Boston, MA - November 2, 2005 - The latest Strategy Analytics study on the bulk GaAs wafer industry, "SI GaAs Bulk Substrates 2004: Vendor Ratings and Customer Satisfaction," showed that suppliers were meeting customer expectations in the commercial areas of technical support and complaints, as well as technical requirements for wafer flatness.

However, there still remains a gap between customer expectations and industry performance in areas that end-users consider essential, such as wafer pricing, wafer uniformity and lot uniformity. Customers rate these qualities highly and this study shows that bulk substrate suppliers need to work harder to meet these expectations.

"Freiberger Compound Materials (FCM), Hitachi Cable and Sumitomo Electric Industries (SEI) achieved the highest ratings for both technical and commercial parameters," according to Asif Anwar, Director, Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductor Technologies service. "While there was no discernible difference in the technical ratings achieved by the top three, FCM was the clear leader in terms of commercial parameters."

"Being the market leader in terms of commercial output doesn't necessarily translate to offering best-in-class customer service," observed Stephen Entwistle, Vice President, Strategic Technologies Practice. "In the case of SEI, the company is able to keep its primary customers very happy, but this appears to be at the expense of smaller customers and this drags SEI down in terms of overall ratings."

"SI GaAs Bulk Substrates 2004: Vendor Ratings and Customer Satisfaction" details the findings from Strategy Analytics' annual survey of the GaAs wafer industry, which asked end-users to rate their suppliers in terms of 10 parameters covering technical and commercial aspects of bulk wafer supply.