Nikkei Asian Review reported that the new crown pneumonia Epidemic has caused people to generally stay at Home to avoid the epidemic, leading to a surge in market demand for 3C and home appliance chips, Chinese semiconductor industry is snapping up used chip manufacturing machines to avoid U.S. sanctions, smooth production and export of homemade chips, so that the price of used chip manufacturing machines rose.
Japanese used chip manufacturing machine dealers said the price is 20% more than last year. The United States does not allow Chinese companies to obtain the latest U.S. chip manufacturing technology, but did not restrict China’s access to older production equipment.
Market demand for TV and computer screen driver ICs and IoT appliances power management chips rose, such chips are manufactured with 8-inch wafers, using older models of machines.
A large chip manufacturing machine leasing company sources said, “used machine prices are rising every year, this past year, the price rose by an average of 20%”, the key lithography machine and other equipment, the price rose to 300% of the original.
Mitsubishi UFJ leasing company sources said, “nearly 90% of the used machines seem to be sold to China.”
The market source said, “I heard that certain Chinese chip makers, even in not yet in a hurry to use used machines to buy spare.”
Since the latest chip production lines use 12-inch wafers, few companies make machines that can produce 8-inch wafers. Sources at Hitachi Financial said, “Used machines that can be obtained immediately are more expensive than brand-new machines.”
Used machine dealers said, “Machines that were worthless a few years ago can now be sold for 100 million yen (about $938,000).” Chip production lines using 20-30 year old machines are located in many places.
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