June 9, 2003 – San Jose, CA – Advanced probe card technologies, including MEMS, continue to take a bite out of the semiconductor wafer test probe card market, according to a report from VLSI Research Inc., San Jose, CA.
VLSI says that while the probe card market as a whole dipped slightly in 2002 to $401.8 million, revenues for advanced technology probe cards — those based on MEMS, vertical, spring, and membrane technologies — increased from 35.4% to 39.0% of the overall market.
Among the factors driving demand for advanced probe cards are the high pin-count needs of parallel device testing, increasing volumes of high pin-count logic and SOC devices, and increasing demand for high-frequency testing at probe.
Leading the pack of top probe card suppliers (in terms of revenue) are FormFactor, JEM, and K&S, all three of which also top the list of advanced probe card suppliers.