Quitting the lithography front, re-betting on the back end (2025)

Reclaiming the lead not head-on but alongside

The core of this decision was that Nikon did not try to win back the lead it had lost on the same ground. In the front-end miniaturisation race running from ArF immersion toward EUV, ASML had overtaken it, and Nikon lagged in both funding and customer base; to cling to a head-on battle there would only keep pouring resources into a war it could not win. The 1980s winning formula of hugging domestic customers had turned into a weakness before a customer map redrawn toward Taiwan and Korea — and the reason of this pivot lies in acknowledging that sore point and choosing instead a different market where its own strengths in optics and precision could tell.

Even so, Canon — which pulled back from EUV — is ahead of Nikon in the back-end process it now judges winnable. There is no guarantee that an edge in digital lithography converts straight into market share, and Nikon has only just tasted the disadvantage of the latecomer in the front end. When a company that has lost the lead bets not on frontal recapture but on redefinition in an adjacent market, how far can it sever the causes of its past defeat? The launch of the DSP-100 is only the first move, and success in the back end cannot yet be seen from where this account stands. Whether the decline of a once-flourishing business can be met not by withdrawal, nor by life-support, but by remaking it — Nikon’s choice leaves that question alive.