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During the last few years it appears from the unit sales numbers of advanced lithography systems (iArF and EUV) that ASML has emerged as the single dominant provider of the advanced lithography ecosystem (numbers compiled from quarterly reports and calculated such that
numbers correspond to annual and not fiscal that Nikon uses):
new iArF units shipped
Year ASML Nikon
2014 76 10
2013 77 5
2012 72 14
2011 101 22
ASML has reached ~90% of iArF and 100% of EUV advanced litho tools market share in numbers of new tools shipped.
Does this mean that the industry has evolved to a single advanced litho tool ecosystem?
Is this good and eventually perhaps even cost saving for the industry?
I would appreciate any thoughts on this by experts and others who like to share their opinions.
Same problem as fabs, the cost is going up and up and there isn't enough money to pay for several companies to each do their own extremely expensive developments and get this back from sales -- in fact I'm surprised Nikon haven't thrown in the towel yet, though taking such a prestige hit is always difficult especially in Japan...
In it he is asked about how they manage their growth. Wennink answers:
'We hebben een hoog marktaandeel, van de mededingingsautoriteiten mag ik niet zeggen hoe hoog. Dat betekent dat we een verplichting hebben aan de industrie hebben om flexibiliteit te tonen. Dat betekent tegelijkertijd dat we een inherente inefficiëntie moeten inbouwen in alles wat we doen. Je zult moeten kunnen versnellen als dat nodig is.'
Translated roughly he states that they have `a high market share`, in fact so high that he answers that he is not allowed by the Competition and Market Authorities to publicly state how high their market share is. Interesting...This also means, he states, that they have the obiligation to the industry to provide flexibility.
On the question of high much production capacity is currently unused at ASML Wennink says: 'Er zit nog wel wat rek in, maar niet veel. We sturen op 15 tot 20% flexibiliteit, op een productiecapaciteit van €7 mrd, inclusief de omzet van service en options. De bouwkranen die we hier hebben staan, staan er niet voor niets.
He states that currently there isn`t that much upside capacity left. They currently steer for a total production capacity of 7 BEuro (including services and field upgrades), and that this has about 15-20% flexibility for capacity. Not much, this suggests that their full capacity for 2015 is around 8 BEuro. And they are still expanding their capacity in Veldhoven, lots of construction and expansion of clean rooms.
Many people should worry about the Chinese but ASML is not one of them. China should focus on figuring how to run 200mm fabs before they start messing with equipment.
[h=2]ASML Recently Discovered IT Systems Security Incident; No Evidence That Anything of Value Has Been Compromised[/h]VELDHOVEN, Netherlands, 1 March 2015 - ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) recently discovered unauthorized access to a limited portion of its IT systems. ASML took immediate steps to contain the breach and is conducting an ongoing investigation. The time between the break-in and the discovery by ASML IT staff was short. At this time it appears that only a limited amount of data has been accessed. ASML has not found any evidence that valuable files, either from ASML or our customers and suppliers, have been compromised. We cannot be certain about the identity of the hackers.
ASML, like any other leading organization, is subject to cybersecurity attacks. We take knowledge protection very seriously and constantly work to improve our defenses against hacking attempts and our detection capabilities.
We will not provide further information about this event unless there is a significant development.
