Business Insight Zone

First, the Green Wombat blog has this informative item on Applied Materials, which has long been the heavyweight champion of semiconductor-production equipment, and which is now retooling a lot of its machines so they can can produce solar panels instead. (And check out the photo to grasp the size of the equipment we’re talking about — it’s like a computer the size of a bus.) Most arresting statement:

In the first quarter of the year the company forecast its solar business would do $200 million in revenue in 2007. By the second quarter, it raised that estimate to $400 million, and last week during the third quarter earnings call, CEO Mike Splinter upped the ante to more than $600 million.

That’s some real money, even for a company as big as Applied. It helps put into perspective why Applied would be so aggressive about pursuing the solar market, which (1) only stands to grow, and (2) could make a nice counterweight to the wildly cyclical chip industry.

Also see this short post from the Cleantech Blog, which touches on Applied and some of the other US companies — including First Solar and Energy Conversion Devices — that are making a serious play in the solar sector.