Niche markets and strategies for small/mid-size semiconductor equipment companies

Dr. Robert Castellano, The Information Network

NEW TRIPOLI, USA: With semicon coming up, small and mid-sized equipment companies usually get starry eyed and teary eyed when comparing their booths to the monoliths of the major equipment suppliers such as Applied Materials, KLA-Tencor, and Novellus.

Competing in the real world also represents challenges that small and mid-sized companies face. Our advice is to stop competing in the main stream areas against the big boys, and focus on niche markets.

For example, our analysis below shows the growth of equipment for MEMs manufacturing. The MEMs market is made of of small companies and devices are generally made on wafers smaller than 300mm. The major vendors are after the Intels and Samsungs budgets of billions of dollars, not MEMs foundries, where except for STMicroelectronics, revenues for the next 20 companies were below $40 million in 2010.Source: The Information Network, USA.