Applied Materials, Inc. operates as the leading manufacturer and supplier of products and services to the global semiconductor industry. The first company within the industry to surpass $1 billion in sales of semiconductor equipment, Applied Materials has 90 locations in 13 countries across the globe. In 2000, the majority of the firm’s sales stemmed from the Asia-Pacific region, while North America and Europe accounted for 27 percent and 15 percent of sales, respectively. The firm is involved in the manufacture of systems that execute chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), epitaxial and polysilicon deposition, rapid thermal processing (RTP), plasma etching, electrochemical plating, ion implantation, metrology, and chemical mechanical planarization (CMP). The company also produces equipment that is used for mask pattern generation, as well as systems used to manufacture flat panel displays (FPDs).