Downturn shuffles equipment rankings

If any semiconductor manufacturing equipment supplier could be said to have had a good year in 2001, it was KLA-Tencor. The metrology giant jumped two spots, to fourth place, in VLSI Research's annual list of the world's largest industry suppliers. KLA-Tencor also had the smallest sales decline in the top ten, with only a 13.7% drop from 2000 to 2001.

Other winners, relatively speaking, included Novellus, which jumped into the top ten at number eight, with just over US$1 billion in 2001 sales. The lithography group as a whole slid 24%, relative to the wafer processing equipment average of 34.7%. Nikon, ASML, and Canon all maintained their hold on the industry top ten.

2001 Rank	Company	Calendar 2001 Sales	Calendar 2000 Sales	2000 Rank
1	Applied Materials	6,454.7	10,303.4	1
2	Tokyo Electron Ltd.	3,557.0	5,141.6	2
3	Nikon	1,928.0	2,623.4	3
4	KLA-Tencor	1,685.2	1,952.6	6
5	ASML	1,543.8	2,016.4	5
6	Canon Inc.	1,135.2	1,418.4	9
7	Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co.	1,056.1	1,389.9	10
8	Novellus Systems Inc.	1,016.0	1,384.3	11
9	Hitachi High-Technologies Corp.	928.2	1,304.4	12
10	Advantest	924.0	1865.1	7
	Source: VLSI Research, Inc. Sales in Millions of US$

US companies were the largest losers in 2001, with sales dropping 39% on average, VLSI Research said. Japanese suppliers Canon, Dainippon Screen, and Hitachi each moved up one spot in the rankings.

Downturn shuffles equipment rankings

Back to top