MELVILLE, NY, April 4 -- Nikon Instruments Inc. has integrated two of its high-precision industrial metrology business units -- Semiconductor Inspection and Nexiv Vision Measuring Systems -- under the SITECH Division located in Tempe, AZ.
Nikon hopes to coordinate the applications engineering and service departments, product management and sales teams to prepare for new business opportunities in precision measurement and inspection.
SITECH, including the new Vision Systems and Semiconductor Inspections divisions, will be lead by Takeshi Kamiya, general manager.
SAN
JOSE - February chip sales were $18.1
billion worldwide, 2% below revised January sales but up 15.8% year-on-year, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported today.
Inventory overages have been worked out of the supply chain, the trade group said.
"Worldwide sales of semiconductors have been stronger than expected
during first two months of 2005," said SIA president George Scalise.
"Flat sales in January followed by a modest sequential decline in
February are actually encouraging signs given that these two months are
normally slow periods for the industry."
Consumer
spending patterns have become increasingly important to the worldwide
semiconductor industry, Scalise noted. The SIA estimates that half of all
semiconductor consumption in 2004 was driven by consumer purchases.
The industry "is paying closer attention to
indicators of consumer confidence. At this time, those indicators
appear to be positive," Scalise said.
Sales of personal computers and wireless handsets have increased
from the same period of 2004 SIA, said. Microprocessor sales are up 11%
from February 2004, DRAMs up 36% and ASICs for wireless applications up
53%.
Scalise said excess inventories are no longer a factor in industry
sales. "According to iSuppli, excess inventories have continued to
decline from $1.6 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2004 and
will be at $700,000 million at the end of the first quarter of 2005.
"The overall health of the global semiconductor industry remains
strong. If the current trends continue, our forecast for flat industry
sales for 2005 could prove to have been overly cautious," Scalise said.
HAVERHILL, MA - Russian semiconductor manufacturers sold about $2
billion dollars worth of chips last year, about one-third the peak of the
former USSR, according to a report from Japan.
The Semiconductor Industry News,
a Japanese publication which recently began tracking the Russian IC market, found
that most manufacturers have been using 4 or 6" wafers for volume production. Their
technology is likely "more than 10 years behind leading global manufacturers," according
to analyst Dominique Numakura, publisher of the EPTE newsletter and a columnist for PCD&M magazine.