However, according to Bob Atkins, Cymer's chief executive officer, only about half of those systems were actually installed at fabs in the quarter. Atkins explained that this was due to leading-edge chip manufacturers reaching production capacity limits in the quarter that resulted in a bottleneck for new installations.

The installation delay would affect expected revenue recognition in the fourth quarter as further XLA-300 shipments would be delayed. According to Atkins, the company expects shipments and installations of the XLA-300 to be back on track by the end of the first quarter 2007.

With the majority of immersion tools being shipped by ASML and Nikon heading for NAND Flash 300mm fabs, it would seem that Flash memory manufacturers are struggling to bring on extra capacity.

However, Cymer's laser pulse usage chart indicated that overall usage was actually down markedly in Taiwan and down slightly in Singapore, which is dominated by foundries rather than memory production.

Cymer did not identify if any NAND Flash customer in particular was having capacity constraint issues.

Overall, the company shipped 67 light sources in the quarter of which 54 percent was 193nm ArF systems. ASML received 38 percent of its shipments, Nikon 15 percent and Canon 6 percent. Chip manufacturers received 41 percent of shipped light sources direct in the quarter, Cymer noted.