Wafer shipments improve again - The Fab Line - Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International report - Brief Article

Electronic News, May 20, 2002

ALTHOUGH STILL BELOW FIGURES POSTED A YEAR ago, worldwide silicon wafer area shipments improved sequentially by almost 15 percent during the first quarter, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI). It is the second quarter in a row in which wafer shipments increased sequentially.

Total silicon wafer area shipments were 1.01 billion square inches during the most recent quarter, up from the 878 million square inches shipped during the previous quarter. The new quarterly total area shipments still represent a 20 percent decline compared to the first quarter 2001 area shipments, SEMI said. The consortium said wafer supplier revenues are not commensurate with volume increases, and this may prove problematic for the industry as it improves cyclically. Wafermakers have a constrained workforce and are showing signs of lengthening product times, SEMI said. SEMI's figures include data on polished silicon wafers, including virgin test wafers, epitaxial silicon wafers and non-polished silic on wafers shipped by the wafer manufacturers to the end-users.