Industry Th e Mo n T h in hB-LeDs
equipment sales
moCVD suppliers see order push-outs
Aixtron and Veeco are set to expand their Regardless of these issues, Veeco is con-
spending on research and development next tinuing strategic investments to build on its
year, even as orders for their systems con- high-throughput K465 GaN MOCVD sys-
tinue to fall. tem’s success. “Our goal is to emerge from
Orders for Veeco Instruments’ solar and this cyclical pause with a better product
LED equipment fell by half between the line-up,” Peeler said.
second and third quarters of 2008 as system Meanwhile, despite entering digestion,
usage declined at some LED wafer manu- Aixtron is emphasizing that its 7158.1 mil-
facturers. The business unit took $26 million lion ($204.2 million) order backlog remains
of orders in the three months to September, much stronger than it was at this time
as sales also dipped to $41 million from last year. Regardless of the uncertainties
$45 million in the previous period. posed by what the German company called
The Plainview, NY, tool producer fell foul “unprecedented” economic circumstances,
of $9.8 million in delayed sales in the Sep- CEO Paul Hyland rejected suggestions that
tember quarter arising from high- brightness some customers had pulled their orders.
LED makers. “While we expected some “There have been no cancellations,” said
fall-off in orders due to the significant Hyland, although he did acknowledge that
MOCVD capacity build-up in Taiwan, the some scheduled deliveries may be delayed,
decline was greater than originally antici- possibly pushing out some sales revenues
pated,” commented CEO John Peeler. o from 2008 to 2009.
The LED industry is again digesting a V
E
EC
The MOCVD producer will now use its
large number of recently installed produc- After the success of Veeco’s K465 reactor (shown substantial cash reserves to accelerate devel-
tion systems, which have been purchased here) and Aixtron’s Crius and G4 systems, the opment work, which Hyland sees as essen-
in expectation of increasing demand. How- companies will now invest in developing tial for Aixtron to maintain its edge. “There
ever, demand has not uniformly increased next-generation reactors for LED production. is no room for complacency,” he said.
to the same extent as capacity, leading to For the first nine months of 2008, Aixtron
lower average equipment usage. Having only regained profitability in posted total revenue of 7192.1 million, up
“The utilization rates of some of the June, Veeco slipped to a net loss of $1.7 mil- 20% on the 2007 figure. In the latest quar-
customers are still going down,” Peeler lion from $115.7 million overall revenue in ter, sales totalled 763.9 million, yielding
commented. “Others are still buying for the September quarter. 75.5 million profit. The company expects
capacity and managing ramp-ups of new Veeco says that it will record less revenue total sales for 2008 to total at least 7270 m i l -
factories for their particular applications. in 2009 than in 2008, driven largely by the lion – meeting the lower end of expectations
It’s a mixed bag.” LED shortfall. This, and the impact of the set at the start of the year.
This digestion situation last arose as global economy in its other markets, is now Hyland explained that while 2009 will be
recently as 2005, when Veeco’s orders leading the company to make cost-cutting a challenging year for everybody, there con-
recovered within nine months, but Peeler plans. “Our management team is conduct- tinue to be positive trends for Aixtron. “We
accepts that things could be different this ing a comprehensive review of our global stand to gain from the continued adoption
time. “It’s difficult to tell if this is a flat spot workforce, and we’re planning reductions in of LEDs – the fundamentals remain as good
or a downturn,” Peeler said. the current quarter,” Peeler said. as they were a year ago.”
market report
LED backlights to grab
pioneers Samsung and Sony. specifically the extra-slim designs that
“The shipment of LCD TVs with LED LEDs enable.
TV share in 2009
backlights will begin to be active in 2009 In the past, superior color rendering,
and [the technology] is likely to account particularly in the red end of the visible
for 6.4% of the total LCD TV market (or spectrum, had been expected to push LED
Significant penetration of LEDs in LCD 10.9 million units) by 2010,” predicted the backlighting. However, CCFL producers
television backlights will begin next year, Displaybank report. countered that threat with improved lamps.
suggest analysts at the Korean market The bullish prediction goes on to fore- More recently, it has been the energy-
research company Displaybank. cast that more than 25 million such units saving potential of LEDs that has been
Already becoming popular in smaller will be shipped in 2011, doubling to around highlighted as the key advantage of note-
LCD units, such as those used for note- 52 million the following year – equivalent book computers. However, the battery life
book computers, LEDs have not yet been to a quarter of all LCD TV shipments. Sur- that this brings is not a consideration in
able to displace traditional light sources in prisingly, Displaybank researcher Allen Ji TVs, and the cost of the several hundred
TVs. This will change next year, as Sharp, reckons that the driving force behind the individual LED chips that are used in a
Philips, Hitachi and LG launch TVs incor- displacement of cold-cathode fluorescent typical TV backlight has so far resulted in
porating the solid-state technology, joining lamps (CCFLs) will be pure aesthetics – CCFLs maintaining their dominance.
10 compoundsemiconductor.net December 2008 Compound Semiconductor
CSDec08hbleds 10,11.indd 10 18/11/08 12:24:08
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