Facing memory shortages and Sharp's plan to shut down its Guishan K2 plant by the end of 2026, GIS chairman Hsien-Ying Chou said the company faces greater operational challenges in the second half of 2026. However, its transformation strategy is accelerating. Among its new businesses, optical waveguide products used in AI glasses and other applications began small-volume shipments in the first quarter of 2026, while its optical communications business is targeting advanced optical source packaging and testing services. Both new application areas are expected to gradually ramp up in 2027, creating new growth momentum for revenue and gross margins.

As the Middle East conflict escalates and demand for AI applications grows, product quotations continue to rise in the second quarter of 2026. Chen-Cheng Pan, chairman of silicone materials distributor Topco Scientific Materials, says upstream material shortages have also become severe. As applications in AI, optical communications, and robotics continue to expand, the proportion of revenue contributed by electronic materials is expected to increase further.

The conversation about humanoid robotics I observed over two days in Sunnyvale had a different quality from what I remembered a year ago. The demos were real. The deployments were live. The debate had shifted from "will this work" to "who gets to scale first" — and the answer is not obvious.

Yageo chairman Pierre Chen, who has become Taiwan's richest man, reiterated at the company's recent shareholders meeting that the group will not sit out opportunities in the AI applications market. He said Yageo will continue its long-running merger-and-acquisition strategy to drive transformation, raise product technology levels, and expand its full-spectrum integrated solutions.

Silicon Motion Technology (SMI) has released a portfolio of AI-optimized storage controllers and products ahead of Ccmputex 2026, targeting edge inference, AI PCs, enterprise AI infrastructure and automotive AI systems. The company said it will demonstrate new Edge SSD controllers, embedded UFS and eMMC controllers, enterprise NVMe solutions and automotive-grade storage aimed at improving data movement, latency and sustained workload performance for AI deployments.

Taiwan's economic outlook improved in April 2026 as rising AI demand and receding Middle East geopolitical risks boosted manufacturers' business sentiment, the National Development Council (NDC) said on May 28. The council reported gains in both its leading and coincident business climate indicators, signaling steady growth momentum for the island's export-oriented economy.

Winbond Chairman Arthur Chiao said market sentiment in the second half of 2026 would carry the strong momentum seen in the first half, with the overall market remaining in a supply shortage. He expects the current shortage will be difficult to ease in the near term, and said capacity constraints might not be resolved until the second half of 2027.

Taiwan Mobile outlined plans to pursue a NT$1 trillion (US$31.88 billion) revenue target as it shifts emphasis to AI, enterprise services, and new technology businesses, executives said after the company's shareholders' meeting on May 29. Shareholders approved the 2025 financial report and a cash dividend of about NT$4.8 per share, while leadership framed the push into AI-enabled enterprise solutions as the next stage of growth.

LinkerBot, a leading Chinese developer of robotic dexterous hands, has acquired Jingling Zhikang in a strategic move that could push AI-powered bionic hands from high-cost rehabilitation devices into a broader assistive technology market.

Nvidia, Microsoft and Arm posted identical messages on X on Friday, each displaying the words "A New Era of PC" alongside the geographic coordinates of Taipei — a coordinated tease that has sent the market speculating about what the three companies plan to announce at Computex 2026, which opens next week.

E Ink Holdings said it will showcase multiple color e-paper technologies and complete solutions at Computex 2026, presenting products aimed at outdoor and indoor advertising, smart retail and product-surface design. The exhibit will open around a premium shopping mall theme to demonstrate how e-paper can be applied across spatial and object surfaces for retail media networks and commercial signage.