Significant in the light of the worries over Perkin-Elmer Corp’s semiconductor fabrication business going to a Japanese company (CI No 1,315), a surver of US semiconductor manufacturers shows that domestic sales of US-made semiconductor equipment and materials will steadily dwindle in the coming years as device manufacturers continue to shift their buying overseas. The survey was commissioned by the Semiconductor Equipment & Materials International trade group in Mountain View, California and covered 24 companies that last year accounted for more than 75% of semiconductors produced in the US. The survey found that 85% of large captive and merchant device companies – ones doing over $650m a year in chips – decreased their equipment purchases from US vendors between 1985 and 1988. For materials, 30% of the firms reduced their buying in the US during that same period. And next year, 60% of the companies expected that their purchases from domestic suppliers would drop even more. US firms are now buying less than half their requirement for lithography equipment from local companies. And the reasons? Product performance and the status of the vendor were top of the list, price came third.
