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With the rapid development of the electronics industry, the global market demand for chips has also ushered in a strong growth, in such a situation, in order to alleviate the tight supply of chips, many countries and regions have increased the layout in the semiconductor industry. Due to the late start of the mainland in the field of semiconductors, domestic chips are largely dependent on imports.
However, with the occurrence of Huawei, the mainland chip was "cut off", and the mainland accelerated the localization process of the chip, but at this time, the lack of high-end lithography machines has become a key point restricting the mainland chip process.
As we all know, with the United States repeatedly revising the "chip rules", ASML cannot freely ship EUV lithography machines to us. As an indispensable manufacturing device for high-end process chips below 7nm, the EUV lithography machine is basically impossible to achieve without it wanting to mass-produce high-precision chips.
As the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer, ASML accounts for more than 90% of the global high-end lithography equipment market, and has formed a monopoly position in the EUV lithography market due to the particularity of its supply chain.
ASML's EUV lithography machine manufacturing process is complex, many parts are developed with suppliers, even ASML itself only mastered 18% of the technology patents, and therefore, after the United States modified the "chip rules", ASML, which uses some American technology, cannot make its own decisions on the shipping freedom of the EUV lithography machine.
In order to alleviate the shortage of domestic chips, SMIC, a mainland semiconductor company, has spent one billion yuan to order an EUV lithography machine from ASML, but until now this lithography machine has not been able to land in the mainland.
In addition, EUV lithography machine is not to say that the production can be produced, due to limited production capacity, generally limited supply to TSMC, Intel, Samsung and other international manufacturers, after these semiconductor manufacturers expand the scale of production lines, EUV lithography machine is more tight, not to say that you can buy it.
Previously, Lee Jae-yong, a director of Samsung Electronics, visited ASML twice to seek more shipments of EUV lithography machines.
ASML admits for the first time that EUV lithography machines may be oversupplied
In order to alleviate the shortage of chips around the world, ASML has also accelerated the shipment of lithography machines, according to the news released by ASML at the first quarter financial meeting of 2022, it is expected to ship 55 EUV lithography machines this year and 90 EUV lithography machines in 2025.
But at the same time, ASML also acknowledges that 90 EUV lithography machines may exceed the actual demand in 2025. According to asML's financial report data disclosed in the first quarter, only three EUV lithography machines were shipped in the first quarter of this year. In addition, ASML's newly developed next-generation high NA-EUV lithography machine has received only six orders.
But ASML says it's a huge effort to meet the $1 trillion demand from the semiconductor industry by 2030.
But in fact, everyone understands that knowing that there will be an oversupply, it is generally reduced to reduce production, and an EUV lithography machine is expensive, and no one will do a loss-making business. Therefore, there is speculation in the industry that this is not to prepare for the supply of the mainland market.
There are three reasons for this speculation
First of all, now the mainland has become the world's largest semiconductor consumer market, and with the country's attention, more companies into the semiconductor field, only last year the mainland added 47,400 new semiconductor companies, an increase of 105.06% year-on-year, in the world's 20 fastest growing chip companies, mainland enterprises accounted for 19, compared with the previous year's 8 increased by 137%.
With the increase of semiconductor-related enterprises in mainland China, the production capacity of chips in mainland China will also increase, and the demand for lithography machines will also increase.
Based on ASML's revenue in the first quarter, total revenue was 3.534 billion euros and gross margin was 49%, down 19% compared to the 54.2% gross margin in the previous quarter.
ASML shipped 23 DUV lithography machines to the mainland market in the first quarter, and ASML's market share in the mainland has surpassed that of the United States and South Korea, accounting for 34% of the market share. The mainland has overtaken the United States as the third largest market for ASML.
Judging from this set of data, there is no doubt that INML is not willing to give up in the face of such a broad market prospect on the mainland.
Secondly, with the joint efforts of scientific research institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Lithography Machine manufacturers such as Shanghai Microelectronics and Changchun Institute of Optical Machinery, in the past two years, domestic lithography machines have achieved multi-faceted technological breakthroughs.
Although the current technology and production capacity of domestic lithography machines cannot meet the needs of the domestic chip market, the speed of progress and improvement of the localization substitution rate in recent years is also obvious to all. For example, it is reported that the domestic DUV lithography machine developed by Shanghai Microelectronics Co., Ltd. will be officially launched next year.
In the chip process, SMIC has also mastered the 7nm process, and has entered risk trial production, and in the mature process, the 14nm and 28nm processes have been able to meet some domestic production needs.
ASML CEO Peter Wennink has repeatedly stated publicly that restricting the shipment of EUV lithography machines in China is not beneficial, they will master this technology in 3 to 5 years, and ASML lithography machines are likely to be eliminated.
Finally, ASML's EUV lithography machine actually has a big drawback, that is, it consumes a lot of power. TSMC had a problem of insufficient power before, but many people felt that this was A problem with TSMC, in fact, it was really not bad for TSMC.
With the recent sharp rise in electricity bills in Taiwan Province of China, TSMC has to pay 4 billion yuan more per year, and now TSMC has to pay more than 30 billion yuan a year.
It's just that before, due to the irreplaceability of the EUV lithography machine, this problem was rarely noticed, and it can be said that even if it is noticed, there is no way, but it will not be accurate later.
Write at the end
Now many regions are because of the chip ban of the old United States is increasing the self-development of lithography equipment and lithography technology, such as Jiaoxia and Canon on the joint development of nano-embossing micro-shadow technology (NIL), has been able to achieve mass production of 15nm process, do not use EUV lithography machine the highest energy process can reach 5nm.
In addition, new technologies such as stacking chips are also emerging, and the end of the EUV lithography machine being replaced by other technologies is predictable, and ASML has begun to have a sense of crisis.