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Thursday 7 May 2026

Transcom sees overseas defense orders drive revenue and production into 2026

Transcom Technology reported that April 2026 revenue rose 45.94% year on year to NT$90.82 million (US$2.9 million) as delayed defense project shipments from March were booked in April, and said defense-related products moving into mass production would support steady second-quarter shipments. The power amplifier maker disclosed first-quarter 2026 revenue of NT$178 million, a gross margin of 54%, net profit after tax of NT$20.2 million and earnings per share of NT$0.22, and stated that current order fulfillment progress pointed to an operational recovery in the second quarter.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Arm shifts focus to high-value silicon to bypass mobile growth plateau

The strategic significance of Arm's current transformation lies in its transition from a volume-dependent mobile component provider to a value-driven infrastructure architect. As the global smartphone market faces structural saturation, the organization is pivoting toward Agentic and Physical AI to redefine its commercial relevance. The core of this strategy is to increase the average selling price per chip by packing higher complexity—measured in core density and orchestration capabilities—into each unit, thereby ensuring revenue growth even as hardware shipment volumes stabilize.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Arm's $2 billion AGI CPU backlog signals strong hyperscaler demand

During the earnings call on May 6, Arm announced a significant expansion of its product strategy, centering on the emergence of "Agentic AI" and "Physical AI" as primary growth drivers for the next decade. The company defines agentic workloads as a shift from human-based queries to continuous, autonomous tasks where CPUs must coordinate data movement, manage memory, and orchestrate work across accelerators. To address this, Arm recently launched the Arm AGI CPU, a product purpose-built for these specific AI requirements.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Nvidia, Corning partner to boost US optical manufacturing capacity 10x

Nvidia and Corning announced a multiyear partnership to expand U.S.-based production of optical connectivity solutions for AI data centers. Corning will increase its U.S. optical connectivity manufacturing capacity by 10-fold and expand fiber production capacity by more than 50%.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Arm's licensing surge masks smartphone market slowdown

Arm reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of US$1.49 billion, up 20% year over year and nearly 20% higher sequentially, according to company financial data. Net profit rose 49% from a year earlier to US$313 million, while operating income climbed to US$438 million.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Raydium Semiconductor sees mixed display demand as AI-driven IT cycle reshapes inventory trends

Raydium Semiconductor reported first-quarter 2026 revenue and profit figures, signaling demand trends in large displays, automotive, and industrial markets that could affect global display and consumer electronics supply dynamics. International manufacturers and investors may reassess inventory and production plans amid cautious smartphone AMOLED demand and continued large-display stocking by some clients.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Memory hikes slow telecom orders, but network chipmakers stay upbeat

Network infrastructure demand in 2026 remains broadly positive as telecom operators in Europe and the US prepare for future AI use cases. Chipmakers say the growth is not just about spec upgrades, but a full-scale overhaul of network infrastructure.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Snapdragon tops India's chipset trust rankings: Counterpoint Research

A Counterpoint Research survey finds Snapdragon is India's most trusted chipset brand across smartphones, audio, XR devices, and passenger vehicles, signaling that chipset performance now shapes purchase decisions—a finding relevant to global readers tracking device performance trends, platform ecosystems, and the expanding role of chipsets in connected-device experiences.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Intel targets entry-level advanced packaging, draws interest from Google and Amazon

Over the past decade, market assessments of Intel have largely been confined to a single lens: execution in advanced process technology. By that metric, Intel has struggled, with delays in 10nm and setbacks at the 7nm node, leading to the loss of Apple's chip orders. This view assumes that semiconductor manufacturing advantage is determined primarily by transistor density, particularly in the system-on-chip era.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

Nvidia, AMD expand in Taiwan as US touts strategic ties at SelectUSA Summit

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said its A+ Industrial Innovation R&D Program has helped attract Nvidia to invest in Taiwan and set up an overseas headquarters in Taipei, while AMD has also received major ministry support to establish a research and development center in the southern city of Tainan.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

AEM CEO says AI upends semiconductor testing

Singapore semiconductor equipment and testing company AEM is facing a dual challenge of "physics and cost" as the AI era rewrites the limits and supply-chain logic of chip testing, CEO Samer Kabbani said. AI is also driving up to US$7 trillion in global infrastructure investment, he said, while forcing the industry to adapt to faster product cycles and far larger, more power-hungry packages.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

GlobalWafers reports weaker quarter as expansion weighs on margins

GlobalWafers said on May 4 that its first-quarter performance reflected a transitional period, as short-term cost pressures and capacity expansion weighed on margins even as demand tied to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing began to strengthen.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

VIS sees stronger growth in the AI boom and pricing power

Buoyed by robust demand for artificial intelligence and the early success of price increases, Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation (VIS) is projecting a stronger performance for the second quarter of 2026, with wafer shipments expected to rise by more than 10% from the previous quarter. Average selling prices are forecast to increase by 2% to 4%, while gross margins are likely to recover to above 30%.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

GlobalWafers outlines 2026 recovery path, highlights tightening 12-inch wafer supply

GlobalWafers expects the current semiconductor cycle to bottom in the first quarter of 2026, with both the speed and breadth of recovery exceeding prior expectations, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand continues to drive growth across the industry.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

AMD earnings call: AI is turning CPUs back into the main event

AMD's fiscal first-quarter 2026 earnings call was not just a victory lap for another data center beat. It was a strategic argument from management: AI infrastructure is no longer only an accelerator story. It is becoming a full compute-platform story, where CPUs, GPUs, memory, software, and rack-scale systems all have to move together.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

MediaTek unit Airoha targets AI networking surge with triple optical growth

MediaTek subsidiary Airoha Technology said its first-quarter 2026 performance met expectations, driven by continued improvement in product mix and accelerating demand across its optical communications, Ethernet, and fixed broadband businesses tied to AI infrastructure expansion.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

RichWave sees Wi-Fi 7 growth outrunning memory price pressure

Radio frequency (RF) front-end chip maker RichWave said on May 4 that Wi-Fi 7 momentum will remain very strong in the first quarter of 2026, even as rising memory and component costs squeeze profitability and cloud order visibility. The company said memory-driven price increases are affecting the broader networking industry, but the impact on its 2026 growth will be limited.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

Analysis: The US$2.5 billion smuggling case hanging over Supermicro's US$40 billion year

Supermicro CEO Charles Liang used the opening of his fiscal third quarter of 2026 earnings call to address a topic unrelated to revenue or margins: the DOJ indictment of former employees for allegedly smuggling AI servers equipped with Nvidia GPUs to China through Southeast Asian transshipment networks.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

TV panel prices stall as China cuts output to defend prices

The LCD TV panel market has shifted sharply from aggressive stocking to defensive procurement as global sports-event demand fades, pre-stocking cycles for China's 618 shopping festival wind down, and end-market demand loses momentum. TV brands are now focusing on inventory control and buying only as needed, while Chinese panel makers are trimming production to support prices.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

AMD lifts outlook as AI demand fuels data center growth

On May 5, AMD reported first-quarter 2026 results that exceeded expectations, supported by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, according to company data and media reports. Revenue reached US$10.25 billion, while net profit rose to US$1.38 billion, reflecting robust year-on-year growth across key metrics.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

Southeast Asia faces fab gap as chipmaking remains concentrated in China and Taiwan

Global semiconductor sales are projected to reach US$1 trillion this year and could double to US$2 trillion by 2035, driven by rapid growth in AI data centers. But the boom is also shining new light on Southeast Asia's limited front-end manufacturing base, as SEMI urges the region to add more fabs to reduce chip supply-chain concentration in China and Taiwan.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Tesla AI5 dual sourcing may not mean equal weight for Samsung

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the company's in-house AI5 chip has completed design tape-out and entered a critical pre-production validation stage. The move has drawn renewed attention from supply chains in Taiwan and South Korea as Tesla builds a scalable computing infrastructure for vehicles, AI training systems, and humanoid robots.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

South Korea eyes memory-led AI order against Nvidia

As AI shifts from training to inference and from single-task use to multi-agent collaboration, South Korea's semiconductor industry is seeking to recast the market around memory rather than GPUs. South Korean academia and industry figures say the AI era will be defined by memory architectures, with the country aiming to build its own framework and challenge an order long dominated by Nvidia.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Ardentec's Longtan plant to start AI ASIC testing in 3Q26

Ardentec's Longtan plant is set to begin taking AI ASIC wafer-probing orders in the third quarter of 2026, as the semiconductor testing provider moves to capture spillover demand from foundry strategic partners.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Google's TPU push hits Nvidia's neocloud grip

Google's effort to expand its tensor processing units (TPU) beyond its own cloud is meeting resistance from some of the AI infrastructure companies best positioned to distribute alternative chips, with executives from Nebius, Lambda, and CoreWeave saying they do not plan to adopt TPUs anytime soon, according to The Information.

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