The United States has extended its ban on Huawei and has strictly controlled the use of American equipment and technology for production supply. The trend of "equipment gearing towards de-Americanization," is expected to drive Taiwanese and non-US equipment agents to develop new business opportunities for additional orders. The Foxconn equipment factory is likely to take the lead, while Micb2b and Foxsemicon under its group have all mastered the advantages of self-made and non-US equipment OEM plants or cooperation alliances. As such, these manufacturing plants are expected to grab the earliest business opportunity, while other Taiwanese operators such as Mirle, Gongin Precision, and GMM will also benefit from this trend.

 

         The United States (U.S) requires all overseas companies that have utilized U.S. technology to produce wafers and all companies must obtain U.S. permission before they can sell wavers to Huawei. As such, wafer manufacturers are eager to locate and spot non-U.S. equipment and technical solutions to avoid having to obtain permission. Given the current situation, Lu Xing-Zhi, an analyst of the former foreign capital institute, pointed out that TSMC should strongly support non-US semiconductor materials and equipment suppliers to cope with the current scenario.

 

          The industry has firmly stated that three of the top five semiconductor equipment plants in the world (Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA) are of US-capital manufacturers, and they have accounted for more than 30% of the total market share as well as mastered those key technologies. As for non-US equipment manufacturers, Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) and others are the ones relatively capable of providing key equipment.

 

        The Micb2b’s income from its self-made and represented high-end semiconductor equipment has accounted for about 35% for its revenue last year. If the business with III-V Group and high-end packaging is added, they will have accounted for about 50% of the total revenue. It is expected that the proportion of related business performance this year can be promoted to more than 55%

 

        Foxsemicon is another major semiconductor plant deployed by Foxconn Group, while Liu Yang-Wei, the current director of Foxconn, previously worked at Foxsemicon. Foxsemicon has worked with Applied Materials for many years and has also allied with non-US key equipment factories such as TEL and other companies. The cooperation between these companies helps to provide key components and systems for semiconductor equipment of international equipment manufacturers through contractual manufacturing so that it renders a product market with diversification. As such, it has strengthened the integration technology of precision systems for the company.

 

          According to the official website of Foxsemicon, the company has immersed itself with a variety of semiconductor equipment, including wafer grinding, oxidation treatment, etching, deposition, wafer inspection, etc., and they have been or are already in production. (News source: Economic Daily News)