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Dec 2, 11:55
Android phone sales falter in China's Singles' Day promotion, pressuring SoC shipments

China's smartphone sales during the 2025 Singles' Day period posted only modest growth, and nearly all of the gains came from Apple, according to new market data. The uneven performance has raised concerns that weaker Android demand could force MediaTek and Qualcomm to scale back shipments of their flagship mobile processors earlier than usual.

Samsung Electronics has promoted its Taiwan region president, Jun Yang, to an executive role following outstanding business performance. Samsung highlighted Yang's extensive experience since joining the company in 2001 and his key leadership roles across Greater China and Taiwan.

Taipei Computer Association (TCA) announced on December 1 the establishment of the Taiwan NextGen Communications Alliance (TNGCA), a cross-industry coalition uniting the nation's telecom operators, electronics manufacturers, and systems-integration firms to strengthen Taiwan's position in next-generation communications.

These are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories in the week of November 24 to November 30, 2025.
Driven by strong AI demand, TSMC continues to expand its advanced process capacity. To meet long-term needs from customers like Nvidia, TSMC is not only ramping up 3nm production at its Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP) wafer fabs but also planning three new 2nm fabs in the same area. This capital expenditure increase over the next three years will boost the entire supply chain, including factory engineering, equipment, and materials suppliers.
India aims to secure rare earth magnet supply amid Chinese dominance as firms from the country deepen ties with Korean giants.
Taiwanese networking equipment supplier Loop Telecom expects its business to accelerate in late 2025 and strengthen through 2026, driven by new product rollouts and the resumption of large-scale infrastructure replacement projects in the US, the company announced at an investor briefing on November 27, 2025.

Following the lead of China, the European Union (EU), and South Korea, Japan has unveiled plans to build its own long-distance quantum communication network. The first phase will link the country's three major cities—Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka—covering a distance of 600 kilometers. Construction is expected to be completed by early 2027, with field testing planned later that year. The initial rollout will focus on sectors where confidentiality is critical, such as healthcare and finance, to establish a Japan-specific quantum communication standard by 2030.

Amid surging demand from artificial intelligence (AI) servers and high-end personal computers, prices of DRAM and LPDDR5 memory have soared, placing heavy cost pressures on budget smartphone makers worldwide. South Korean industry insiders warn that the "low-price strategy" that once fueled rapid expansion in the smartphone market may be losing its effectiveness.
Following disappointing sales of Apple's iPhone Air and tightening supply chains, major Chinese smartphone manufacturers have reportedly frozen or canceled their own "Air" ultra-thin phone projects. Industry sources cited by Sina Finance and Jiemian.com reveal that Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and others have either scrapped or adjusted development plans for Air models, reallocating eSIM solutions originally intended for these devices to other standard product lines.
Chinese smartphone manufacturers are leading the race to increase battery capacity. Recent reports indicate that several Chinese smartphone makers are aiming to launch devices with ultra-large 10,000 milliampere-hour (mAh) batteries, which is roughly double the capacity found in flagship models from Samsung Electronics and Apple.
Taiwan's national quantum program is entering the final year of its first phase, with Academia Sinica and other research groups achieving significant breakthroughs. These include optical Schrödinger cat state generators using heralded photon pairs and high-integration polarization-entangled Bell-state quantum light source chips.