Following the setup of an advanced wafer fab in the US because of the US government's pressure, TSMC is now facing pressure from governments of Japan, Germany and the US, demanding it to strengthen its support to carmakers...

Components and materials have been in short supply for the IT upply chain, and the shortages may have been further compounded by a fire that hit Unimicron's BT substrate plant in Taiwan on February 4 - the second blaze striking the same plant in four months. In short supply is also wire-bonding capacity...

RISC-V has grabbed headlines recently as the open-source technology is now viewed as a hotbed for innovation. It is also a source of intellectual properties (IP) freely open to the market and free from political wrestling between the two largest economies in the world.

Taiwan-based makers shipped 9.52 million LCD TVs globally in fourth-quarter 2020, increasing 9.8% sequentially and 12.3% on year, according to Digitimes Research.

Worldwide tablet shipments climbed to a 13-quarter high of 51.56 million units in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Digitimes Research. However, shipments will fall 31% sequentially in the first quarter of 2021.

Smartphone shipments to the China market are expected to fall over 10% sequentially in the first quarter of 2021, after growing 19.2% in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Digitimes Research's latest data from its smartphone tracker.

There has been speculation suggesting that AMD may turn to Samsung for making its 5nm and 3nm chips in as its currernt foundry partner TSMC has been unable to provide sufficient capacity support. But industry observers in Taiwan say AMD is unlikely to make such a move. AMD has seen major gains in the PC market partly thanks to shotages of Intel CPUs...

Eight-inch wafer foundry service provider VIS is increasing its capex budget for 2021, with the sum mainly for manufacturing process conversion and facility maintenance. Despite short supply of foundry services, VIS says it is increasingly expensive to hike 8-inch capacity, and its production capacity will rise only slightly in 2021...

Taiwan's large-size panel shipments (excluding Sharp's) are expected to decline 7.3% sequentially in first-quarter 2021, having expanded 4.4.% sequentially and 26.5% on year to 74.76 million units in fourth-quarter 2020, according to Digitimes Research.

Global AIO (all-in-one) PC shipments will be weighed down by lingering shortages of crucial parts and components to suffer a sequential decline of 17.5% in the first quarter of 2021, having edged up 3.3% to 3.54 million units a quarter earlier, according to Digitimes Research.