Developments in the IC industry have triggered the rapid growth of the computing, com-munications and consumer electronics market in the last decade. Recently, the outsourcing trend has thrived in semiconductor backend services and the substrate business is a necessary complement to the assembly service of ICs. Continuing the momentum, ASE Group has focused on the research and development of substrate technology for low cost, high performance, thin, miniature, reliable and environmentally compatible next generation IC package solutions.

We expect substrates will become an increasingly important value-added component of the semiconductor packaging business. The demand for higher performance semiconductors in smaller packages will continue to spur the development of advanced substrates that can support the advancement in circuit design and fabrication. As a result, we believe that the market for substrates will grow and the cost of substrates as a percentage of the total packaging process is getting more significant, especially for advanced packages such as flip-chip BGA packages.

We leverage the expertise of ASE Group's capabilities to achieve integrated design by inte-grating the assembly technologies and substrate technologies as well as to provide our customers with reliable quality, cost effectiveness and fast cycle time. ASE well prepares in stable high volume manufacturing ability with consistently increasing capacity for customers' quick ramp up.

ASE's substrate design and manufacturing capability enables the interconnection materials of a wide range of wire-bond BGA and flip chip product applications. We also provide stub-less solution with etching back and GPP process for substrates for high frequency and high performance package applications.

We believe that interconnect technology and materials have become an increasingly value-added element for the semiconductor packaging business. Consequently, ASE continues to focus on developing and enhancing the in-house capability and capacity of substrate design and manufacturing to benefit our customers with our fast cycle time, largest capacity, mature technology and competitive price.