This week's announcement that India's Vedanta has tied up with Taiwan's Foxconn Technology to make chips is being lauded as proof that New Delhi is gaining traction with its plans to build a semiconductor industry. That's hardly the case.

Despite multiple COVID-19 resurgences, offline channel disruptions due to restrictions and sustained component shortages affecting OEMs, key SEA countries (Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam) saw a 5% YoY growth in smartphone shipments in 2021, according to Counterpoint Research. At 96 million units, the 2021 shipments were the highest ever for a calendar year and more than the pre-pandemic levels.

China's No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker ZTE has been quietly boosting its chip design capabilities as a US crackdown continues to hobble its bigger domestic rival, Huawei Technologies, Nikkei Asia has learned.

Thai-Chinese joint venture SAIC Motor-CP, the manufacturer and distributor of MG cars, plans to spend THB2.5 billion (US$75.8 million) developing a factory to produce batteries for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and start making BEVs domestically next year.

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage will construct a new 300-milimeter wafer fabrication facility for power semiconductors at its main discrete semiconductor production base, Kaga Toshiba Electronics, in Ishikawa Prefecture. Construction will take place in two phases, allowing the pace of investment to be optimized against market trends, with the production start of Phase 1 scheduled for within fiscal 2024. When Phase 1 reaches full capacity, Toshiba's power semiconductor production capacity will be 2.5 times that of fiscal 2021.

China plans to set up a special organization that facilitates collaboration between domestic companies and overseas semiconductor powerhouses such as Intel to foster development hubs for software, material and manufacturing equipment.

Samsung Electronics is stepping up spending on advanced chipmaking technology as it sees growing demand for its smartphones, displays and memory products.

Memory chip maker Micron Technology will shut its DRAM chip designing operations in Shanghai by the end of this year, the company confirmed late on Wednesday.

The Biden administration is reviewing e-commerce giant Alibaba's cloud business to determine whether it poses a risk to US national security, according to three people briefed on the matter, as the government ramps up scrutiny of Chinese technology companies' dealings with US firms.

Toyota Motor is cutting its February production by around 20% due to chip shortages, the Nikkei newspaper reported Tuesday, though that output target is still up from a year earlier.

More global automakers have been caught in China's latest coronavirus outbreak in Tianjin, adding further stress to already strained supply chains.

Taiwan's GlobalWafers is close to clearing an important regulatory hurdle in its $5.3 billion acquisition of German silicon wafer manufacturer Siltronic, according to people familiar with the matter.

Officials in Beijing are on high alert just weeks out from the start of the Winter Olympics, after China's first local outbreak of the Omicron variant spread from the northern port city of Tianjin to the central province of Henan.

Japan's Sony Group plans to launch a company this spring to examine entering the electric vehicle market, looking to harness its strengths in entertainment and sensors to play a bigger role in next-generation mobility.

It follows a similar lockdown in Xi'an, where 13 million have been confined to their homes since 23 December.

GM said its sales, which fell 13%, were hurt by semiconductor shortages affecting the car industry. Japan's Toyota claimed the top spot, selling more than 2.3 million vehicles last year, up 10%.

South Korea's factory production jumped the most since mid-2020 last month, suggesting supply disruptions that hurt manufacturing in key industries were easing before an omicron-triggered surge in global infections.

Apple said it had placed the southern Indian factory of iPhone assembler Foxconn on probation after both companies found that some worker dormitories and dining rooms did not meet required standards.

China's ride-hailing firm Didi Global on Wednesday reported a 1.7% decline in third-quarter revenue, as its domestic business took a hit from a regulatory crackdown.

Beijing is hunkering down after experiencing more Covid infections in the current cluster than at any time in the past 17 months, with officials asking for events and activities to be moved online.

Apple has cut back sharply on iPad production to allocate more components to the iPhone 13, multiple sources told Nikkei Asia, a sign the global chip supply crunch is hitting the company even harder than it previously indicated.

Few people could have predicted the downward spiral for Alibaba, when founder Jack Ma delivered a blunt criticism of China's financial system last October.

Micron Technology said on Wednesday it is considering building a new memory factory in the United States but that state and federal subsidies will be needed to offset costs that are higher than its factories in Asia.

JP Morgan on Tuesday became the second brokerage in two weeks to cut its forecast for Apple's iPhone sales for the crucial holiday quarter as the global chip shortage and factory closures in Asia finally catch up to the technology giant.

The project to link India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Singapore's PayNow is targeted for operationalization by July 2022, both nation's central banks said on Tuesday. Users on either of the systems will be able to make transactions to one another without having to sign up to the second platform, the banks added.

China will set up a new stock exchange in Beijing, giving the nation's capital and political center more influence in the world of business and finance.

Wistron of Taiwan is partnering with India's Optiemus Electronics to build products such as smartphones and laptops, a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push to make the country an electronics manufacturing hub.

US officials have approved license applications worth hundreds of millions of dollars for China's blacklisted telecom company Huawei to buy chips for its growing auto component business, two people familiar with the matter said.

Philippines-based renewable energy firm AC Energy Corp. (Acen) and partnered with Indian solar power firms to build a US$220-million solar power project in the country with an installed capacity of 420 megawatts as their initial two solar farms start commercial operations.

The Department of Space's Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB) have collaborated to successfully demonstrate CMOS 180nm-based production-ready 8-bit memory technology, described as a "gamechanger by enabling secure memory and encryption hardware for the country" by top scientists.

Orbic, a home-grown US smartphone manufacturer, has announced it has partnered with Dixon Technologies to manufacture smartphones for Orbic in India at a manufacturing facility in New Delhi. The new Orbic Myra 5G UW, powered by the Snapdragon 750G 5G Mobile Platform, will be the first 5G mmWwave product to be produced in India for export to the US.

Mumbai-headquartered Eruditus Learning Solutions, which offers executive learning programs, has become the sixth Indian startup to bag the unicorn tag this month after securing US$650 million in a Series E funding round led by Accel US and SoftBank Vision Fund II.

Asia's renewed surge in Covid-19 infections is compounding supply-chain blockages across the world's biggest source of manufactured goods.

The Chinese government has unveiled a five-year plan outlining tighter regulation of much of its economy. It says new rules will be introduced covering areas including national security, technology and monopolies.

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is gaining traction in the country with more vehicles sold in the first seven months than the whole of 2020. A positive outreach by manufacturers including improved charging infrastructure along with price parity with conventional vehicles on the back of government incentives and falling battery prices are driving demand for EVs, particularly for two- and three-wheelers from logistics and ecommerce players, industry officials said.

India is considering slashing import duties on electric cars to as low as 40%, two senior government officials told Reuters, days after Tesla Inc's (TSLA.O) appeals for a cut polarised the country's auto industry.

The Southeast Asian tech scene welcomed a new unicorn this week when Singapore-based crypto finance startup Matrixport said on Monday that it has raised USD 100 million in a Series C round, taking its valuation to over USD 1 billion. Founded in 2019, the company offers crypto-related services, including institutional custody, trading, lending, structured products, and asset management to institutional and retail clients.

Tata Motors has enjoyed the most success in the EV segment in India so far thanks to the popularity of the Nexon EV. The company Chairman N Chandrasekaran is aiming to achieve at least 25 percent of its sales from EVs in the medium to long term, compared to the current share of 2 percent.

Data consumption in rural areas has increased by 400% in the past one year, official data showed, indicating a large appetite for internet connectivity in India's hinterlands. The government's initiative to provide Wi-Fi hotspots and fibre-to-home (FTH) connections in rural areas has also garnered more than 1.3 million Wi-Fi registered users. More than two million household subscribers are set to benefit from high-speed broadband connections by December this year, officials said.

Google did not disclose who will manufacture the Tensor chip for Pixel, but sources familiar with the matter told Nikkei Asia that Samsung will handle production using its advanced 5-nanometer process technology.