The United States influences the Netherlands and puts an embargo on materials useful for the manufacture of semiconductors in the direction of China.
An intensified strategy by the Americans to maintain ASML’s position towards Chinese industries
ASML Holding NV est a Dutch company manufacturing lithography machines. This holds the first place in the semiconductor market in the world. For information, lithography constitutes a fundamental material to be able to manufacture semiconductors.
For several years, the United States has supported continuous efforts. The goal being toprevent Chinese industries from being supplied with equipment. The latter will then not be able to create relatively old chips, but above all accessible to the general population.
Initially, Dutch law prohibited ASML from supplying the equipment to manufacture advanced chips in China. Today, this embargo extends to less sophisticated equipment.
Consultation procedures between the United States and the Netherlands on the subject took place last May. Don Graves, US Under Secretary of Commerce, had an interview with Peter Wennink at ASML headquarters. Seeing China’s intentions to invest $17 billion in chip manufacturing in 2021, the United States decided to act. This investment would have introduced $432 billion in chip profits for the Chinese.
And on the other hand, the analysis of the Americans intensifies. A single advanced extreme ultraviolet system costs almost 164 million dollars. ASML then lost a large part of its sales in China. Then, a ban on the deep ultraviolet system could cause the company to lose 5-10% of its sales profits. We must also not forget that China is preparing Xtal to the electronic chip manufacturing market. The latter is a major rival for ASML. Its founder is none other than a former engineer of the company, suspected of having stolen ASML’s intellectual property.
ASML consolidates its position of market dominance during the health crisis
In the market for old chips that require lithography systems deep ultravioletthe Dutch company is competing for the race with its two rivals: Canon et Nikon. However, on using theadvanced extreme ultraviolet, the company still dominates the market. The statistics support that ASML held 91% of sales figureson the market during the year 2020. This was during the health crisis which had caused difficulties in the supply chains of companies around the world. ASML was able to take advantage of this to save companies on the verge of bankruptcy by providing them with lithography machines in a context of global shortage.
ASML Holding had to deal with an internal fire in one of its factories in Berlin on the night of January 2, 2022. This incident had not reported any injuries, but was still the subject of an investigation. This in order to locate the extent of the damage and its possible impact on the supply of lithography machines in the world.
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