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CHENG TING-FANG and LAULY LI, Nikkei Asia tech correspondents
September 2, 2024 19:52 JST
TAIPEI -- China spent more on chipmaking equipment in the first half of the year than South Korea, Taiwan and the U.S. combined amid a frantic push to localize chip supplies and mitigate the risk of further Western export restrictions, according to global chip industry association SEMI.
China, the world's biggest semiconductor equipment market, spent a record $25 billion on chip tools in the first six months of 2024, SEMI data showed. China maintained robust spending into July, and could be on track for another full-year record.
China needs to spend its dollars from their positive trade balance somewhere. And spending $25 billion USD to buy chip tools that could displace several times that amount in chip imports in the future over the span of a decade seem like a reasonable purchase to me. Expect this level of tool purchases by them to last for two years assuming they are not interrupted somehow.
China built fab shells for several hundred thousands of wafers of capacity in mature nodes and they are filling those fab shells with tools as we speak. Over 450,000 wafers per month in my estimation. Roughly half of this capacity is memory and half is logic. These chips will go into consumer appliances, like smart TVs, smart boxes, smart vehicles, etc.
China is "dissatisfied" with the Dutch goverment's decision to expand export controls on ASML chipmaking equipment, the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement on Sunday. The Dutch government on Friday said it would expand export licensing requirements for ASML's 1970i and 1980i DUV (Deep...
asia.nikkei.com
