AMEC Chairman Yin Zhiyao: Equipment is the "lifeline" of the semiconductor industry — AMEC responds to industry consolidation with a platform-based strategy.

Shanghai Securities News, China Securities Network (Reporter: Deng Zhen) — On the afternoon of October 12, during the inaugural "National Chip Exhibition" (国芯展) at the 2026 China International Industry Fair (工博会), the Integrated Circuit Summit Forum themed "Chips Spark New Quality Productivity, Chains Forge a New Global Landscape" (芯启新质生产力，链筑全球新格局) was held. Yin Zhiyao, Chairman and General Manager of AMEC, delivered a keynote speech, noting that the semiconductor equipment market now exceeds US$100 billion annually, underpinning a US$1.4 trillion chip design and manufacturing industry, which in turn supports an electronics systems industry of roughly US$4 trillion and a downstream application market of over US$20 trillion.

"Chip design and manufacturing sit at the head of the industrial chain, driven by end-user applications. Semiconductor equipment, by contrast, is the very foundation of the industry, extending downward to components and materials. For a nation's semiconductor development, equipment, components, and materials are the chokepoint," Yin Zhiyao said.

Industry consolidation is inevitable; the development model is shifting from catch-up to independent innovation

Yin Zhiyao said that over the past 20 years, the number of domestic semiconductor equipment companies has been large — conservatively at least 500, and at most close to 1,000. After consolidation in the United States, only a few dozen domestic companies remain. From this, he projects two major trends for the next 20 years: first, industry consolidation is inevitable, as fragmented companies will struggle to compete with platform-based, large-scale enterprises; second, the development model will shift from catch-up to independent innovation. In the first two decades, the focus was largely on learning from overseas and benchmarking against them; over the next two decades, China must comprehensively surpass international advanced levels in semiconductor equipment technology and overall performance.

He further stated that leading domestic semiconductor companies need to transform from single-product players into platform-based corporations. By possessing both etch and thin-film technologies, they can verify early in the process-development stage whether thin-film materials etch well; by then adding metrology and inspection capabilities, they can synergistically advance process development and provide customers with complete, turnkey solutions.

In addition, Yin Zhiyao cautioned that AI is currently an extremely hot topic, but AI investment carries the risk of a bubble.

Capital expenditure, boom-bust cycles, and AI

Yin Zhiyao said that capital expenditure in the semiconductor industry is directly tied to equipment procurement, with companies spending 70% to 80% of their capex on equipment. From 1984 to 2026, annual global semiconductor capex has fluctuated sharply — rising as much as 100% in one year and falling as much as 30% in another. These dramatic swings stem mainly from two causes: first, each boom cycle has typically been driven by a single product — from electronic watches, video games, PCs, and the internet to smartphones — and the next cycle may be driven by AI, though it has not fully arrived yet; second, the influence of the global macroeconomic environment, as once an economic crisis occurs, pressure is transmitted upward along the industrial chain.

AMEC's platform strategy: upholding independent innovation and building complete solutions

Yin Zhiyao noted that AMEC has grown from a single etch-equipment maker into a comprehensive semiconductor equipment platform company, focusing on four major directions: etch, thin-film, metrology and inspection, and wet-process equipment. The company adheres to technological innovation, product differentiation, and intellectual-property protection — it does not copy or replicate overseas designs, instead building its own self-developed technologies.

To date, AMEC has developed 54 types of high-end semiconductor equipment, including 26 CCP and ICP etchers, 24 thin-film equipment models, as well as CMP and advanced-packaging optical metrology and inspection equipment. As of the end of June 2026, more than 8,800 reaction chambers have been in volume production across over 220 production lines in China and abroad, serving more than 100 customers, with etch and thin-film equipment achieving atomic-level processing precision.

Over the next three to five years, AMEC plans to develop 100 types of niche equipment in total, with R&D investment of RMB 13 billion. By 2030, it aims to deliver all its etch equipment, all its thin-film equipment, and the vast majority of its metrology/inspection and wet-process equipment, raising the overall coverage rate of integrated-circuit equipment to over 60%, and striving for over 70% coverage of equipment for new-architecture chips. Given the industry's reliance on imports for large-panel display equipment, AMEC launched R&D on large-panel PECVD equipment at the end of 2023, completed manufacturing within 12 months, achieved thin-film uniformity of within 5%, and has sent it to China's most advanced OLED production line for validation.