ANDevices doubles fab capacity, expects promising 2007

JANUARY 11, 2007 -- ANDevices Inc. (search for ANDevices), provider of planar lightwave circuit (search for PLC) devices, says it has doubled its revenue for the third straight year. The company also has installed new fabrication equipment to meet increasing demand.

Company president and CEO Dr. Jacob Sun called 2006 "a banner year" for ANDevices, necessitating the new fab equipment, which doubles the company's chip fabrication capacity. "This, coupled with strategic packaging partnerships in China, enables us to support all of our expected growth in demand for 2007," he says. "While our core business remains supply of Arrayed Waveguide Gratings [AWGs] to Tier-1 system vendors, we are complementing our products with higher valued added features such as integration of monitors, control electronics, and variable optical attenuators. We see this trend continuing in 2007, and will help us provide more value to our customers."

ANDevices' business expansion is driven in large part to its strategic position in the reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (search for ) market, reports Sun. "We are providing mux/demux solutions to multiple ROADM suppliers, who appreciate the low-loss performance of our AWG products and our ability to supply quality parts in a timely manner," he says.

In addition to the ROADM market, the company reports seeing growth in hybrid integrated modules. Functionally, hybrid integrated modules act as sub-systems as they incorporate multiple PLC chips, control electronics, and line monitoring devices into a single package.

"Rather than chase high-volume, low-margin businesses as our competitors have chosen to do, ANDevices has dedicated its engineering resources to develop integrated solutions for our customers, who appreciate the size, performance, and cost advantages of our products," contends Sun. He says that ANDevices' AWG-based optical channel monitors are gaining acceptance by Tier-1 systems vendors and will provide a significant stream of revenue in 2007. The company's tunable optical dispersion compensators, which now are under beta testing by several systems vendors, also are expected to be a new revenue stream in 2007.

In a related announcement, ANDevices has revealed that Dr. Niel Ransom, former CTO of Alcatel, has jointed the company's Advisory Board. Ransom joins current advisory board members on Dr. Tingye Li (former AT&T Fellow), Dr. Tadashi Miyashita (formerly of NTT and founder of PIRI), and Dr. Y.J. Chen (Full Professor, Univ. of Maryland at Baltimore).

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