Historically, sales of process control tools (metrology/inspection equipment) have not mirrored sales of the entire front-end equipment market. Chart 1 is a graph of the change in revenues for the year as a comparison between the wafer front end equipment market and process control market. Over the eight years covered in this chart, the cyclicality in capacity-oriented capital spending by logic and memory chip manufacturers is readily apparent.
In 2017, we witnessed a ramp in memory spending — wafer front end equipment revenues from memory suppliers reached $27.8 billion, up 63.5% from revenues of $17.0