Comments on the MEC 2009 MEMS Market Analyst Panel

Contributed by Paul Werbaneth, VP Marketing and Applications, Tegal Corporation

I’m mostly never an early adopter. Very often, I’m a wait-and-see kind of guy when it comes to things like digital cameras, smartphones, booking travel on the internet. Blogging.

But once I get a head of steam up and actually pull the trigger I can become the most enthusiastic of proselytizing converts. (Want to know about my Nikon D40?)

So I’m a little surprised when I hear frequent references Friday morning during the MEMS Market Analyst Panel (Jeremie Bouchaud) to how good the smartphone market is going to continue to be to MEMS, moving forward into 2010.  I guess I’m actually not the last person in the world to buy an iDroidPrePhone (I’m the first in my family to do so, actually).  Of course I won’t be replacing my phone anytime soon, because I’m pretty attached to it now, but there are about 800 million other consumers in line behind me waiting to buy a new, or first, smartphone. And that’s exactly the kind of demand that’s going to fill up the depreciated 8” fabrication lines now being repurposed for MEMS manufacturing.  Not to mention fill lots of 6” MEMS fabs along the way.

Industry Buzz from the Bay Area MEMS Happy Hour

Contributed by Paul Werbaneth, VP, Marketing & Applications, Tegal Corporation.

Well if they have farms, milk, butter, and cheese in Berkeley, CA, then having MEMS in Berkeley is the next logical step, right?

And if you had stumbled in, or otherwise found yourself in, the Pyramid Alehouse on Gilman in Berkeley Wednesday evening, you would have found they not only have MEMS in Berkeley (Al? Clark?), they also have excellent draft beers (that wasn’t moo juice we were drinking), good pizzas, healthy (?) sweet potato fries, and a whole bunch of MEMS people standing outside on the Alehouse patio enthusiastically networking over the aforementioned imbiss.

It’s the monthly roving Bay Area MEMS after-work get-together, and it’s attracted more people tonight than anyone (including the loose band of organizers: Dave Cook, Alissa Fitzgerald, Roger Grace, Mary Ann Maher, Magnus Rimskog, among others) thought would make the trek up from Silicon Valley, or from campus up the hill.  (31 miles from Petaluma to Berkeley for me, a trip the car knows well, owing to two daughters who are now both Cal grads.)