AUSTIN, Texas, April 1 -- Charles Swoboda, president and CEO of Durham, N.C.-based Cree Inc. -- the first company to produce commercial-level, blue spectrum LEDs -- will be the keynote speaker at Blue 2004, the first international gathering of blue spectrum manufacturers and their suppliers, distributors, packagers and financial catalysts. Blue 2004 will be held May 10-12 at the Ambassador Hoteol in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Swoboda will speak about trends in the industry and about Cree's expanding blue laser development. Cree recently announced it will acquire the gallium nitride (GaN) substrate and epitaxy business of Advanced Technology Materials Inc., a subsidiary of ATMI. According to CompoundSemi Online, which is organizing Blue 2004, "While other high-tech sectors struggle to recover from a severe downturn, the high-brightness LED and advanced laser diode (LD) industries are thriving, especially in Asia, and those working in the new 'blue spectrum' are experiencing the most dramatic growth. Together, the LED and LD industries are responsible for bringing to the world the most promising solid-state sources of common white lighting, as well as the lasers used in the current and next-generation DVDs, CDs and other optical storage systems." The online publication said the extent of the dramatic buildup in Asia of advanced LED and LD manufacturers and developers became abundantly clear at Blue 2003, held in Dallas, Texas, last June. "While companies in Japan and the USA started these businesses, and continue to be key players in the industry, in the last year alone the combined market share for Taiwan, China and Korea grew 700 percent in GaN volume production," Compound Semi said. "Those three Asian countries now supply 40 percent of the worldwide GaN LED market." Veeco and Accent Optical Technologies are lead sponsors of Blue 2004. Other sponsors include Rohm and Haas, Aixtron, Akzo Nobel, Rubicon, BOC Edwards and Monocrystal. Co-chairing the conference are Yung-Sheng Liu, vice president and general director of the Opto-Electronics & Systems Laboratories at Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute, and Robert Walker, principal of YEBY Associates. For more information, visit: www.CompoundSemiNews.com