Universal Instruments has claimed that figures recently released by one of the industry's most respected market monitoring organisations reveal that it has achieved four successive quarters of market share gain in the combined chip placement sector. The market share secured by Universal's High Speed Chip Placement platform products has doubled in the period since mid-2004, it states.
Universal says that a key driving factor behind this escalating success in one of the market's most competitive segments is its Lightning rotary placement head - a technology innovation that ingeniously combines the modularity and scalability of flexible fine pitch gantry-based equipment with the raw speed and throughput of a chipshooter for parts from 0201 to 20 mm² in size with no appreciable performance derate.
"Lightning's proven ability to place the broadest range of components makes all-platform lines even more compelling, a fact that is contributing to the success we are achieving in all market sectors with this philosophy," said Karen Moore-Watts, global director of marketing at Universal Instruments. "But more significantly, we are consistently seizing an expanding share of the chip placement segment with our Genesis and AdVantis platforms, configured with Lightning heads. The versatility of these systems is unmatched: users no longer need to choose between flexibility and fast changeover associated with gantry machines or the speed of a rotary head. With our platform products they can have both and, evidently, that is starting to show."
"You can expect Lightning to remain at the centre of our chip placement platform philosophy as we continue to leverage the technology lead it gives us and aggressively carve into a segment that has been dominated by dedicated, less flexible equipment," she said.
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