China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission have released the 15th Five-Year Plan for the development of the electronic information manufacturing industry, aiming to push revenue at large-scale enterprises above CNY30 trillion (US$4.5 trillion) by 2030 and foster world-class companies in semiconductors, advanced computing, consumer electronics, basic electronics, and energy electronics.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics is investing KRW6.78 trillion (approx. US$5 billion) to expand FCBGA capacity in South Korea and Vietnam. The projects are backed by customer funding and medium- to long-term volume commitments, as demand for high-performance package substrates pushes Korean production lines toward high utilization.

Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) has launched two research programs targeting silicon photonics (SiPh) and next-generation AI data center power systems, seeking to address energy and performance bottlenecks as high-speed computing shifts increasingly from copper to optical interconnects.

The direction of global corporate investment in physical assets is becoming clearer. According to the fDi Report 2026 and an analysis by Visual Capitalist, announced greenfield foreign direct investment by multinational companies exceeded US$1.3 trillion in 2025, up 2.2% from a year earlier.

Qualcomm announced on September 24 that it has renewed its global patent licensing agreement with Apple, with the new contract set to take effect on April 1, 2027. The terms and value of the deal were not disclosed, but Apple's long-running move toward in-house modem chips continues to draw close attention.

Nittobo is expanding production of its T-Glass glass cloth as demand from AI chip makers tightens a critical part of the global semiconductor supply chain. The move matters beyond Japan because shortages of this insulating material could slow advanced chip production, raise costs, and affect technology markets worldwide.

Skyworks Solutions (Nasdaq: SWKS) has completed its combination with Qorvo, creating a US-based supplier of high-performance radio frequency (RF), power management, and analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. The company expects annual cost synergies of US$500 million or more, and says the deal will add to non-GAAP earnings per share right away.

Huawei's Kirin 9050 Pro has been fully broken down by Chinese and overseas researchers, giving the market a closer look at the company's "LogicFolding" approach. Analysis from Geekerwan and die-shot images posted by Kurnal Insights show that the flagship SoC in the Huawei Mate 90 Pro Max uses two vertically stacked dies rather than a traditional single-plane chip design.

As AI computing clusters continue to expand, performance requirements for scale-out interconnects between racks are rising rapidly. This is pushing traditional pluggable optical transceivers from 800G to 1.6T and accelerating the transition toward future 3.2T products, a shift reshaping printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing from substrate materials to processing technologies.

Samsung Electronics is expanding its thermal-management efforts for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) beyond the memory stack as increasingly large chip packages raise heat-management challenges.

Solidigm, SK Hynix's NAND subsidiary, is expanding its Taiwan production base for data center solid-state drives (SSDs), underscoring the island's growing role in the global AI server supply chain. The move could affect global SSD supply, customer sourcing, and partnerships across the fast-growing data center market.