A blanket 10% price increase on all lithography machine parts has been fully accepted by the two leading South Korean semiconductor giants.
The lithography machine industry has completed a deal without a press conference!
ASML, the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer, is comprehensively raising the prices of domestically supplied replacement equipment parts by 10%.
This round of price hike covers all spare parts for Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) and Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, and the new price will be implemented starting from products delivered in January 2027.
Back in early September, ASML's headquarters had submitted the price hike proposal to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix through its South Korean subsidiary.
After negotiations with the procurement departments of the two companies, the price hike was finally finalized.
10% Uniform Price Hike
According to a report by South Korean media The Elec, ASML has decided to raise the prices of replacement lithography machine components supplied to the South Korean market by a uniform 10%.
All components used in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) and Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography equipment are eligible for this price adjustment.
The price hike will be implemented starting from January next year.
According to industry sources, ASML's headquarters sent the price hike proposal to Samsung and SK Hynix in early last month through its South Korean subsidiary on the 10th.
After negotiations with the two procurement teams, the price hike was finally confirmed.
The price increase applies from regularly purchased consumables to key components that are replaced due to failure or performance degradation.
Exposure equipment includes a variety of optical components such as lenses and reflectors for light transmission, as well as light sources and precision drive units.
Accordingly, the cost of continuing to operate the equipment will also rise.
It is well known that ASML only adjusts the prices of components separately when raw material prices rise sharply or certain materials are difficult to procure, and a uniform 10% increase is unusual.
Industry insiders said that even though the prices of all components have risen, ASML is also striving for more profits because its customers are making good money.
This also points out the real logic behind the price hike.
During the 2026 memory chip super cycle, Samsung's profits have skyrocketed.
Among them, Samsung's Q3 operating profit is expected to reach 107.4 trillion won (about 80 billion US dollars), a year-on-year increase of nearly 800%, and has hit a record for four consecutive quarters.
Customers are reaping huge profits, and ASML, as the upstream equipment monopolist, naturally wants to take a share of the pie.
Since Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have accepted the widespread price hikes from the world's largest equipment supplier, the demands for price increases from other equipment and component suppliers will also accelerate.
Semiconductor Equipment Giants Raise Prices Collectively
The price hike wave in the global semiconductor equipment industry is by no means a one-man show of ASML alone.
Companies such as Applied Materials from the US and Tokyo Electron from Japan previously revealed successively that they are pushing forward price adjustments for some equipment and products.
Applied Materials announced at its earnings call in August 2025 that the prices of new and existing products have been raised;
Tokyo Electron of Japan also explained at its earnings conference in late July that in response to rising costs, the company is adjusting prices, including adjusting the prices of equipment currently on sale;
Advanced Energy, an American plasma power supplier, also announced that it will raise the prices of some product lines.
From lithography, etching to thin film deposition and metrology & inspection, almost all major players of front-end equipment are involved, and a price hike chain spanning Europe, America and East Asia has taken shape.
The underlying driving force is also very clear — the global demand for AI chips, HBM memory and advanced processes is expanding at a speed far exceeding the historical average, driving wafer manufacturers such as TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix to expand capital expenditure.
When leading players almost simultaneously enter the capacity expansion cycle, the equipment market instantly shifts from buyer-dominated to seller-dominated.
SEMI data quantifies this trend very intuitively.
The global semiconductor equipment sales in 2026 are expected to reach 165.9 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 23.2%; it will climb to 229.5 billion US dollars in 2028.
Nearly 64 billion US dollars of expansion in two consecutive years is extremely rare in the history of the industry, and it is supported by the long-cycle capital expenditure of AI infrastructure, with higher certainty than any previous cycle.
Industry insiders pointed out that after the large-scale capacity expansion is implemented, equipment components have entered a stage of supply shortage.
As the scale of wafer feeding continues to expand, large-scale supply shortage may also occur in the production consumables sector later.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Gelonghui Finance Hotspot" (ID: glh_finance), written by Outsider, published with authorization from 36Kr.