Because of the often critical nature of telecommunications applications and the increasing demand for portability, these applications require a very high degree of reliability and small size. New electronic ballast systems, which have been replacing older magnetic ballast systems and incandescent bulbs, provide greater efficiency and significantly reduce operating costs. Because the new electronic ballast systems typically are priced at a relative premium, these systems must be extremely reliable in order to justify the higher initial cost. In addition to a high degree of reliability, electronic ballast manufacturers require their components to be priced affordably and be compact. We sell to all major applications within this end use market.
Distributors meet the needs of customers with lower volume requirements.
Distributors serve all of our markets in all of our regions, but our primary distributor sales are in North America and Europe. Major customers in our end-use markets include Robert Bosch Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, Lucent Technologies, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., Motorola, Inc., Nokia Corp., Phillips NV, Siemens AG, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sony Corporation. Each of our ten largest customers has been our customer for more than 25 years. We own or lease six production facilities located in China, Taiwan, Ireland, Germany, France and New York. In addition, we have manufacturing supply agreements with various companies located in Asia.