Asyst Strengthens Sorter Market Leadership Position With $15 Million Spartan™ Win

Business Wire,  July 10, 2008  

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

FREMONT, Calif. -- Asyst Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:ASYT), the leader in Agile Automation[TM], today announced that its Spartan Integrated Sorter has been selected by a major IC manufacturer for installation in four different fabs, fully displacing a competitor's previously installed equipment. The company expects to book orders and recognize the related revenue, estimated at approximately $15 million, over a 12-18 month customer implementation period.

Asyst continues to gain share in the sorter market. According to industry research firm Gartner Dataquest, in calendar year 2007 Asyst expanded its market share in the wafer management segment of the worldwide semiconductor equipment market by 11%, to a leading 42% share overall. This helped to drive a 32% year-over-year increase in Asyst's sales in the segment for calendar 2007, a difficult year for other semiconductor equipment.

The Spartan Sorter is a unified wafer management solution embodying the minimum scale and complexity necessary to sort wafers as cleanly and quickly as possible. It provides leading 300mm performance with the lowest demonstrated particle performance for better than Class 1 cleanliness, high reliability for fast start-up times and unique, integrated NexEDA[TM] software for easy fab integration. It also offers "fast swap" wafer exchanges, or movement of two wafers simultaneously, to achieve high throughput while mitigating the risk of wafer damage.

"Based on recent independent market share figures and increasing customer acceptance, we believe the Spartan Sorter is the best-of-breed sorter solution in the marketplace and the clear market leader," said Paula LuPriore, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Automation Solutions, for Asyst. "We believe these influential recent wins for Spartan will fuel further market share gains in the wafer management segment. The Spartan is an important tool for Asyst, representing our ability to create an entirely new solution to address the needs of today's manufacturing environments, and to integrate seamlessly into a comprehensive fab automation strategy and toolset."

Gartner Dataquest information derived from, "Market Share: Semiconductor Automation Equipment, Worldwide, 2007," dated May 12, 2008, Bob Johnson and Mark Stromberg, Gartner.

About Asyst

Asyst Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated automation solutions that enable semiconductor and flat panel display (FPD) manufacturers to increase their manufacturing productivity and protect their investment in materials during the manufacturing process. Encompassing isolation systems, work-in-process materials management, substrate-handling robotics, automated transport and loading systems, and connectivity automation software, Asyst's modular, interoperable solutions allow chip and FPD manufacturers, as well as original equipment manufacturers, to select and employ the value-assured, hands-off manufacturing capabilities that best suit their needs. Asyst's homepage is http://www.asyst.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Except for statements of historical fact, the statements in this release are forward-looking. The forward-looking statements include statements regarding customer wins, expected orders and revenue, product capabilities, and other factors more fully detailed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2008, and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. These factors include, but are not limited to, the availability and performance of our Spartan products; the ability of our Spartan products to meet customer requirements; uncertainties related to the pace or completion of customer orders and the timing and realization of expected sales and related revenue for our Spartan products; and other factors more fully detailed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2008, and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Asyst" is a registered trademark and "Spartan", "Agile Automation", NextEDA" are trademarks of Asyst Technologies, Inc. Copyright 2008, Asyst Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

COPYRIGHT 2008 Business Wire
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning