ASML, formerly the famous electronics manufacturer Philips, is the world's most profitable invisible overlord. It only produces 30 lithography machines a year, each selling for 1 billion yuan. , the net profit is as high as 85%. Dutch lithography machines can manufacture chips with processes below 7nm. They are precise instruments that can ensure quality. However, the output is limited. Companies that need lithography machines need to make reservations with the Netherlands in advance, and the reservations have been scheduled for decades. One machine Is it hard to believe that the price of a top-level lithography machine can exceed 1 billion yuan? It’s hard to get a photolithography machine even if you have money.
Lithography machines can be called the flowers of the modern optical industry. They are so difficult to manufacture that only a few companies in the world can manufacture them. Currently, the only company in the world that can produce the highest-precision lithography equipment with stable performance is ASML. It is the only company in the world that has successfully developed EUV lithography machines (extreme ultraviolet lithography machines).
ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, was established in 1984 and was formerly known as Advanced Semiconductor Material Lithography Holding N.V. It is a semiconductor equipment manufacturer independent from Philips. It was renamed ASML in 2001. The company has approximately 16,500 employees, including more than 6,000 R&D personnel, accounting for more than 36%. ASML currently has a total market value of nearly 90 billion yuan, ranking first among global semiconductor equipment manufacturers.
ASML is the only manufacturer in the world that can manufacture EUV lithography machines, and its output is extremely low. Its entire capacity is booked well in advance of production. ASML's customers include international chip giants such as Intel, Samsung and TSMC, and EUV lithography machines will also ensure that the above-mentioned companies maintain their leading edge in the chip field. The chips produced by this machine will make electronic equipment faster and have greater capacity. However, the advent of this new type of machine will significantly reduce profits by about 43%.
ASML’s prospects are still quite promising. The revenue and profit increased significantly in the first quarter of 2020. Most of them are just the result of selling traditional products (DUV). Up to 30 units of EUV will be produced this year. For lithography machines, the target for 2021 is 35 units.
The earliest lithography machines used contact exposure, and the mask was directly attached to the wafer for exposure, which was prone to process contamination and mask life problems; later proximity lithography machines used air cushions to A tiny gap is created between the mask and the silicon wafer, but it also affects imaging accuracy. It was not until the scanning projection exposure in the 1980s that the optical lens was used to adjust the distance and improve the imaging quality, and accuracy below microns could be achieved.
It is not an exaggeration to say that ASML is the king of the semiconductor industry. You must know that five years ago, when the famous Moore's Law began to expire and lithography technology stagnated, it was ASML's successful development of EUV lithography machines that brought vitality to the semiconductor industry, which had almost stagnated in development. ASML's EUV lithography machine was successfully developed in 2013, using a 22nm light source; in 2017, a more advanced EUV lithography machine was successfully developed, using a 13nm light source, making it possible to achieve 7nm and 5nm line width processes.
In recent years, ASML’s revenue has been growing. From 2012 to 2016, the semiconductor industry developed slowly, and the company's revenue growth also slowed down, with a growth rate of about 10%. However, the substantial growth in the company's performance in 2017 was mainly due to the recovery of the downstream semiconductor industry. Manufacturers represented by memory have expanded production to drive equipment demand, and the global wave of wafer foundry construction has driven equipment demand to increase.
Pfizer is one of the world's largest biopharmaceutical companies. Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) was founded in 1849 and is headquartered in New York, New York, USA. It has 88,300 full-time employees. It is a global biopharmaceutical company mainly engaged in health products, chemical drugs, biological agents, vaccines, and health drugs. Manufacturing and marketing Pfizer has three business segments: Healthcare, Animal Health, and Consumer Healthcare.
A blood lipid-lowering drug developed by Pfizer at the end of the last century had sales of more than 100 billion US dollars during the patent protection period. This sales occurred from the time Lipitor was developed in the 1980s to the expiration of the patent in 2011 between.
Therefore, Pfizer is doing nothing and can make the world's richest man just by collecting patent fees.
Patents have a protection period, but do you think that patents will no longer be profitable when the protection period expires?
After the patent expired, he continued to make a fortune. Lipitor's patent rights expired in 2011, but Pfizer had already thought of countermeasures. Its countermeasures to prevent patent expiration are worth learning by Chinese companies. After the Lipitor patent expired, the first generic version of Lipitor authorized by Pfizer, the American Watson Pharmaceuticals version, was officially launched.
This first-to-market generic version is authorized by Pfizer, and Pfizer will receive a share of sales revenue. After 20 years of monopoly, Pfizer not only achieved high monopoly profits at the time, but also accumulated unshakable popularity and reputation. Lipitor occupied 80% of China's market share by entering the medical insurance system.
Although the basic patent has expired, Lipitor’s high profits will continue for a long time. Today, Pfizer still holds patents for dozens of drugs, and it won't be able to make a fortune even if it doesn't.
Lipitor (atorvastatin), used to reduce LDL blood cholesterol;
Lyrica (pregabalin) to treat neuropathic pain/fibromyalgia;
Diflucan (fluconazole), an oral antifungal drug;
Zithromax (azithromycin antibiotic;
Viagra (sildenafil) treats erectile dysfunction;
Norvox (Amlodipine Besylate Tablets) is by far the most prescribed brand-name drug for the treatment of hypertension in the world
Zoloft (Sertraline Hydrochloride Tablets) can treat it. Depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
As the world’s first oral PDE5 inhibitor, Viagra is the largest-selling prescription drug for the treatment of male erectile dysfunction (ED).
Hope. Shumei (azithromycin tablets/dry suspension) is an oral antibiotic widely used around the world. It can treat most respiratory infections in adults and children; Celebrex (celecoxib capsules) is a non-steroidal drug. Somatic anti-inflammatory analgesic, the world's first selective COX-2 inhibitor
Enbrel (Etanercept, Enbrel) is the world's first original research and fully human source in the field of rheumatism. It is a soluble tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonist and is also the world's first biological agent for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis;
Lyrica (pregabalin capsules) is A new generation of neuralgia treatment drugs, calcium channel modulators, reduce the excessive release of excitatory neurotransmitters and are used to treat neuropathic pain such as postherpetic neuralgia
< p> Arnosin (exemestane) is a steroidal aromatase inactivator with a similar structure to natural androstenedione substrate. It is an excellent product mainly suitable for endocrine treatment of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. < /p>Captop (irinotecan hydrochloride injection) is mainly used to treat patients with advanced colorectal cancer
Sutent (sunitinib malate) is a new multi-targeted drug. It is an oral cancer treatment drug mainly used to treat patients with inoperable advanced renal cell carcinoma, gastrointestinal stromal tumors who are intolerant or progressive to imatinib mesylate, and unresectable, metastatic well-differentiated tumors.
XalkoriTM (crizotinib) is the world’s first and only treatment for anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. Targeted drugs for cell lung cancer.
Qualcomm is a global leader in the research and development of 3G, 4G and 5G technologies. It has provided technology licenses to many manufacturers around the world, involving all telecommunications equipment and devices in the world. Brand of consumer electronic devices.
Qualcomm provides customers with chips and software that integrates Qualcomm technology to help them develop and launch products easily and quickly. In addition, Qualcomm also leverages a number of major patents. The cross-licenses obtained in the hands of the holders reduce the intellectual property costs of customers and minimize intellectual property disputes in the industry.
In recent years, Qualcomm has also been lenient in collecting patent licensing fees. In 2018, Qualcomm's patent licensing department reported revenue of US$5.1 billion and net profit of US$3.5 billion. Innovation is productivity, especially in today's knowledge age.
So how can we monetize innovation and bring benefits to the company? This requires Chinese entrepreneurs to think more.
By the way, China's Huawei uses Qualcomm chips, and their supply will be cut off in 2020.
U disk is the abbreviation of USB (Universal Serial Bus) disk. According to the homophony, it is also called "U disk" and is a type of flash memory. It connects to the computer through the USB interface, and the main control chip is responsible for various instructions and enables the computer to recognize the U disk as a "removable disk", making data storage and movement convenient and simple.
I believe that everyone has used this convenient and compact digital storage "artifact", but how many people know that this invention patent belongs to a Chinese company - Netac Technology.
20 years ago, Netac Technology applied for a patent for "Fast Lightning External Storage Method and Device for Data Processing Systems", with the patent number ZL99117225.6. In July 2002, this patent was granted Officially authorized by the State Intellectual Property Office. Since then, Netac has obtained a basic invention patent for flash disks authorized by the U.S. National Patent Office (U.S. Patent No. 6,829,672).
Many well-known companies on the market, such as Kingston, SanDisk, PNY, Alibaba, and Xinji Information, have all tried to exploit Netac Technology’s patents. It can be said that most companies on the market are involved in the field of flash memory. , can't get around Netac Technology.
With major patents in hand, Netac also began their "cheating life." The U disk invention patent brought huge profits to Netac Technology. In January 2010, Netac Technology was officially listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board and was known as "China's No. 1 mobile storage stock." In the more than nine years since its listing, Netac Technology has achieved a cumulative net profit of 295 million yuan, with an average annual net profit of about 33 million yuan. Not only that, infringement compensation can earn more than licensing fees.
In other words, because it holds the patent of flash memory, Netac Technology can be said to be making money while lying down.
Royal FloraHolland of the Netherlands is a warehouse-style flower company. This century-old giant in the flower industry has an annual revenue of 4.5 billion euros! In the huge warehouse, millions of flowers are scattered, attracting tourists from all over the world.
Every day, a large number of tourists arrive in the center of Amsterdam one day in advance. They get up at dawn the next day and rush to Royal FloraHolland’s warehouse outside the city. They spend 7 euros to buy a ticket to visit. This is not a warehouse in the ordinary sense. It has an area equivalent to 400 football fields and sells 200,000 different types of flowers and green plants.
In 1911, a group of Dutch flower growers jointly founded Royal FloraHolland. They held auctions, and bidders took photos of the flowers and exported them to the world. In Europe, flowers are needed for weddings, birthdays or funerals. It quickly attracted customers from London, Spain and Germany, and has now developed into the world's largest flower market. This auction method of wholesale flowers has continued to this day.
The place starts preparations for operation at 6 o'clock every morning and opens for business at 7 o'clock. Many electric carts piled with flowers and green plants shuttle in the warehouse, and even the roof exudes a charming fragrance.
For flower lovers, this is definitely a rare opportunity to see millions of flowers. This company's logistics capabilities are also top-notch. It is definitely a difficult task to arrange hundreds of thousands of flowers that are not easy to store for a long time in an orderly manner.
After the 90-minute auction ends every day, the warehouse will deliver the flowers to the buyers as soon as possible, or express them by road to nearby cities in Europe, or ship them to other parts of the world.
Today, Royal FloraHolland has 4,500 members from all over the world, including Kenya, Ethiopia, Israel, Colombia, Ecuador, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom and other countries. This company has an annual revenue of 4.5 billion euros (approximately RMB 329 billion) in the flower industry, helping the Netherlands become the world's largest exporter of fresh cut flowers.
From January 1 to March 31, 2020, Luxshare Precision’s profit ranged from 955 million yuan to 986 million yuan, an increase of 55%-60% over the same period last year.
Luxshare Precision was established in 2004 and is mainly engaged in the R&D and production of connectors, motors, antennas, acoustics, electronic modules and other products. Thanks to its first-class factories and advanced manufacturing processes, Luxshare Precision successfully penetrated Apple's Mac, iPad and iPhone product lines in 2015.
Following the development of Apple, Luxshare Precision has counterattacked from a small factory with a market value of several billion to a foundry giant with a market value of over 200 billion. Since 2006 to the present, as Apple's AirPods series has been favored by consumers and sales have been rising, Luxshare Precision has also developed rapidly and is highly sought after by capital.
Thanks to the continuous improvement of product production technology and the increase in yield, Luxshare Precision has become an important foundry for Apple's TWS products. According to statistics, in 2017, 70 to 80% of the production capacity of Luxshare Precision's Kunshan factory was used for Apple orders. It can be seen that Luxshare Precision was greatly affected by Apple.
Luxshare Precision is an electronic components supplier whose main customers are Apple, Huawei, Samsung, Google and other companies. Since the planning and development of specific products need to be combined with the product orientation of end customers, Luxshare Precision has always adhered to the customer-centered development strategy.
With the support of Apple and its customer-centric development strategy, Luxshare Precision has become a leading enterprise in precision manufacturing in the domestic electronics industry. He has made a fortune behind Apple's back, earning more than 3 billion yuan a year from OEM headphones.