Applied Materials, Inc. is the leader in the materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every semiconductor and advanced display in the world.
The company is experts in the design, development, production, and servicing of the critical wafer fabrication and display fabrication tools the company’s customers need to manufacture semiconductors and displays. The company’s customers’ products are used in a wide variety of products such as personal computing devices, mobile phones, art...
Applied Materials, Inc. is the leader in the materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every semiconductor and advanced display in the world.
The company is experts in the design, development, production, and servicing of the critical wafer fabrication and display fabrication tools the company’s customers need to manufacture semiconductors and displays. The company’s customers’ products are used in a wide variety of products such as personal computing devices, mobile phones, artificial intelligence (AI) and data center servers, automobiles, connected devices, industrial applications and consumer electronics. The company has the semiconductor capital equipment industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of products. This breadth allows the company the ability to connect and co-optimize technologies across the company’s portfolio, enabling its customers to achieve superior results as manufacturing semiconductors and displays is becoming increasingly complex. Semiconductors provide the foundation for advances in technology that are reshaping the global economy, including artificial intelligence, internet of things, robotics, electric and autonomous vehicles, and clean energy.
The company’s long-term growth strategy requires continued development of new materials engineering solutions, including products and platforms that enable expansion into new and adjacent markets.
A majority of the company’s products and services are delivered to customers in jurisdictions outside of the United States, including China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. The company also purchases a significant portion of equipment and supplies from suppliers outside of the United States.
Segments
The company operates in three reportable segments: Semiconductor Systems, Applied Global Services (AGS), and Display.
Semiconductor Systems
The company’s Semiconductor Systems segment designs, develops, manufactures and sells a wide range of primarily 300mm equipment used to fabricate semiconductor chips, also referred to as integrated circuits (ICs). The Semiconductor Systems segment consists of the semiconductor capital equipment industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of products used in the chip making process. The company’s products address steps across materials engineering, process control and advanced packaging, including the conversion of patterns into device structures, transistor and interconnect fabrication, metrology, inspection and review, and packaging technologies for connecting finished IC die. In addition to providing equipment for individual process steps, the company has the ability to combine, co-optimize and integrate the company’s technologies to develop highly differentiated solutions for the company’s customers. The company’s equipment helps customers improve the power, performance, yield and costs of the semiconductor devices.
The company’s patterning systems and technologies address challenges resulting from shrinking pattern dimensions and the growing complexity in vertical stacking found in today’s most advanced semiconductor devices. The company’s transistor and interconnect products and technologies enable continued power and performance improvements of 3D transistors. The company’s process control systems employ optical and eBeam technologies that allow customers to inspect and review critical semiconductor architectures throughout the manufacturing process, helping improve chip yields. The company’s advanced packaging systems use its materials engineering expertise to allow customers to connect multiple chips together through heterogeneous integration, enabling them to advance the technology roadmap beyond a single chip.
The company’s Semiconductor Systems sales are to customers that serve the following markets: foundry, logic and other; DRAM; flash memory. Foundry, logic, and other is consisted of leading-edge and non-leading edge technology nodes. Leading-edge represents customers that are producing on the most advanced technology nodes. Non-leading edge technology nodes serve markets, such as internet of things, communications, automotive, power and sensors.
Applied Global Services (AGS)
The AGS segment provides services, spares and factory automation software to customer fabrication plants globally. The AGS segment also manufactures and sells 200mm and other equipment, which is shipped to customers globally that serve non-leading-edge markets.
AGS’s transactional and subscription service products, spares and factory automation software is purchased by customers to optimize the performance of the company’s large, global installed base of semiconductor, display and other equipment. These solutions are also used to optimize plant performance and productivity. Customer demand is fulfilled through a global distribution system in more than 200 locations and trained field engineers located near customer sites to support the company’s semiconductor, display and other equipment worldwide.
Display
Display segment is primarily consisted of products for manufacturing liquid crystal displays (LCDs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and other display technologies for TVs, monitors, laptops, personal computers (PCs), tablets, smartphones, and other consumer-oriented devices. While similarities exist between the technologies utilized in semiconductor and display fabrication, the most significant differences are in the size and composition of the substrate. Substrates used to manufacture display panels and other devices are typically glass, although newer flexible materials are entering the market. Display segment growth depends primarily on consumer demand for increasingly larger and more advanced TVs and high-resolution displays for mobile devices and information technology (IT) products, including laptops, monitors and tablets, as well as new form factors, including thin, light, curved and flexible displays, and new applications such as augmented and virtual reality. In addition to display applications, the segment’s Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) technology is used to manufacture solar energy cells. The expertise that the company has in materials engineering on large glass substrates is synergistic with the advanced packaging business in the Semiconductor Products Group, as there is a trend in the industry to utilize various types of substrates, including glass.
Marketing and Sales
Because of the highly technical nature of the company’s products, the company markets and sells products worldwide almost entirely through a direct sales force.
The company has operations in many countries, with some of its business activities concentrated in certain geographic areas.
The following companies accounted for at least 10 percent of the company’s net revenue for 2024 for products and services in multiple reportable segments: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited.
Patents
The company has more than 22,000 active patents in the United States and other countries, and additional applications are pending for new inventions.
History
Applied Materials, Inc. was founded in 1967. The company was incorporated in 1967 as a Delaware corporation.