Applied Materials, the semiconductor equipment giant, said on Wednesday that it will discontinue the SunFab line for thin-film solar panels and cut about 500 workers.
It's the end of a saga. Applied jumped into the amorphous silicon solar business in 2006 through acquisitions and talked about ultimately creating factories that would produce gigawatts worth of solar panels a year. The center of the strategy was SunFab, a factory-in-a-box. The company landed early clients like Signet Solar, Suntech and Masdar PV.
"The thin film market has been negatively impacted by several factors, including delays in utility-scale solar adoption, solar panel manufacturers' challenges in obtaining affordable capital, changes and uncertainty in government renewable energy policies, and competitive pressure from crystalline silicon technologies," said CEO Mike Splinter in a prepared statement.
* It looks like PV is still a dominant technology in solar panel market.
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