ASML's performance is declining, market changes are worrying, and 1 nanometer cake may be difficult to round.
Recently, ASML executives said that Moore's Law is still in place, and based on the current advanced processes such as EUV lithography, the process can be increased to 1nm, and the company's revenue fell 19% in the first quarter before the announcement, and net profit almost halved, perhaps because of the company's concerns about the semiconductor industry.
To this day, ASML is still full of vitality, semiconductor manufacturers all over the world are using lithography machines, not only new lithography machines are selling well, but also out of stock, and second-hand lithography machines are being speculated, especially China's semiconductor companies to catch up, but also to Japan's second-hand goods to more than three percent.
However, because of the high cost of lithography technology, it has caused dissatisfaction among many companies, including Japanese chip companies, and the NIL process developed in cooperation with Japanese chip equipment companies, have withdrawn from the lithography process, according to Japanese reports, the NIL process can greatly reduce the manufacturing cost of the process, and the 5nm process has been widely used, and is expected to extend to 5nm in the future.
Since lithography is currently unavailable, a northern country has decided to develop a new micro-imaging technique. An X-ray lithography method is currently being developed in Japan, which has a wavelength smaller than very ultraviolet light, and if it can be carried out smoothly, it can further improve accuracy and greatly reduce production costs.
Because of various factors, it is more difficult for China to buy extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, but China can first make deep ultraviolet lithography machines, and then upgrade the process to 7nm, then upgrade the process to 5nm process, and then upgrade the process to 5nm process level, plus China is already the world's largest consumer of wafer components, if the demand for Chinese lithography machines decreases, it will be a heavy impact on ASML.
ASML is more concerned about the decline in demand for lithography machines from three major users (TSMC), Intel and Samsung, which TSMC said is difficult to develop 3nm, 2nm and above processes, so it has delayed the development of more advanced processes, so its demand for EUV lithography machines has declined.
Perhaps ASML is also afraid that the demand for lithography machines will decrease in the future, so it will release such a sentence, on the one hand, to boost investors, on the other hand, it is also to give those semiconductor manufacturers a good face, because their industry only has lithography machines, once the demand in the market decreases, it will also be a huge blow to them.
In fact, ASML is currently facing not only the change of the lithography machine market, but also the change of insufficient supply of the chip market, the company pointed out that the global chip supply will continue to be tight, but the famous Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Gartner have different views on this, Ming-Chi Kuo said that the current mobile phone chip market has an oversupply trend, Gartner also expects that there will be an oversupply of chips in the second half of this year or next year.
A large number of chips will slow down the production of delayed lithography machines, and ASML may continue to release positive news because it is afraid that the demand for lithography machines will decrease, so that both itself and investors can benefit from it.
In any case, the international semiconductor industry has undergone great changes in the past two years, and the entire semiconductor industry has been greatly affected, so ASML has had a very prosperous life in the past few years, but at the same time, it will also have a great impact on ASML's lithography machine industry, and it is impossible to maintain prosperity all the time.