Korean Companies Ramping up Investment

EUV lithography equipment of ASML

Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML announced on April 21 that its Q1 sales and operating profit are 4.364 billion euros and 1.331 billion euros, respectively.

In the first quarter, 44 percent and 43 percent of ASML’s sales were derived from South Korean and Taiwanese clients, respectively. In the fourth quarter of last year, the respective figures were 31 percent and 39 percent. Samsung Electronics vice chairman visited the ASML HQ in October last year in order to procure more EUV lithography equipment.

South Korean companies are making increasing efforts to secure semiconductor manufacturing equipment. In the case of Applied Materials, the largest semiconductor manufacturing equipment supplier in the world, the ratio of sales in relation to South Korean clients jumped from 12 percent to 25 percent in the first quarter of this year, when that in relation to Taiwanese clients fell from 33 percent to 23 percent.

With the ongoing global chip shortage spreading to a shortage of equipment, those South Korean companies are striving to procure the maximum possible. Samsung Electronics is planning to initiate the operation of new plants in South Korea and the United States and trying to prepare equipment to be used there.

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