GigaLane outrivaled Japan and France, accumulated equipment export amount exceeded $100 million
A Korean small-scale equipment maker climbed to a top position in the global light-emitting diode (LED) market by beating Japanese and French companies that have been dominating the market.
While most LED makers in Korea are having a tough time fighting against the raid of Chinese and Taiwanese competitors, this company is drawing the industry’s attention by displaying unrivalled performance in the etcher market.
On the 10th, GigaLane announced that it had climbed to a top position in the global market including China with its LED etcher. This is an outcome of the company’s effort dedicated over the last five years since market entry.
The accomplishment is all the more meaningful as the company defeated global equipment makers like Japan’s Samko and France’s CORIAL, the strong leaders in the field.
GigaLane sold around 250 LED etchers. Export takes up more than half of the company’s sales. This company recorded over $100 million in accumulated export amount with one type of equipment only. Last year alone, it sold approximately 120 etchers based on contracts. The key customers are LED chip and wafer makers in China and Taiwan where new LED investment is being carried out actively.
“When we first entered the global market five years ago, Korean equipments were not received favorably abroad,” said Vice President Bae Byeong-cheol of GigaLane’s equipment division. “We experienced difficulty persuading customers and securing our product reliability. However, as words spread out, we could rapidly increase our market share. So, currently, we have a large number of new customers and also a considerably high repurchasing rate by the existing customers.” Vice President Bae added, “We expect high growth this year in a similar level to last year.”
GigaLane developed an LED etcher ‘MAXIS300L’ in 2009 and entered the market the following year. This equipment is used in PSS (patterned sapphire substrate) etching process to improve light emitting efficiency of LED elements. Providing even etching quality and excellent performance, MAXIS300L has positioned itself as the most sought-after equipment by not only global LED chip, but also patterned wafer makers.
In addition, GigaLane’s etcher can be applied to photonics crystal etching process and gallium nitride (GaN) etching to form electrodes.
GigaLane is soon to release a new 6.8” large caliber product for sapphire substrate. This product will be applied to single wafer process. GigaLane has also recently developed an equipment to target not only LED, but also micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and through silicon via (TSV) markets. This company has acquired as many as 50 related patents.
“Recently, imitations similar to our product began to be released in Taiwan,” said Vice President Bae. “Their performance is not up to standard, and thus cannot exert a direct impact on our business. However, we will be setting up for a countermeasure using patents.”