A key question in the commercialization of small (and large) products is: should you buy it or make it yourself? This question is related to a few other questions about the company strategy, its technology, and its environment: Do we have the needed background? Can we afford to invest in new equipment? Is the work so confidential that it has to be done in house? Can we exploit available existing/standard processes? Or is the technology changing too fast for the infrastructure that is available externally?

In the early days of semiconductors, every company had its own wafer-processing infrastructure, they packaged and assembled their own products, and they often even developed their own specialized equipment. However, the buying of equipment and the outsourcing of back-end processing (packaging and assembly) soon became standard practice. Other parts of the business chain followed, and slowly front-end semiconductor processing also was transferred to external foundries.

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