Taipei: Dutch financial journalist Marc Hijink said Friday that while ASML dominates the photolithography machine market, it is best known for its strategic partnerships with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Samsung, and Intel. Speaking at the launch of his new book, “Focus: The ASML Way,” during SEMICON Taiwan 2025 in Taipei, Hijink highlighted that these partnerships are central to the company’s success.
According to Focus Taiwan, by securing investments from Intel, Samsung, and TSMC, the Dutch firm could generate substantial funding to hire more staff, pursue acquisitions, and establish research institutes in the Netherlands to conduct fundamental research on photolithography technology-a move that requires foresight, Hijink said. This is because ASML is not going to make a machine that no one will buy.
On ASML’s future development, the author said ASML’s main competitor is the economy itself. Uncertainties brought by U.S.-imposed tariffs are affecting the entire industry, potentially halting investment in new technologies and reducing demand for chips. During the Taipei event, Hijink also touched on the U.S.-China trade tensions and the export restrictions of ASML machines to China.
Restricting ASML’s supply to China could increase competition for the Dutch company, he said, likening the situation to what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently remarked. If his company is unable to supply “H2O chips” to China, Huawei could catch up, creating more competition for Nvidia. “H20 chips” refers to Nvidia’s H20 chip, a less-advanced artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor designed for the Chinese market after the U.S. government imposed export restrictions on more powerful AI chips in late 2023, citing national security concerns.
Regarding TSMC’s response to geopolitical challenges, Hijink said that with a wafer foundry market share of over 70 percent, the Taiwanese company is aware that the world depends on it and is working to mitigate related risks by investing in new fabs in the United States, Japan, and Germany. SEMICON Taiwan is an annual trade exhibition and conference for semiconductor, semiconductor device fabrication, microelectronics manufacturing, packaging, and test technologies. This year’s exhibition, which is being held from Wednesday to Friday, features more than 1,200 semiconductor and technology companies, with over 4,100 booths.