On January 6, 2021, Applied Materials, the largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer in the United States, announced a few days ago that it plans to increase the price of the acquisition of Kokusai Electric in Japan to 3.5 billion US dollars.
As early as July 2019, Applied Materials announced the acquisition of all the shares of the Japanese company for US$2.2 billion. The new purchase price is now 59% higher than the previous price, which also reflects the good prospects for the semiconductor manufacturing equipment market.
It should be known that at a time when 5G high-speed networks are rapidly developing and chip manufacturing is popular, the acquisition of Applied Materials in the United States will help expand its product line and use Kokusai Electric to increase the company's semiconductor production related technology.
After Applied Materials completes the acquisition of Kokusai Electric, the former’s market share in the global semiconductor equipment market will increase from 18% to more than 20%. The International Semiconductor Association SEMI said that by 2020, the global semiconductor equipment market will reach 58.4 billion US dollars. The analysis believes that with the huge changes in the global semiconductor industry, in order to prevent the flow of related technologies to China, the international integration of US semiconductor companies may continue in the future.