Applied Materials Lost Share Across Key Semiconductor Equipment Markets in 2025

What’s in This Article

Introduction
Table 1 – Top 5 Semiconductor Equipment Companies: Share of Served Available Market (SAM)
Impact of Currency on ASML and Tokyo Electron Market Share
CMP: The New Strategic Center of Wafer Fabrication
Table 2 – CMP Market Share by Company (%)
Deposition: The Largest and Most Diversified Equipment Market
Table 3 – Deposition Market Share by Company (%)
Doping: A Mature Market with Stable Competitive Structure
Table 4 – Doping Market Share by Company (%)
Etch: AI Complexity Expands Process Intensity
Table 5 – Etch Market Share by Company (%)
Lithography: ASML’s Monopoly and the Limits of Competition
Table 6 – Lithography Market Share by Company (%)
Process Control: KLA’s Yield Management Dominance
Table 7 – Process Control Market Share by Company (%)
Investor Takeaway

Introduction

I have consistently found that Applied Materials’ (AMAT) “Master Class” presentations and product announcements require careful scrutiny, as the company’s characterization of its competitive position often differs from what is observable in segment-level data. These presentations are effective marketing tools, but they can rely on selective framing that overstates leadership positions.

For example, following Applied Materials’ December 14, 2022 eBeam product launch, the company stated in Applied Materials Breakthrough in Electron Beam Imaging Technology Accelerates Development of the World’s Most Advanced Computer Chips that it had become “the process control industry’s number-one supplier of eBeam systems,” with market share of over 50 percent. At the time, I wrote a Seeking Alpha article entitled Applied Materials Ballyhooed E-Beam Inspection Sector Lost Share To KLA’s Optical (December 2022), showing that while Applied emphasized its e-beam technology, market data indicated that KLA Corporation continued to dominate the metrology and inspection sector, with optical inspection gaining share as Applied’s position declined. Data comes from my report entitled “Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control in VLSI Manufacturing“, which can be previewed on my website at The Information Network.

The company’s April 2026 Logic Master Class introduces a similar claim—this time in chemical mechanical planarization (CMP). As with prior instances, the claim warrants examination against available market data.

In this article, I analyze not only the CMP industry, but all major equipment segments and the share of the Top 5 Equipment Companies in each segment: Applied Materials (AMAT), Lam Research (LRCX), Tokyo Electron (TOELY), KLA (KLAC), and ASML (ASML). All data in this article comes from our report entitled “Applied Materials: Competing Analysis of Served Markets,” which can be previewed on my web site at The Information Network. Remember, AMAT reports after the bell on Thursday May 14.

Table 1 compares these Top 5 companies and thechange of their Served Available Markets (SAM) in 2024 and 2025. Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron both lost share within respective SAM in 2025, while Lam Research, KLA, and ASML expanded their positions. These shifts reflect a broader industry transition in which leadership is increasingly concentrating around the most technologically critical process bottlenecks rather than around overall platform breadth alone.