US President Donald Trump has ordered the divestment of certain semiconductor assets of EMCORE Corporation following a national security review that identified risks linked to foreign ownership, according to a White House executive order and a statement from the US Treasury Department.
Indian OSAT players aim for price competitiveness on par with Malaysian rivals, as L&T Semiconductor is scheduled to announce products at CES.
Taiwan's power semiconductor suppliers are positioning for steady growth through 2026. The momentum comes from two fronts: artificial intelligence data centers adopting new power architectures and automotive customers adjusting sourcing after supply disruptions linked to Nexperia.
Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) design sector faces intensified challenges as 2026 begins that may push its global revenue ranking to third place, largely due to competitive pressures from the US and China. The dominant reliance on consumer electronics revenue offers limited growth prospects, as AI-driven expansion primarily benefits cloud computing sectors.
Singapore is drawing a new wave of semiconductor investment as global chipmakers expand advanced manufacturing tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure, reinforcing the city-state's strategy of attracting investments to enable next-generation technologies and position Singapore higher up the semiconductor value chain.
Japanese semiconductor firms are pivoting toward advanced packaging and alternative lithography as TSMC extends its scale advantage in artificial intelligence chips. TSMC's 3nm and 2nm capacity is largely locked in. Advanced packaging now contributes a growing share of sales. The company is on track to see annual revenue exceed US$250 billion around 2029 or 2030. That widening gap has pushed Japanese companies to focus on panel-level packaging and nanoimprint technologies. Both emerged at SEMICON Japan 2025 as key levers to bypass manufacturing bottlenecks and secure a foothold in the fast-expanding AI accelerator supply chain.
Chang Wah Electromaterials and its affiliate Chang Wah Technology are expanding operations across Taiwan, China, and Malaysia as global chipmakers and packaging houses ramp up capacity in Asia, positioning the group's combined distribution and manufacturing model to strengthen its role in the semiconductor back-end supply chain.
The global semiconductor market is projected to reach US$1 trillion as early as 2026, significantly ahead of previous industry forecasts targeting 2030. The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) forecast, released in December 2024, expects growth to be driven predominantly by logic chips, including GPUs and AI accelerators. Memory markets are poised for the steepest increase.
Global memory markets are expected to remain tight through 2026 as aggressive spending by cloud service providers (CSPs) on AI infrastructure continues to outstrip supply growth for both DRAM and NAND flash, pushing prices higher, according to industry estimates.
Smartphone distributors in Taiwan have recently said they are no longer able to obtain Asus handsets through local agents and claimed they had received information indicating that Asus's smartphone unit would operate only through December 31, 2025, after which the company would stop launching new smartphone products.
The PCB industry is making large upgrades. The largest beneficiaries of the AI boom are IC substrate makers that are part of the advanced chip packaging supply chain, such as Unimicron and Kinsus, which have gradually emerged from the oversupply bottleneck caused by large-scale post-pandemic capacity expansion. The surge in orders has spread to multiple networking and server PCB manufacturers, including Gold Circuit Electronics (CGE), Allied Circuit Co. (ACCL), and First Hi-tec, driving double-digit year-over-year growth in Taiwan's PCB manufacturing output value in 2025.
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