No. 64 on Business 2.0's list of the 100 fastest-growing technology companies
Under CEO Michael Splinter, the 40-year-old company is branching out from chipmaking equipment to supplying gear for the makers of three products that are showing nonstop, unprecedented growth: solar panels, flat-screen monitors, and flash memory. All those products are made at nanotech scales - but don't let Splinter hear you call what his company does "nanotech."
On moving from "nanotech" to "nanomanufacturing": The vision for our company is to apply nanoscale technology to improve the way people live. The reason that we call it nanomanufacturing, not nanotech, is that this is all about the technologies that are really going into production, building flat-panel displays, semiconductors, and solar cells, and really being utilized in factories around the world. That's why our company has been able to grow and increase our profits, because we've been able to actually get those nano-scale technologies into manufacturing and widespread use.
On the iPod effect: In the semiconductor industry, we've seen expansion over the last three years. The biggest thing has been memory chips. They've gone up dramatically during this period of time. Specifically flash memory chips for digital cameras, iPods, and now in handheld computers and videocameras. The demand for these seems to be insatiable.
On looking for the next big thing: Our move to build gear for the flash memory boom came a year too late. I think we caught up in the end, but we should have been more alert and realized what was happening in the market sooner. Hindsight is 20:20. When you started to see digital photography really take off at the end of the 1990s, it should have become obvious that everyone out there was going to need a huge amount of storage for their pictures. We started exploring new areas for long-term growth, and that's how we started making the push for solar. How big it's going to get, I really don't know, but if you look at the magnitude of investment in electricity on a worldwide basis, it's hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
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