SANTA CLARA, USA: VLSI Research Inc. reports that weakness in the semiconductor industry pushed sales growth of probe cards used for testing IC wafers down to 13.9 percent in 2007, half of the five-year historic average growth rate.

The year 2008 will be particularly difficult for those serving the memory IC market, according to the firm. Sales of probe cards are forecast to reach $1.41bn in 2008 from $1.36bn in 2007, which represents an annual growth of only 3.4 percent.

In 2007, FormFactor (USA), Micronics Japan Co. (MJC - Japan), and JEM (Japan) maintained their strong lead at the top of the supplier ranking, while Phicom (Korea) moved into 4th position, up from 6th in 2006. SV Probe (USA) was the 5th largest supplier.

Despite the industry slowdown, the probe card market continues to outpace the semiconductor IC market, with an average annual growth rate of 28 percent over the past five years. This growth has been fuelled by the demands of memory IC testing, where the historic five-year CAGR of memory bits shipped has been over 90 percent.

VLSI Research projects that the probe card market will reach $2.4bn by 2012.