Global smartphone shipments amounted to above 300 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022 and are estimated to go down to only around 260 million units in first-quarter 2023, slipping a double-digit percentage sequentially in both quarters, according to DIGITIMES Research's latest figures on the global smartphone market

The competition among VR head-mounted devices (HMDs) has grown fiercer since the introduction of the Metaverse concept and pancake lenses, which can satisfy demand for an ultra-slim design, improve image quality, and support vision correction functionality, are becoming the mainstream optical solution for new VR HMDs, according to DIGITIMES Research's new study on VR products

Various satellite projects and applications have been increasingly thriving, which leads to a huge amount of data transmission and processing. Such business opportunities attract cloud juggernauts including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to justle for the space market

Taiwan's IC design industry has reached a critical crossroads, with an unclear development direction, worsening talent shortage, confusing government policies, and shrinking academic research momentum all requiring cooperation from all sectors to overcome. But in terms of a feasible development direction, datacenter server processors and HPC (high-performance computing) chips are believed to provide the most promising future for Taiwan IC designers, according to Eric Huang, vice president of DIGITIMES and host of the IC Design Industrial Policy White Paper team

Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing sector boasts structural advantages in its next decade of development, but the advantages for its IC design sector are likely to change, according to Colley Hwang, president and founder of DIGITIMES

The shortages of automotive chips have been improving since the fourth quarter of 2022, while Tesla's plan to significantly cut its SiC consumption is unlikely to undermine the SiC product market's potential, according to DIGITIMES Research's findings

The companies that participated at Taipei International Machine Tool Show (TIMTOS) 2023, which was hosted from March 6-11, primarily focused on showcasing innovations revolving around three major themes: eco-friendly designs, digital twin, and automation, according to DIGITIMES Research's observations of the show

The fad for ChatGPT is driving up the growth of the generative AI market with figures from financial data company PitchBook showing that venture capitals in the US invested a total of US$2 billion in generative AI companies in 2022. DIGITIMES Research expects the B2B-type of businesses to be the key revenue contributors for ChatGPT-related products

With the US-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic driving companies to diversify their production lines to different parts of the world to avoid risks after 2020, Malaysia has also become one of the targets for international first-tier IT companies to make investments in, but wafer manufacturing and semiconductor packaging and testing remain the key investment projects for the companies, according to DIGITIMES Research's latest study on Malaysia's semiconductor industry

The four leading foundries in Taiwan - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics (UMC), Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing (PSMC), and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) - together generated a total of US$89.4 billion in revenues in 2022, soaring 31%. However, they also experienced the first on-quarter revenue decline since the hit of the COVID-19 pandemic in fourth-quarter 2022, according to DIGITIMES Research's collected figures from the latest study on Taiwan's wafer foundry industry

Global EV sales continued to exhibit prominent growth in 2022, amounting to 9.78 million units, as opposed to the overall automotive sales worldwide that again came short of expectation, according to the latest figures collected by DIGITIMES Research

As the US rallies Japan and the Netherlands to tighten up semiconductor export controls against China, the world has been trying to estimate the extent of damage done to the Chinese semiconductor industry, especially to China's leading foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC