Macronix and Foxconn have signed an agreement for the memory maker to sell a 6-inch wafer fab to the EMS giant, enhancing the latter's development in the semiconductor sector. TSMC has raised its sub-7nm shipment outlook for 2021 and 2022, with prospects of Qualcomm and Nvidia placing major orders. Component shortages are improving, fueling optimism at Pegatron about its business in second-half 2021.

Macronix International, a vendor of non-volatile memory (NVM), and EMS provier Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) have announced the signing of an agreement for the former to sell a 6-inch wafer fab and equipment at the Hsinchu Science Park (HSP) to the latter for NT$2.52 billion (US$90.67 million).

Device assembler Pegatron has expressed optimism about its consolidated sales outlook for the second half of 2021, as the ongoing shortage of upstream chips and components is expected to increasingly improve along with suppliers ramping up their production scales.

Vietnam has emerged as a major production hub for the global supply chain, with manufacturing equipment upgrades promising huge business opportunities.

Electric vehicles (EV) are changing the ecosystems of the carmaking industry. Many companies with different backgrounds, such as in ICT or even the smartphone industry, are entering this market. More and more startups are also expected to join this game in the future. MIH Alliance, a Foxconn (Hon Hai)-led initiative for developing EVs, has built an open platform to connect the carmaking companies and components suppliers. MIH even aims to electrify all buses in Taiwan in the next five years, according to Jack Cheng, CEO of MIH Alliance.

Taiwan's incentives program has attracted NT$824.4 billion (US$29.4 billion) in investments from businesses returning from China over the past two years, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

The ongoing shortage of crucial chips and components will be challenging industrial PC maker Ennoconn in the second half of 2021, according to the company president Nelson Tsai.

As the second largest handset market next to China, India sees its suppliers mainly carrying Chinese brands. Is India facing a fundamental change in market structure? Smartphone brands often find themselves overwhelmed by fast market changes. And surging logistics costs are posing greater challenges, fueling management problems.

Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam saw their respective export values for June 2021 exceed the corresponding pre-pandemic monthly figures for June 2019, thanks mainly to economic recovery in the US and China that sharply boosted imports from the three Southeast Asian countries.

Global notebook shipments wee weaker than expected in second-quarter 2021, thanks to components shortages. Global notebook shipments will see less than 2% sequential growth in the third quarter. Smartphone AP shipments into China grew about 3% sequentially in the second quarter, and will rise by anohter 7% in the third quarter. DIGITIMES recently talked to tech venture specialist Vitaly M Golomb about the EV trends ahead of his participation in the upcoming "Asia Venturing (II): Tech-Driven Mobility" event.

Procurement orders from the education segment reached the peak in the second quarter, while demand for gaming and enterprise notebooks also remained robust, but worldwide notebook shipments still performed weaker-than-expected in the second quarter of 2021, as a result of worsening shortages of panels, graphics cards, ICs, and substrates.

Chromebook demand has begun shrinking since early July, and consumer and gaming notebooks are expected to see sales decelerate dramatically in 2022. But the enterprise segment is expected to serve as the key shipment growth driver for the notebook industry next year, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

A surge in COVID infections in Southeast Asia is hitting Japanese carmakers' production in the region. And COVID-inflicted disruptions to logistics services have prompted Vietnam to introduce a new rail transport route to Europe.

Despite speculation circulating in the supply chain that notebook shipments may start falling in 2022, brand vendors such as Dell and Asustek Computer remain optimistic about their notebook sales growth next year.

Intel has made aggressive moves trying to retake leadership in the foundry sector. If it is able to meet its schedule of technology advancements, Intel could close the gap against TSMC in five years. Conservative outlook from some of the big-name tech firms is not preventing Taiwanese ODMs from seeing strong server orders from datacenter clients. Monika Mikac, CBO of Barcelona-based QEV Technologies, and former COO of Croatian EV startup Rimac Automobili. Mikac, who will speak at the upcoming Asia Venturing (II): Tech-driven Mobility event, told Digitimes in a recent interview about developing e-bus platforms for emerging markets.

Taiwan-based server ODMs have enjoyed a strong pull-in of orders placed by US datacenter vendors with clear order visibility extended to the end of this year, according to industry sources.

EV development is fast acclerating. Jack Cheng, CEO of the Foxconn-led MIH Alliance, an open platofrm for EV development, believes the EV market may reach its sweet spot in 2025-2026. In the semiconductor sector, MediaTek has raised its outlook for for 2021, expecting its revenues to grow 45% this year. In China, Unisoc is seeing a sharp rise in adoption of its smartphone APs by Chinese phone vendors.

GaAs- and InP-based epitaxial wafer maker LandMark Optoelectronics (LMOC) has obtained orders of LD (laser diode) sensors from a US-based head-mounted device vendor, with trial production to begin in the third quarter of 2021 and volume production to kick off at the end of the year, according to the company.

The rising costs from logistics as well as components and materials have started bringing pressure to downstream brand vendors such as Apple and Asustek Computer, according to some market observers.

Given the ballpark yearly volume of about 200 million units for the notebook market, estimated worldwide shipment of 238 million units in 2021 outperforming 2020 by 19% is a rarely seen booming record for laptop. According to DIGITIMES Research's survey, notebook shipments reached 57.5 million units in first quarter of 2021, and 60 million units in the second quarter, and they will arrive at 62 million units in the third quarter, but will relapse to 58.1 million units in the final quarter.

Fabrinet is one of the world's largest manufacturers of optical transceivers. Headquartered in George Town, Cayman island, Fabrinet was founded in 2000 by Seagate co-founder David T. Mitchell with an initial capital of US$1 million.

The supply chain makers of Chromebooks reportedly have experienced a significant cutback of orders from their brand clients due to the dwindling demand for notebook products in the end market, according to industry sources.

Foxconn Technology (Hon Hai Precision Industry) has started installing equipment including lithography systems for high-end IC packaging at its chip plant in Qingdao, northeast China, according to industry sources.

The plant is set to kick off trial production in October, and will focus on packaging and testing 5G, AI and other HPC chips, with full-scale production slated for 2025 at the latest, the sources said.

Some 38% of semiconductor market share is contributed by computing products, and around 32% from communication products. Notebooks, desktops and servers are major categories of computing products, with notebooks being the biggest of them all. Getting a good grip on notebook industry trends can give a good grasp of the bigger picture about the business climate of the computing sectors.

Texas Instrutments has given a less optimistic outlook for the third quarter of 2021, but industry sources have claimed that TI still sees prolonged lead times. TSMC has disclosed it is in early talks with clients about the feasibility of constructing a fab in Germany, and industry observers say such a fab could be a boost to Europe's car supply chain. DIGITIMES Asia president Colley Hwang has just published the first of his latest series of analysis of the global IT supply chain.