In 2020, mainland China became the world’s largest semiconductor equipment sales market for the first time, with a market size of US$18.72 billion (about 122 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 39%.

In the first quarter of 2021, sales in mainland China were US$5.9 billion (about 37.7 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 69% compared to US$3.5 billion in the same period last year, ranking second in the world, second only to South Korea.

The reason why the demand for semiconductor equipment in mainland China is so large is that the semiconductor industry has been continuously developed in mainland China in recent years, especially in the field of wafer manufacturing.

The focus of wafer manufacturing is equipment. In the process of manufacturing a small chip, dozens or hundreds of equipment and hundreds of processes are required. Therefore, with the increase of production capacity in mainland China, the demand for semiconductor equipment has increased. It’s also been increasing.

Among these dozens or hundreds of semiconductor devices, 4 devices account for the highest proportion, namely lithography, etching, film deposition and process inspection, accounting for about 74% of all equipment costs, of which lithography accounts for About 21%, about 22% for thin film deposition, about 20% for etching, and about 11% for process inspection.

So how high is the localization rate of these 4 most important equipment? Recently, Yunxiu Capital released the research report “2021 China Semiconductor Investment In-depth Analysis and Prospects”. These devices are analyzed in detail in the report, let’s take a look at the specific situation.

As shown in the figure above, the localization rate of lithography machines is currently less than 1%, the localization rate of process testing equipment is about 2%, the etching rate is about 7%, and the film deposition rate is about 8%. Obviously, the localization rate of these four important equipment is very low, especially the lithography machine and process inspection, even below 2%.

According to the data of previous institutions, the overall localization rate of semiconductor equipment in 2020 may only be about 6%, which has seriously affected the development of China’s chip industry.

It can be seen that improving the localization rate of semiconductor equipment will be the top priority of China’s chip industry chain, because if these key equipment are all imported, others can get stuck on your neck at any time, no equipment, no matter how strong the chip is Technology, and can not produce chips, it can be said that improving localization is a must, and there is no way out.