Ardentec Corporation is an expert in "wafer probing," a highly specialized niche sandwiched between "front" and "back-end" semiconductor manufacturing. Because the semiconductor industry uses a modular process and has standard containers for sharing work-in-progress, it turned into a high horizontal structure where specialists would be cut Ardentec unique market opportunities that are less attractive to the integrated producers. The company grew quickly, but as he begins to take a significant percentage of the total available market, its founders are faced with the problem of how to maintain growth. They are vertically integrated in the back end, or should they try to make acquisitions in adjacent markets? Case is designed for use in conjunction with Technical Note, "Horizontal specialization and modularity in the semiconductor industry" (608-001).
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by Willy Shih, Chen Fu, Ting-Chen Chen, Chintay Shih Source: Harvard Business School 16 pages. Publication Date: August 25, 2008. Prod. #: 609026-PDF-ENG
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