Abstract
Although the world market shares of Japanese firms in the semiconductor devices such as DRAM and liquid crystal display panels are not already at the top, they have a 70% share in the world markets regarding to electronic components and their materials. Nowadays east Asian firms can produce the semiconductor devices and liquid crystal display panels as factories of the world depending on Japanese electronic components and materials which are created through their high level of research and development activities of Japanese firms.
Photoresist used in the semiconductor manufacturing process is one of the electronic materials of which Japanese chemical companies have a high market share in the world market. Kodak's negative photoresist was used first in the semiconductor industries in the 1950s and the two user's innovations were followed. The former is that AT&T applied the positive photoresist for the first time in the semiconductor manufacturing process and the latter is that IBM invented and applied the chemically amplified photoresist. After then many chemical companies have provided various photoresist materials to the semiconductor manufactures. Nowadays Japanese chemical companies have become to have over a 60% market share in the world.
In this paper, the reasons why Japanese chemical companies have become to have such a high market share are discussed as a case of the photoresist materials from the following three points.
(1) These Japanese chemical companies had competitive advantage based on their materials or own technologies.
(2) They had a close relationship with Japanese semiconductor device manufactures and developed photoresist materials in order to be suitable for the requirement of the semiconductor manufactures and in order to solve the problems in their process.
(3) Even though the market scale was not so large, many foreign and Japanese chemical companies entered in this market and the market was very competitive.
