Marketing Strategy for New Products of Semiconductor Equipment Industry

• Main Authors: Jui-Liang Kuo, 郭瑞良
• Other Authors: Chyan Yang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/31922980306151215821

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 高階主管管理學程碩士班 === 91 === The life cycle of the whole semiconductor industry has been running through innovation stage, differentiation stage to current cost stage since the semiconductor was introduced a half century ago. Every semiconductor manufacturer is thinking the marketing strategy to be more innovative and differentiated to be avoid the crisis of being commoditized as well as outperform its competitors. This study is to take Applied Materials as a case study to evaluate its important milestone- launch Process Module Products, will be a successful marketing strategy or not in Wafer Fab Equipment Industry. Applied Materials, the largest supplier of products and services to the global semiconductor industry, is one of the world's leading information infrastructure providers. Applied Materials announced its Process Module(TM) strategy, a key approach to enabling next-generation semiconductor manufacturing. Pioneered by Applied Materials over the last five years, the Process Module concept represents a major leap forward for the industry, providing customers with a revolutionary ``plug and play'' approach with significant performance and time-to-market advantages for building an entire structure on a chip. Shipments to multiple customer sites worldwide for several types of modules are expected to begin this year. ''Applied Materials' leadership in copper/low (kappa) materials, nanometer device shrinks and 300mm positions us to lead the industry's next paradigm shift to Process Modules,'' said Dr. Dan Maydan, president of Applied Materials. ''Extensive work with key customers at our Equipment and Process Integration Center (EPIC) over the past several years has proven the viability and effectiveness of this approach where we have achieved test chip yields greater than 98 percent at the 130 nanometer technology node. We have demonstrated that our Process Module units can reduce chip-to-chip variability by 50 percent -- enabling customers to optimize their manufacturing flow to maximize yields of their highest performance chips,'' stated Dr. Maydan. ''To further enable our Process Module capability, Applied Materials has invested significant resources in developing new facilities, process control technology and stand-alone systems that will extend our leadership in this approach.'' Applied Materials Process Module approach segments the semiconductor manufacturing process into separate building blocks. Each of these blocks, or Process Modules, consists of several individual systems that work together as a single, well-coordinated unit. Wafers fed through a module are automatically processed to a specified, guaranteed level of performance. To accomplish this, Applied Materials has integrated its systems with a broad range of innovative metrology and inspection.