The semiconductor market has been increasingly expanding in the Asia region—particularity in China—for producers and among consumers. In recent years, the growth of international semiconductor OEM manufacturers, packaging and testing companies in Asia have reined in production to China in order to reduce country of origin production costs. This trend will continue as the intense pressure to reduce costs drives advanced packaging production to China. Also spurring the growth of packaging in China is the rapid demand spike of the domestic electronics market—especially for mobile phones, personal computers and other consumer electronics. The domestic demand on electronic goods will increase even further in China given the fact that the 12th five-year plan commencing this year puts a heavy emphasis on creating and increasing domestic consumption rather than exported services and applications.
Although Palomar Technologies has held a prominent presence in Asia for well over a decade, we have not see such a rapid jump in advanced packaging production to Asia—mainly China—as we’re experiencing in the last few years. Due to this rapid transfer of packages from North America and Europe to Asia, the high-precision 3500 Die Bonder has had a rapidly increasing installed base in China and neighboring countries.
In order to ensure a seamless transfer of equipment, the Palomar Technologies Asian field services team works closely with customers. With proper planning, coordination and scheduling, the majority of our customers experience a “plug and play” when the die bonders arrived at their Asian facilities. Most customers who have previously deployed 3500 Die Bonders have now entered the second phase of their expansion in production capacity by purchasing new equipment in Asia. Some companies prefer to stick to the workhorse 3500 Die Bonder; others have switched over to the ultra-flexible 3800 Die Bonder to meet new and more challenging packages, such as those requiring 5-7um-placement accuracy at 3-sigma.
If you ask me what is the secret of our success, my answer is simple: Palomar Technologies combines more than 30 years of process know-how with a high-precision line of machines to deliver proven and working solutions to our customers. This is our recipe for success!
You may be familiar with capital equipment in Asia sitting in a corner of the building as a sort of “white elephant”. So how does Palomar Technologies ensure that every piece of equipment purchased by a customer will fully meet their microelectronic packaging needs? The answer is that we will not accept an order from a customer unless and until our technical and application team understands exactly what the customer is expecting on their application. Only when we know the customer application thoroughly and have a solution ready will we would accept the order. This is a much more thorough and hands-on process for the customer to provide detailed technical information, often including drawings. But this is a sure way that the interest and investment of our customer are protected. Unlike our competition, we will never tell our customer “no problem” before knowing the application and assessing the risk involved in it. As evidenced by the community of satisfied customers in Asia, the Palomar Technologies path has been a great success to developing microelectronic packaging solutions.
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PH Chan 钟碧和
Asia Pacific Director
Palomar Technologies (S.E. Asia) Pte Ltd