Nikon President Launches Comeback Push in Chip Equipment Market

Nikon Has a New CEO and a Very Old Problem: Nobody Is Buying Its Scanners

Yasuhiro Ohmura took over as Nikon's president on April 1st. Thirty days later, he was publicly pitching a comeback in semiconductor lithography equipment — a market Nikon effectively walked away from in 2008, when it abandoned EUV development and ceded the most critical chipmaking technology entirely to ASML. The pitch: Nikon will undercut ASML on price for argon fluoride immersion scanners, the deep-ultraviolet workhorses that handle a significant share of chip layers even in the most advanced processes.

The problem is that Nikon's last three quarters of ArF sales data reads like a obituary for the division: eleven systems shipped in the fiscal year ending March 2024, and zero in the first three quarters of fiscal 2025, against a consolidated net loss of 86 billion yen for the same fiscal year (TechTimes). And here is the tension that Ohmura needs to resolve: Nikon's immersion scanners were already priced a double-digit percentage below ASML's equivalent offerings, and Nikon's market share kept declining anyway. If price was already the argument and it still did not work, why would a lower price work now? That is the question hanging over the entire strategy.

Analysts at Dr. Robert Castellano's Semiconductor Deep Dive note that fabs with long track records of working with ASML have acquired deep technical expertise in integrating ASML components and systems — expertise that does not transfer when you switch vendors. The process recipes, the yield optimization cycles, the engineer workflows: all of it is built around ASML's installed base. Switching a scanner is not a purchasing decision; it is a multi-year engineering commitment, and the qualification cycles for lithography tools in a production fab can stretch to eighteen months or longer. A scanner that costs $30 million less sounds attractive until you factor in what it actually costs to bring it to production yield.

Ohmura's counter-argument is that Nikon's vertically integrated manufacturing — making many scanner components in-house rather than sourcing through ASML's German and American supply chain — gives it a structural cost advantage it has not had before. He told Nikkei Asia that Nikon is in advanced talks with major chipmakers in the United States and Asia, with some discussions nearing purchase orders. ASML's advanced ArF immersion machines average approximately $82.5 million per unit, according to industry data (TechTimes). That price gap, if Nikon can sustain it profitably, creates negotiating room for fab operators who have had no leverage against ASML for years.

There is also a geopolitical tailwind that Ohmura is betting on. Export controls have restricted Chinese chipmakers' access to advanced ASML equipment, and supply chain diversification has become a stated policy goal for governments funding domestic semiconductor capacity under programs like the CHIPS Act. A credible second source for DUV equipment — even one limited to ArF immersion rather than EUV — is a strategic asset for nations building fab capacity outside established supply chains.

Nikon plans to launch a new ArFi platform by fiscal 2028, featuring a new projection lens, a redesigned wafer stage, and crucially, compatibility with ASML's mask format — meaning chipmakers could theoretically use the same reticle sets across both vendors' tools. According to a person familiar with the matter, Nikon has disclosed plans to deliver a prototype to a customer by 2027, with a development partner whose identity Nikon is withholding and whose collaboration extends beyond 2030 (Bits & Chips). No major chipmaker has publicly confirmed an active evaluation of Nikon ArFi tools.

The DUV market is not trivial. Industry forecasters project the segment will reach $23.7 billion by 2031, growing at roughly 6.4 percent annually (TechTimes). Memory production, legacy foundry lines, and a substantial portion of the multi-patterning steps required even for 3-nanometer logic still run on ArF immersion tools. Nikon projects the ArFi market specifically will grow 40 to 50 percent over the next decade, driven by 3D integration techniques in logic and memory (Bits & Chips). That is a real opportunity — not just a legacy backwater.

But the timeline is a vulnerability. A lot changes in semiconductor equipment in two years. ASML is not standing still — it is moving aggressively toward hyper-NA EUV, the next generation of extreme ultraviolet systems. If Nikon's new platform reaches customers in 2028, the industry conversation may already be several nodes ahead.

Whether Nikon has the engineering, the cash, and the customer patience to close that gap is the question Ohmura's tenure will answer — one way or another.