GLG News by Council Members in North America who Follow Semiconductor Testing

Industry consolidation in this case will not lead to a reduction in available products in the short term, so is of little immediate benefit to the industry as a whole.  Verigy will be the strongest out of the remaining SOC test companies as they alone benefit from the economics of single platform,...

Two tier 2 companies forced together by weakness creates another tier 2 company.  The combination will reduce number of test platforms in the industry and enhance the profitability of Teradyne and Verigy.

Advantest has acquired the remnants of SZ from Credence, giving them power and analog testers and some incremental customers.  The technology won't be integrated into Advantest's SOC platforms - if that's why Advantest bought it, they're fooling themselves.  Credence continues the divestment...

Development of silicon and III-V compound semiconductor nanostructures offers yet another path for low cost production and increased photovoltaic efficiencies. The real question is when how soon these advanced methods will become commercialized. The decisive factor for the success and production of...

This acquisition is not Lam Research’s first step into wet processing but will be the most significant and application intensive. A very good match considering the industry is in the transitional phase for new materials and device structures at and below the 65nm node and requires an in-depth understanding...

The sluggish memory market combined with the credit crunch changes the dynamic for bank funding of the Intel, STMicroelectronic and Francisco Partners joint venture agreement. This delay could impact select semiconductor capital equipment vendors. Competitor Spansion won’t likely benefit from a 3-month...

Nanoscale probing directly at the transistor level for 65nm, 45nm and 32nm IC's has come of age. Agilent and MultiProbe's strategic partnership using Agilent's tester and MultiProbe's atomic force probe (AFP) system is posed to strengthen Agilent’s product offerings to include...

Teradyne gets a capable entry into flash memory test to allow the company to compete more effectively against Verigy.  Nextest executives get over being swallowed for a second time by Teradyne by negotiating a good price for the company.  Keeping Nextest key employees will be the challenge....

Acquisition weakens the power of Verigy's single platform strategy.  Demonstrates the failure of standalone structural test in the commercial test marketplace.  Financial terms are not disclosed, so price should be close to zero.

1. There is a lot of noise about WiMax being 4G technology for mobile devices including cellular phones. While this is probably true Wimax standard is not finalized yet and this fact makes the technology developers a risky companies to invest in. 2. NextWave is spending huge amount of money...