Asia Optical's subsidiary AsiaTech Imaging forecasts a 20-30% sequential revenue increase in the first quarter of 2026, signaling a recovery from a difficult 2025, President Iris Wu said during an online earnings call on January 28. Full-year revenue is expected to surpass 2025 levels.

Giantplus Technology, which focuses on small- and medium-sized panels, recently faced a management rights dispute. The largest shareholder, Japan's Toppan Holdings, had originally agreed with JuYi Investment to transfer 53.1% of Giantplus Technology's shares in two phases. However, the second phase of the transaction has stalled, and reports indicate that Toppan does not rule out resolving the matter through legal channels.

Rising precious metal prices are rippling through the LED industry, prompting Chinese manufacturers to issue price increase notices and pushing Taiwanese suppliers to consider similar moves. Taiwan-based LED maker Edison Opto has already announced broad price increases, while peers including Ennostar and Everlight Electronics are said to be internally evaluating their pricing strategies as cost pressures mount.

As global industrial landscapes restructure, Taiwanese companies are making record investments in the US, driven by a strategic shift from cost-cutting to resilience in supply chain management. AU Optronics (AUO) chairman and CEO Paul Peng underscored the necessity for Taiwanese firms to transition from passive manufacturing bases toward leveraging the US as a critical market, innovation center, and capital platform.

Introducing OLED technology into IT applications has been on the rise over the last couple of years, and display driver IC (DDI) companies expect this segment to provide new incremental growth momentum for OLED DDIs. Major notebook companies have already rolled out high-end product lines equipped with OLED displays, indicating that related projects are already shipping. However, DDI brands say the impact has not been particularly noticeable so far, describing the current situation as having projects but limited shipment volumes.

Below are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories from the week of January 19-25, 2026.

As optical technology continues to push toward ever more extreme miniaturization, metalenses are emerging as one of the optical industry's most closely watched inflection points heading into 2026. At the Consumer Electronics Show early this year, companies including MetaOptics and Kyocera showcased a range of wearable devices incorporating metalens technology, signaling that the long-promised shift from laboratory research to commercial deployment may finally be underway.

Ennostar Corp. is advancing its Micro LED technology from display applications to short-distance data transmission within AI server racks, aiming to achieve a significant boost in transmission speeds by 2026. The company plans to raise Micro LED data transfer rates from 1.25 Gbps to 3–4 Gbps and is collaborating with global partners to develop modules for high-speed intra-rack optical communication.

Smart glasses have transitioned from being a concept to practical use and pricing. 2026 is expected to be major for AI wearable devices, especially after the compute power of multimodal AI models is deployed. The lightweighting of hardware carriers has become the core issue determining adoption rates. Waveguide technology, with its high light transmittance and thin-form advantages, is reshaping the value-chain distribution of the global optics industry.

The display industry, evolving from LCD to OLED, now faces cost and performance bottlenecks, driving focus on new emissive materials and novel form factors. South Korean research teams recently achieved breakthroughs in stretchable OLEDs and perovskite LEDs (PeLEDs), aiming to maintain the country's leadership in display technology.