Boston, MA - December 18, 2006 -Strategy Analytics has released the results of surveys detailing customer ratings for their bulk and epitaxial GaAs substrate suppliers, revealing that uniformity and price are the critical parameters used by GaAs device manufacturers and epitaxial wafer suppliers when choosing a substrate supplier.

The two studies, "SI GaAs Bulk Substrates 2005: Vendor Ratings and Customer Satisfaction," and "SI GaAs Epitaxial Substrates 2005: Vendor Ratings and Customer Satisfaction," summarize customer ratings across a range of technical and commercial parameters:

• Technical parameters

Surface Finish

Flatness

Wafer Uniformity

Lot Uniformity

Lot-to-lot Uniformity

• Commercial parameters

Test Data

Lead Time

Achieving delivery promise

Technical Support

Response to complaints

Price

"The Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) epitaxial wafer suppliers have differentiated themselves on cost. Aside from IQE, none of the other epitaxial wafer suppliers could match VPEC and MBE Technology wafer pricing," notes Asif Anwar, GaAs service Director. "MBE Technology also had the highest rating overall as a result of strong customer ratings in both the technical and commercial parameters."

"Customers rated the top three suppliers of SI GaAs bulk substrates, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Hitachi Cable and Freiberger Compound Materials, highly for technical parameters, with little difference between the three," observes Stephen Entwistle, VP of the Strategy Analytics Strategic Technologies Practice. "We did see changes in the rank order for commercial performance and in particular, we have seen considerable improvement in AXT's commercial ratings."