"But then again, don't you feel a little strange today?" After Ni Guangnan calmed down from his excitement, Boss Jia suddenly said.
"What's strange?" Ni Guangnan asked foolishly.
"Nothing, it's just that ASLM is a little too nice to us!" Boss Jia touched his nose.
"There's something wrong with you. They're so nice to us and they treat us so well. You say they're strange. I think you're the strange one!" Ni Guangnan said angrily.
"Of course it's strange. At first, I thought it might be because no one wanted to buy their equipment that they were so nice to us. But later on, I felt that something was wrong. I felt that something was wrong when the vice president allowed you to visit their factory! "
"Because this vice president didn't take us seriously at all. When he talked to me, he never looked at me directly. The smile on his face was mostly a perfunctory smile!"
"More importantly, he didn't talk to us about the price from beginning to end. He didn't even mention anything about the product itself. It didn't seem like he really wanted to sell something at all!"
"Because if I planned to sell something to others, then I would definitely brag about the various advantages of my product. At the same time, because there's only one 70nm equipment in the world, it's a unique product! So I would definitely pretend that there are many people interested in it. If you want to buy it, then buy it. If you don't want to buy it, then get out of here quickly. This would stimulate the buyer's desire to buy it! "
"But there's none of that. It seems that the other party just wanted to show us around. He didn't expect us to buy his machine at all!"
"What you said seems to make sense!" Ni Guangnan was a little confused. "I remember. When I was visiting the factory, I talked to many workers. In the end, none of them knew that there would be people from Hua Xia coming to visit the factory. This is indeed a little abnormal. If it were me, I would definitely tell the workers in advance so that they would be prepared and perform better! "
"That's right!" Boss Jia nodded. "There must be something wrong here!"
"But what could be wrong here? I can't find a suitable reason! "Ni Guangnan and Boss Jia were confused at the same time. That's right, they really couldn't find a reason for ASML to do this.
What Boss Jia and Ni Guangnan didn't know was that in another hotel one kilometer away from their hotel, two people were also having a meeting.
"Mr. Minister, we've found out the truth. A group of buyers came to visit today, and they were personally received by the vice president of ASML. The standard of reception was very high, and it was very grand. They were even invited into the workshop to take a look. It seems that our opponents are really here!" A younger white guy said.
"Someone actually wants to buy this set of equipment. Apart from Intel, who else would use such a high-precision lithography machine?" The director muttered to himself in astonishment.
That's right, these two white men were the head of the purchasing department and his assistant from Intel Corporation of the United States.
As the world's top computer CPU manufacturer, Intel was naturally at the forefront of the era. After the birth of 70nm lithography technology, Intel immediately sent a team to negotiate with ASML and bought both lithography machines at a suitable price.
Originally, Intel was full of confidence this time because its two previous competitors, AMD and Apple, were not in a good state at the moment. AMD was said to be tight on funds, to the point where its capital chain was about to break. They simply didn't have the money to buy the latest lithography machine.
Apple, on the other hand, had serious internal conflicts in the company, and its market was being squeezed by Microsoft. More importantly, Apple, which had always insisted on developing its own chips under the leadership of Boss Qiao, had been wavering under the control of the new board of directors.
Now, in order to save research and development funds, Apple even proposed to give up on developing its own chips and buy the chips directly from Intel. This way, not only would it save money, but it would also save them a lot of trouble.
In the past, only these two companies competed with Intel for high-end lithography machines because other companies simply didn't need such high-end lithography machines. After all, 140nm lithography machines could basically meet the needs of all other companies.
Now that these two competitors had given up on buying, Intel was the only buyer left for this machine. Would Intel still accept ASLM's offer honestly?
In the past, ASLM used to buy the latest lithography machine from ASLM because there were three competitors. Not only was ASLM's price high, but because of the competition between the two sides, the purchase price was often higher than the fixed price. ASLM made a lot of money, which made Intel very unhappy.
Now, there were no competitors, and no one else wanted to buy their machine. Naturally, Intel had to lower the price unscrupulously.
For example, during the first negotiation, Intel's representative directly lowered the price of 150 million USD to 50 million USD. ASLM was so angry that they jumped up. They couldn't even earn back their capital with such a small amount of money.
Of course, Intel was just trying to bargain. They also knew that it was impossible to buy it with 50 million US dollars. So, after rounds of discussion, competition, and bargaining, the price was now stuck at 80 million US dollars.
Intel proposed that 80 million USD was the highest price they could accept, and there was no need to talk about any higher.
ASML said that they couldn't even earn back their capital if it was less than 120 million USD.
Because according to Intel's calculations, the cost of this lithography machine was at most 60 million USD. 80 million USD was already a very generous price, so Intel completely insisted on the price this time. They were unwilling to let go. The two sides had been in a stalemate for almost a week.
Logically speaking, ASML was almost unable to hold on. ASML had invested a lot of money in the development of this 70nm machine. Now the company's capital flow was about to break. If they didn't sell these two machines quickly and give the company some money, ASML might really starve to death.
However, the price of 80 million USD was really unacceptable to ASML. Although this price was more than enough to cover the production material cost, it was not worth mentioning in terms of research and development costs. After all, ASML had invested 500 million USD in research and development funds.
If a machine could make a profit of 90 million USD, then they could quickly earn back the research and development funds.
However, if a machine only made a profit of 20 million USD, then they had to sell 25 machines to recoup their capital. According to ASML's calculations, it would take at least 5 years to sell 25 high-end models.
Therefore, both sides were stuck at a price that was unacceptable to both sides. Intel relied on the fact that they were the only buyer and tried their best to lower the price. ASML was on the verge of collapse because of the cash flow problem. They were about to agree to the other party's request. When the price was lowered a little more, Hua Xia appeared.
Although they didn't understand how Hua Xia had the money to buy the lithography machine, they did propose to buy the lithography machine. This gave ASML a huge help.
You see, Intel wasn't the only one who wanted to buy the machine. There were others who wanted to buy the machine. Intel couldn't insist on the price of 80 million USD anymore. They had to raise the price!
This was the reason why ASML had such a good attitude towards Jia Yapeng and the others. It was because whether Jia Yapeng and the others really wanted to buy the machine or not, ASML had to maintain absolute enthusiasm and create signs of heated negotiations between the two sides. Intel couldn't help but raise the price.
As for whether the Chinese would really fork out money to buy their own photolithography machine, ASML felt that this was most likely nonsense and that they were just here to watch the show. However, the news that someone wanted to buy it was like music to ASML's ears.
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