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Jul 1
China's price war cuts humanoid robot hand costs in half — but precision parts resist

Competition in China's humanoid robot market is driving down prices for dexterous hands and other key parts, with implications for suppliers and buyers worldwide. Rapid product cycles are forcing cost cuts, while technical barriers, especially in high-precision components, continue to shape which manufacturers can compete globally.

Compound semiconductor epitaxy makers are raising prices again for gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP) epi wafers, as persistent raw material cost increases, supply chain shortages, and inflation continue to weigh on the industry. Taiwanese suppliers warn that output in the second half of the year remains tied to material restrictions.
MiTAC Holdings' subsidiary, MiTAC Computing Technology, has won strong demand from US cloud customers, driving a sharp rise in orders and a global expansion plan from Asia to North America starting in 2025. With new capacity set to come online in 2026 and additional North American output in the second half of the year, the company expects a clear uplift in operations.
Agentic AI demand is driving major US cloud providers such as Google and Amazon to expand data centers, lifting global server shipments and triggering a new wave of orders for Taiwan connector makers. DIGITIMES Research expects worldwide server shipments to grow more than 19% in 2026, approaching 20 million units.

Mobile system-on-chip (SoC) vendors are collectively upgrading flagship platforms to 2nm in 2026. Beyond the need for better specifications, the bigger goal is to avoid the most heavily booked 3nm process and secure more supply.

Taiwan plans to launch an emissions trading system (ETS) in 2028 as the next phase of its carbon pricing framework — a cap-and-trade market where companies buy and sell permits to emit greenhouse gases. However, environmental researchers and academics caution that the experiences of Japan, South Korea, and the European Union (EU) show that emissions trading markets take years to mature and operate effectively. With Taiwan's own carbon fee only recently taking effect, they argue the government should prioritize policy continuity and give businesses time to internalize carbon costs and implement decarbonization strategies before introducing a cap-and-trade regime.

As semiconductor manufacturing enters the 2nm era, conventional transistor scaling is approaching its physical limits. On June 25, 2026, IBM unveiled what it described as the world's first sub-1-nanometer chip technology, featuring a 0.7nm (7-angstrom) process node. The research chip integrates nearly 100 billion transistors into an area roughly the size of a fingernail, marking a significant milestone in semiconductor scaling.

According to IDC's latest data, Nvidia's networking business has surged to the top, with the company becoming the revenue leader in the global data center Ethernet switch market for the first time in the first quarter of 2026. This is an arena traditionally contested by network equipment vendors such as Arista Networks, Cisco, Huawei, and HPE, with switch chip suppliers such as Broadcom deeply involved.
As the Acer Group approaches its 50th anniversary, founder Stan Shih said the company's greatest legacy is not a single corporation, but what he calls the AAQW Business Family—a network of independently managed companies united by a shared corporate culture rather than family ownership.
OpenAI engineers claim to have figured out a way to halve the costs of inference using its models, according to The Information. The development comes as AI model developers are seeking to raise their models' token efficiency during a time when enterprise users are being saddled with enormous AI-usage bills.

AI chip competition is widening beyond raw performance, a shift that matters for global cloud providers, device makers, and investors. Tenstorrent chief executive Jim Keller says the startup can outdo Cerebras, while also courting Intel, Qualcomm, and hyperscalers for licensing deals, acquisitions, and future chip deployments.

Kinpo Electronics said its core operations remained stable despite a first-quarter revenue drop, with global demand patterns, customer model changes, and seasonal softness driving the decline. The company expects a recovery in the second half of 2026 as Thailand's capacity expands, new customers come online, and multiple product lines return to growth.