Growing sales of 300-mm wafers provided the only sunshine in an otherwise drab 2001 for manufacturers of silicon wafers, Gartner Dataquest reports. A 31% drop in revenues from 2000 would have been even worse except for the "burgeoning of the 300-mm wafer market," notes Takashi Ogawa, principal analyst for the firm's semiconductor manufacturing research group. Revenues declined $2.4 billion last year, from $7.8 billion to $5.4 billion. "Such a dreary double-digit decline in million square inches [of] demand had not been seen since 1985," Ogawa points out. Producers would have fared even worse if demand for the "premium price product" hadn't been as strong as it was, he adds.

The rankings of the top producers show the positive effect of 300-mm wafer sales. Shin-Etsu Handotai remained atop the rankings by growing its 300-mm wafer sales, the research firm says. Wacker Siltronic kept the second position, although the merger of Sumitomo Metal and Mitsubishi Materials into SUMCO may alter the rankings. Other suppliers offering 300-mm silicon substrates also kept their losses in 2001 below the market average.