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Tuesday 12 May 2026

Trade talks to test US-China leverage on rare earths, tariffs, and AI

US President Donald Trump is set to travel to China this week to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for trade talks. The meeting comes at a time when both powers are grappling with technological competition, trade tensions, and the Middle East conflict. Many observers are not expecting a transformative outcome, but rather a continuation of small gestures to tamp down a trade war that erupted last year.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

PC chip demand stays murky in 2H26 as pre-buying clocks key

Demand for PC, notebook, and other IT application chips in the first half of 2026 remains relatively strong, driven not only by memory and CPU shortages and price increases, but also by solid pull-in demand for peripheral chips. Many industry players say the current buying momentum is stronger than in a typical seasonal low and reflects customers' expectations that component costs will keep rising. By past patterns, inventory digestion would usually emerge in the second half, but chipmakers now cannot say for sure whether customer orders will see a major correction.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

Aurotek posts record first-quarter revenue and profit as robot demand surges

Aurotek Corp. reported record results for the first quarter of 2026 as rising demand for smart manufacturing robots drove consolidated revenue and profit higher. The company said the results reflect its transition from an equipment and component supplier into an AI smart robot integrated solutions provider.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

E Ink eyes 25% growth in 2026 on surface push

E Ink expects its operations to keep growing in 2026, with chairman Johnson Lee saying the e-paper maker sees revenue growth of 20-25% as applications expand across e-readers, e-notebooks, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), and digital signage. He said retail digitization and outdoor surface applications will be the next major growth drivers.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

Viking AI revenue jumps to 12% as resistor lead times stretch to 15 weeks

Viking, a major maker of automotive thin-film resistors, said AI-related revenue rose quickly to 12% in the first quarter of 2026 from less than 5%, helped by stronger shipments for data centers, server power supplies, and other applications. The company also said resistor lead times have stretched from five weeks to about 15 weeks as AI demand tightens capacity.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

AcBel Polytech teams with OmniOn and Kinpo Group to target AI power-supply market

AcBel Polytech reported record first-quarter consolidated revenue in 2026, driven by rising demand for enterprise and data-center power, but flagged muted near-term profit performance due to product-mix shifts and delayed shipments of some high-power products. The firm said first-quarter consolidated revenue was NT$8.581 billion (US$273 million), up 20.5% year-over-year and down 6.7% sequentially, and that April revenue was NT$3.152 billion, up 34.61% year-over-year and up 0.19% month-over-month.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

Nvidia's modular AI strategy fuels Delta Electronics supplier boom

AI infrastructure demand is reshaping the electronics manufacturing sector, pushing component makers to move up the value chain into module production and system integration. Delta Electronics has emerged as a prominent example, with its aggressive global expansion plans also accelerating capacity investments by suppliers, including rack maker JPP Holding and battery module supplier Dynapack International Technology in Thailand.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

Himax targets 2026 rebound on auto DDI and AI glasses momentum

Himax Technologies said its revenue and profit in the first quarter of 2026 both came in at the upper end of its original financial forecasts, and it expects operations to trend higher over the next several quarters as new automotive projects enter mass production and non-driver ICs gain traction, particularly timing controllers (TCONs) and WiseEye AI. The Taiwan-based display driver IC (DDI) maker disclosed these results in its latest earnings report.

Tuesday 12 May 2026

Taiwan's cybersecurity market shifts toward managed services as ransomware pressure mounts

For many Taiwanese businesses, cybersecurity still means buying a router and moving on. That gap between perception and exposure has become expensive — and increasingly hard to ignore. Speaking at CYBERSEC 2026 in Taipei, executives from Zyxel Group subsidiaries Zyxel Networks and Zyell Solutions described an industry in transition: from one-time hardware purchases toward continuous managed protection, and from conventional encryption toward systems designed to withstand quantum-era threats.

Monday 11 May 2026

Tesla AI5 ignites Samsung-LG race for ABF substrates, robot parts

LG Innotek is seeking to enter Tesla's AI semiconductor supply chain by targeting ABF-based FC-BGA substrate orders for the automaker's AI4 chips, intensifying its competition with Samsung Electro-Mechanics (Semco) across both autonomous driving and humanoid robotics hardware.

Monday 11 May 2026

Taiwan chip testing firm sheds power unit, pivots to AI validation as margins recover

Taiwan-based electronics verification and analysis specialist Integrated Service Technology (iST) posted weaker first-quarter revenue and an operating loss amid a major operational restructuring, but said the transition has laid the groundwork for a sharper focus on higher-margin AI-related validation and analysis services.

Saturday 9 May 2026

Quanta, Compal notebook shipments sink 30%-plus in April as Q1 pull-forward hangover hits

Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics, two of Taiwan's largest notebook contract manufacturers, posted April shipment declines exceeding 30% as a wave of orders pulled into late March left the following month with little to fill. The drop reflects a familiar quarter-end timing pattern rather than a demand collapse, executives said.

Saturday 9 May 2026

China's robots move from half-marathon to triathlon

Chinese robots, which recently demonstrated their ability to complete a half-marathon, are now entering a new stage of competition. The focus is shifting from flat-ground endurance and speed to sustained, high-difficulty operation in heat, heavy rain, shallow water, and complex terrain — signaling a transition from "long-distance runners" to "triathlon athletes" with greater endurance, payload capacity, and environmental adaptability.

Friday 8 May 2026

Chenbro Micom sees strong second-half 2026 server demand as AI build-out continues

Chenbro Micom said demand driven by AI deployments remained clear for the second quarter and the second half of 2026 as the company accelerated localization of manufacturing and operations to bolster resilience against regional conflicts and potential tariff changes. The firm reported cumulative revenue of NT$9.17 billion (approx. US$290 million) for the first four months of 2026, a 49.7% year-over-year increase, and April revenue of NT$2.06 billion, up 4.6% year-over-year, which it attributed to rising end-market AI application demand that is fueling data center hardware build-outs.

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.

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

SEMICON SEA 2026: Delta showcases AI-enabled smart manufacturing

Delta Electronics presented its latest AI-enabled smart manufacturing solutions at SEMICON Southeast Asia 2026, underscoring its efforts to advance efficiency, precision, and scalability in semiconductor packaging production amid intensifying industry demands.

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.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Another Qualcomm exec joins Intel to lead PC and physical AI unit

Intel has announced that it has appointed Alex Katouzian as head of its Client Computing and Physical AI Division. With this hire, Intel seeks to align its consumer PC business with physical AI applications spanning robotics and AI -enabled devices.

Monday 4 May 2026

Realtek sees PC revenue growth despite 2026 shipment decline

Realtek's projection of a sharp fall in full-year 2026 PC shipments amid tight memory supply signals wider device-market shifts: global brands are prioritizing mid- and high-end models and premium components, boosting demand for higher-content semiconductors as unit volumes fall, with implications for laptop pricing, vendor strategies, and component suppliers worldwide.

Monday 4 May 2026

Asia Optical 1Q26 revenue, profit hit record highs on AI cooling and optics growth

Asia Optical reported its first-quarter 2026 financial results, posting consolidated revenue of NT$6.21 billion (approx. US$196.43 million), up 15% year-over-year. Gross profit rose 16% from a year earlier to NT$1.07 billion, while operating income increased 58% from the first quarter of 2025 to NT$482 million, marking record highs for all three for the same period.

Monday 4 May 2026

BenQ Materials unit Cenefom enters memory supply chain with CMP brush wheels

BenQ Materials is accelerating its expansion into semiconductor materials as its subsidiary Cenefom officially begins operations at its new Guangyuan plant. The facility's chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) brush wheels have entered the Taiwan supply chain of a major memory manufacturer.

Sunday 3 May 2026

Silicon Motion posts record 1Q26 revenue driven by AI, new products to boost growth

Silicon Motion Technology reported a record quarterly revenue of US$342 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 23% from the previous quarter and soaring 105% year-over-year. The company posted a gross margin of 47.2%, net income after tax of US$53.9 million, and diluted earnings per American depository share (ADS) of US$1.58. CEO Wallace Kou said that ongoing ramp-ups of new projects and market share gains will drive quarterly revenue growth throughout 2026.

Sunday 3 May 2026

Taiwan supplier JPC takes No. 2 spot in Nvidia Vera Rubin power cable certification

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to drive power demands, investment in power-related sectors has become a key focus for component suppliers. Connector and cable supplier JPC Connectivity announced a major breakthrough in its power cable business during its earnings call on April 28, confirming that its ORV3 series of products have completed validation by major cloud service providers (CSP) and Taiwanese ODMs, and have entered the mass production and shipment phases.

Saturday 2 May 2026

Lite-On profit rises on surge in AI-driven cloud demand

Lite-On Technology reported first-quarter revenue of NT$43.4 billion (approx. US$1.35 billion), up 19% from a year earlier, as surging demand for AI infrastructure fueled rapid growth in its cloud-related business.

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