I read the Nikon report and concluded that they really screwed with Cymer. It smells to me like a company in relative trouble considering its size, hot products, and general strength. It has de-emphasized its camera operation to the point where it is almost a phase-out, not doing the research and marketing needed to retain market share. It is now a wafer lithography company with a smaller camera business. However, it is making money on its cameras, which were always among the best in their class. Its stepper operations are not so profitable and, in fact, they seem to be having a lot of engineering problems in the .25-.18um generations. They are certainly losing actual or potential market share at this point to SVGI, which is growing at their expense. A classic example of loss of focus (sorry) tearing a company apart. They need to spin off their stepper operation fast and let the camera company look forward.
Anyway, in retrospect, I think we can infer that the Cymer pushouts were caused by Nikon's engineering problems. They simply weren't able to build steppers fast enough to meet specs and to take delivery of more lasers and took a hunk of Cymer's hide, by inference. This really stinks.
The big news here is: buy SVGI. |
