INDUSTRY NEWS

Semicon Taiwan 97

Show's explosive growth mirrors IC industry expansion on island

Exhibit hall bustles at World Trade Center in Taipei.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — The explosive growth in attendance and exhibitors at Semicon Taiwan 97 held here in September mirrors the rapid expansion of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry. In its second year of existence, the show — cosponsored by the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA) — saw a nearly 80% rise in exhibit booths and a 46% increase in attendance, according to SEMI statistics. Trade group president Stanley Myers said all available exhibit space was occupied, with some 100 members on the waiting list. He added that Semicon Taiwan has become SEMI's second-largest Asian show, trailing only Semicon Japan.

Chintay Shih, chairman of TSIA, told reporters that Taiwanese manufacturers have already announced more than $67 billion in scheduled fab expenditures over the next decade. Shih said he doesn't foresee any 300-mm fabs completed on the island by 2000, but offered projections of as many as 25 such facilities in place by the end of the next decade, most of them built in the new Tainan Science-Based Industrial Park in southern Taiwan. Strategic growth forecasts cited by Shih show a Taiwanese market generating close to $35 billion in product revenue by 2005, which would translate into about 8% global market share.

Taiwanese Premier Vincent Siew accompanies SEMI President Stanley Myers on way to welcoming speeches and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

Applied Materials senior vice president David Wang said that his company expects to spend about $1.07 billion in Taiwan by 2001. The executive laid out three items at the heart of the equipment supplier's Taiwan strategy for the next decade: develop low-cost, high-quality manufacturing, design, and production of key tool components; hire more people and expand the company's training capabilities, both for employees and for customers; and globalize technologies developed in Taiwan via joint-development partnerships, with a "reflowing" of those technologies to international applications. "Our ultimate goal," noted Wang, "is to combine our expertise with the local Taiwanese IC industry to become one unit, because their success will be our success."

Semicon Taiwan 98 will be held at Taipei's World Trade Center on November 4-6. For more information on this or any other Semicon show, contact SEMI headquarters at 415/964-5111 or check the group's Web site, www.semi.org.

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