Qualcomm reported record financial results for its fiscal first quarter of 2026, while guiding lower for the current quarter as memory supply constraints begin to weigh on handset production.

The networking industry is seeing a rebound in demand in 2026, but worsening imbalances in memory supply and demand have emerged as the biggest variable affecting operations this year. Senao Networks chairman Tommy Tsai said that major cloud service providers (CSPs) have locked up DDR4 and DDR5 capacity, leading to supply-demand mismatches for DDR3, DDR4, and even NAND flash used in networking equipment. In the spot market, there have even been extreme cases of memory prices surging tenfold. This wave of component shortages has put pressure on networking equipment makers that had been optimistic about growth in 2026. While overall order momentum remains intact, runaway memory prices could directly erode gross margins.

Samsung Electronics has once again pushed its net cash above KRW100 trillion (US$68.97 billion), reaching KRW100.61 trillion at the end of 2025, up 7.8% from the same period in 2024. This marks Samsung's return to the milestone for the first time since 2022, highlighting its increasingly robust financial structure and strong capital deployment capabilities.

SK Hynix is accelerating production of 1b DRAM for high-bandwidth memory as quality testing of Nvidia's next-generation HBM4 nears its final stage, according to Korean media and industry sources.

Record demand for artificial intelligence applications propelled Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to milestone financial results in 2025. On January 29, 2026, the two South Korean memory giants held rare, nearly simultaneous earnings calls to signal their respective positions in the race for the next generation of high-bandwidth memory.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have both secured production-ready technology for 16-layer stacks of sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, known as HBM4, positioning the two South Korean memory makers for a pivotal contest in 2026 as demand from artificial intelligence accelerators expands. While each company has demonstrated technical readiness, industry participants say yield performance, rather than headline specifications, is likely to determine market share, profitability, and supplier standing in the next phase of the HBM cycle.

Benefiting from specification upgrades in AI servers and switches, the content per box of NOR Flash is set to grow by multiples, with high-capacity specifications likely to face severe supply shortages. NOR Flash price increases in the second quarter of 2026 are expected to jump 40–50% quarter-on-quarter from the first quarter, with some product lines even seeing customers willing to pay premiums to secure supply. As for legacy-process products with tight supply, such as SLC NAND and MLC NAND, price hikes are even more aggressive. Second-quarter contract prices are rumored to see year-on-year increases of up to 400–500%, prompting Winbond Electronics to accelerate the expansion of its SLC NAND capacity.

Recent market speculation has claimed that China's memory producer CXMT is triggering a price war by offloading DDR4 at deep discounts. Supply chain sources, however, said CXMT has largely pivoted to DDR5 process development, keeping only around 10,000 wafers of DDR4 capacity for a handful of long-term customers, making large-scale, low-priced dumping into the open market unlikely.

Benefiting from rising memory prices and supply shortages, DRAM giant Nanya Technology reported revenue of NT$15.31 billion (US$484.8 million) for January 2026, up 27.39% sequentially and surging a staggering 608.02% year over year. This growth reflects both monthly and annual gains, setting a new record for single-month revenue.

Amid an acute global memory chip shortage, China's leading manufacturers ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) are rolling out their most aggressive capacity expansion plans, seeking to close the gap with global giants Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

SoftBank Corp. has launched a push into next-generation AI memory through its wholly owned unit SAIMEMORY Corp., forming a strategic collaboration with Intel Corporation to commercialize a new memory architecture known as Z-Angle Memory (ZAM).

The structural shortage in the memory market is driving a surge in supply chain operations, with reports indicating that Winbond recently finalized its contract pricing for the first quarter of 2026. The company expects DRAM price increases from the fourth quarter of 2025 to sustain through the second quarter of 2026, marking three consecutive quarters of growth and effectively doubling contract prices year-over-year. Furthermore, Winbond's new production capacity planned for 2027 has already been fully booked.

Memory packaging giant Powertech Technology is aggressively expanding into fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP), with chairman Duh-Kung Tsai optimistic about the AI industry. Amid ongoing memory shortages and rising demand for advanced packaging, Powertech aims to become the top partner outside the TSMC ecosystem, expecting a significant revenue surge in 2027-2028 as FOPLP capacity reaches full utilization, contributing NT$3 billion (US$95 million) monthly.

SK Hynix has reportedly made significant progress in the quality testing of Nvidia's sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) products, boosting the likelihood that it will become a stable supplier of HBM4 for Nvidia's latest Rubin GPUs.

Rising memory prices are creating fresh cost challenges for IC design firms, particularly those producing chips with embedded memory. While most chip designers feel the impact indirectly, vendors shipping system-on-chips (SoCs) with integrated memory face more immediate and significant cost pressures.

Memory shortages are worsening across the market as international suppliers shift capacity aggressively toward servers, tightening supply for consumer electronics and automotive sectors. China's leading NAND flash producer YMTC is reportedly being assigned a stabilisation role, prioritising support for key domestic industries to maintain supply chain continuity and avoid production disruptions and layoffs.

Rising prices are no longer limited to upstream materials and PCBs; surging memory costs have further pushed up supply chain expenses, prompting synchronized responses across wafer foundries, OSAT providers, and IC design houses to reflect cost and supply-demand changes. Multiple Taiwanese and Chinese IC design companies have clearly initiated price increase mechanisms. Realtek passed on a 10% price increase for products with embedded memory as of January 1, 2026, and will raise prices again two months later, on March 1, by an average of more than 30%.

Apple reported strong results for its fiscal first quarter of 2026, but the company's supply chain did not share in the enthusiasm. The key reason is that Apple is feeling the impact of rising prices for critical components while striving to maintain a certain gross margin range. This means increased pricing pressure on suppliers.

Kioxia Holdings sees an opportunity to expand its presence in high-density storage for AI data centers as rivals direct resources to other segments. The company's incoming president said demand tied to artificial intelligence continues to grow and Kioxia will keep capital spending disciplined.

China's YMTC is fast-tracking construction of its Wuhan Phase III NAND flash fab, bringing its mass production target forward to the second half of 2026, roughly a year ahead of the original 2027 schedule.

The first half of 2026 is packed with events, including the Super Bowl, tax season, the FIFA World Cup, and the Lunar New Year holiday. TV brands have therefore moved forward with inventory stocking. China's top three panel makers—BOE Technology, TCL China Star Optoelectronic Technology (CSOT), and HKC—will simultaneously implement production cuts of five to 10 days each. This is expected to tighten overall supply-demand conditions for LCD TV panels and drive prices upward. Additionally, there are fewer working days in February, so panel output is expected to decline significantly, shifting supply and demand toward a tighter balance and making LCD TV panel price increases in February a certainty.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, on February 1, 2026, underscored Taiwan's central role in the global artificial intelligence supply chain, saying the company "would not be possible without Taiwan," while warning that soaring AI demand is placing unprecedented pressure on semiconductor, memory, and manufacturing capacity worldwide.

The smartphone industry is bearing the brunt of rising memory prices, and the impact is most evident in mid- to low-end models. Transsion, the Chinese smartphone maker regarded as a leading brand in emerging markets, has become one of the first handset vendors to be clearly hit by this wave of memory price increases. On the evening of January 29, 2025, Transsion announced its earnings forecast for full-year 2025, estimating annual revenue of CNY65.568 billion (US$9.4 billion), down about 4.6% year over year. Net profit is estimated at about CNY2.546 billion, plunging 54.11% year over year, nearly half of the previous year. This marks the first significant profit decline since Transsion went public.