EONEWS: What are your opinions regarding the major trends for this market (slowing, growing, booming…)?
CAPITANIO: The ATE market was consolidated over the past 10 years. To stay competitive in this market a continual strong investment in R&D is required. Advantest with over a 50% market share continues to invest over $300M in R&D.
The market contraction had a number of reasons, enhance productive use of existing systems, implementation of BIST and DFT to name a few.
We believe that the market has flattened out and look forward to a period of sustained growth.
EONEWS: What are the key strategies adopted by your company in the short/medium period to address (or to better address) the needs of the market?
CAPITANIO: We work closely with our partners and take their long term needs into account when developing new products. By continuing to spend strongly on R&D we target to stay a step ahead of our competitors.
EONEWS: What are you doing in order to implement your strategies (partnership / agreements, new acquisitions, investments in activities like R&D, people…)?
CAPITANIO: We continue to develop products that cover the whole range of customer needs. With the recent acquisition of Verigy and the excellent V93000 product, we haven’t only strengthened our presence in the SoC test market, we have also gained share in the foundry and out sourced test segments as well.
By offering a strong product portfolio that covers the whole range of devices from mixed signal, consumer, RF through to logic and memory we have found a position that is strong and less immune to the fluctuations of market segments.
Further following diversification paths we also continue to offer device interface and probe card products needed to customize testers for specific device types and associated equipment like handlers and burn-in systems.
EONEWS: What are the most important application?
CAPITANIO: Many areas are promising, in particular we focus on:
a) Mobile applications which is growing most
b) LCD driver test
c) CMOS image sensor applications
EONEWS: Which are the key factors that set your company apart from the competition?
CAPITANIO: We differentiate ourselves with the technologies and the solutions that we develop which are fuelled by our strong and important R&D spend. By partnering with customers we can find the best ways and generate the win win solution.
EONEWS: And in the middle/long term (if you have a crystal ball!)?
CAPITANIO: We have implemented our ACT2014 program targeting 250BY sales in 2014 and a market share of 50% or better.
The italian version on EONews 566-Jul/Aug 2013