Japan Strong in Semiconductor Material and Equipment Industries

U.S. President Joe Biden (left) and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hold a news conference after their summit in Tokyo on May 23.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with each other in Japan on May 23. In their joint statement, the two presidents gave concrete shape to bilateral cooperation in the fields of advanced semiconductor development, space development, economic security, etc.

According to Japanese newspapers, the United States and Japan are expected to form a working group to conduct research on 2-nm and more advanced chips and their collaboration is also likely to cover next-generation semiconductor R&D related to quantum computing, AI commercialization, and so on.

According to experts, the United States’ semiconductor research collaboration with Japan is because Japan is highly competitive in the semiconductor material industry, the importance of which is continuing to increase as global supply chain instabilities are growing.

“Japan’s semiconductor material technologies are the best in the world and even TSMC has research facilities in Japan,” the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association commented, adding, “The cooperation in the industry between the United States and South Korea is likely to revolve around U.S. equipment and South Korean manufacturing technologies and that between the United States and Japan will focus on U.S. manufacturing and Japanese materials.”

Japan is highly competitive in the semiconductor equipment industry, too. According to market research firms, the global top 15 and top 10 companies in the industry include seven and four Japanese companies, respectively. Applied Materials is on top, followed by ASML, and Samsung Electronics subsidiary SEMES, 13th, is the only South Korean company on the top 15 list.

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