Accton Technology reported consolidated results for the first quarter of 2026 after a board meeting on the 7th, disclosing that revenue rose to NT$70.121 billion, up 64.02% year on year and down 2.63% sequentially, driven by shipments of AI products and orders from hyperscale cloud service providers. The network equipment maker said operating profit reached NT$10.049 billion, up 70.16% year on year and up 10.28% quarter on quarter, while net profit after tax was NT$8.341 billion, up 62.68% year on year and down 0.18% sequentially.
Samsung is reportedly testing a next-generation Exynos processor that could push the company's chip ambitions beyond smartphones, with early specifications pointing to a 1.4nm-class design, a 10-core CPU, a large 96MB system-level cache, and a possible PC variant aimed at Google's Chromebook ecosystem.
The European Union has become the first strategic partner of the Global Coalition on Telecommunications, or GCOT, expanding a Western-led telecom policy framework as governments seek to shape next-generation network infrastructure and the race toward 6G.
As soaring memory prices fuel "chipflation," Samsung Electronics and Apple are taking sharply different approaches. Samsung's Mobile eXperience (MX) division is trying to protect profitability by optimizing its product mix and expanding across more price points, while Apple is leaning on an ecosystem of 2.5 billion devices and high-margin services to offset rising component costs.
Radio frequency (RF) front-end chip maker RichWave said on May 4 that Wi-Fi 7 momentum will remain very strong in the first quarter of 2026, even as rising memory and component costs squeeze profitability and cloud order visibility. The company said memory-driven price increases are affecting the broader networking industry, but the impact on its 2026 growth will be limited.
Largan Precision on May 5 reported its self-calculated April consolidated revenue at NT$5.4 billion (US$169.7 million), down 1% from the previous month but up 24% from the same period in 2025. For the first four months of 2026, consolidated revenue reached NT$20.9 billion, an 11% increase from the same period in 2025.
Apple and Samsung led the global smartphone market in the first quarter of 2026 as premium demand helped them buck broader shipment declines, industry data showed. According to Counterpoint, the iPhone 17 was the world's best-selling smartphone in the first quarter, while Samsung's Galaxy A series placed five models in the top 10, leaving the two vendors with nine of the top 10 spots.
DIGITIMES Research has released its latest forecast for smartphone application processor (AP) shipments, revealing a divergence between Apple and the Android ecosystem as the market enters a seasonal slowdown. While weaker demand is typically expected across the board, recent data suggests a clear split in performance between the two camps.
The global broadband customer premises equipment market entered a bottoming-and-rebound phase in 2026 after a prolonged inventory correction. Still, Taiwan networking vendors are losing ground as their shipments move out of step with broader market trends, according to a DIGITIMES Research report. The divergence carries implications for market share, pricing power, and supply-chain exposure.
Rising memory prices have squeezed handset demand and are expected to widen the gap between smartphone and notebook shipment declines in 2026, according to industry reports. Global smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2026 totaled about 290 million units, down 2% to 4% year on year, while notebook shipments showed a smaller sequential decline as vendors and channels adjusted to higher component costs.
Apple's product strategy is moving toward an AI-centered architecture, prioritizing on-device intelligence, tighter chip integration, and system-level design, a shift that could change how Taiwan's suppliers compete and collaborate. The company has signaled the direction through recent executive comments and its continued in-house chip work.
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