AI's shift from data centers into cars, robots, wearables, and connected devices is widening the market for fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI), while China is building a domestic supply chain spanning substrates, foundry capacity, and chip design.
Tower Semiconductor plans to make Japan its largest manufacturing base for optical communications semiconductors after expanding silicon photonics (SiPh), silicon germanium (SiGe), and advanced packaging capacity in the Hokuriku region, as demand from AI data centers accelerates.
China has introduced its first national standard for perovskite photovoltaics, a move that could improve how solar performance is measured and compared worldwide. The new rules are likely to support industry transparency, help investors assess progress more accurately, and speed commercialization by reducing inconsistencies in testing data across markets.
South Korea's DB HiTek is gaining pricing power as tightening 8-inch foundry supply, high utilization, and stronger demand for power-management chips improve conditions across mature-node manufacturing.
China's PC monitor market is entering a period of sharper structural divergence, with commercial demand offsetting part of a weakening consumer segment while rising component costs push manufacturers toward higher-value products.
China's CXMT has begun mass production of its fifth-generation DRAM platform, or G5, claiming process capabilities comparable with the industry's most advanced mass-production nodes and bringing higher-density LPDDR5X into volume production.
Samsung Electronics will reportedly slash quantum-dot (QD) LCD TV production in 2026 to 2 million to 3 million units, down as much as 80% year-over-year, while it also plans to gradually scale back Neo QLED output and potentially stop production as early as 2028. The move shifts the company's LCD TV focus toward Mini LED models without QD.
ACM Research Shanghai is staking its growth case on two developments: planned tool installations at customers outside mainland China and orders for panel-level advanced packaging equipment, according to Star Market Daily, Securities Times, and East Money.
German commercial vehicle company Quantron and China's Hongjing Drive have formally agreed to establish a joint venture, Quantron China, to develop a China-Europe technology and industrial platform for next-generation zero-emission commercial vehicles. Foxconn will serve as the industrial manufacturing partner for truck and bus platforms, supporting their international deployment.
MediaTek's new Dimensity 9600 Pro puts agentic AI at the center of its flagship smartphone strategy, supporting on-device mixture-of-experts (MoE) models with up to 30 billion parameters. Vivo, among the first Chinese handset makers to adopt the platform, has followed with an expanded AI software stack spanning BlueLM, BlueLM Copilot, and a system-level BlueLM Harness.
