ASML is the only producer of EUV lithography equipment in the world, required for manufacturing advanced semi-conductor chips used in all our iPhones, computers, etc. There’s countless videos on their monopoly.
What my question is—and I’ve been failing to get the answer to—is how did they first establish this monopoly, and how have they maintained it?
Why did they succeed where Intel, US National labs, and other companies failed? And why haven’t other companies been able to catch up through R&D?
In: 6
How they first estabilsed the monopoly is pretty easy, if you invent something you start out with a monopoly. The difficult part is keeping it, this has two parts first are patents for the process you invented so even if Intel got to the same prozess through R&D they wouldnt be allowed to use it, they would have to come up with something diffrent which is very difficult in such a high tech and specialised field. Second part is cost versus profit, intel most other companies in this field are publicly traded companies with investors expecting returns. This field of R&D is very expensive and coming up with a new tech will cost the short term a lot and takes time, they might make profits in a few years if they can get it to work, but this isnt guaranteed. You could lose your company bilions with out ever getting a working product and that wont make your investors happy. So as long as ASML provides them at “resonable” prices with what they need it might just be better to not take that risk.
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