Tescan's expansion of its Seoul site integrates a Demo Lab with office space to better serve semiconductor clients amid global AI-driven memory demand, promising faster failure analysis and reliability testing for advanced packaging customers worldwide and reducing testing wait times for partners pursuing heterogeneous integration and chiplet technologies.

Kinpo Group held an investor conference on March 19, where General Manager Chen Wei-Chang expressed optimism for the second half of 2026 and projected a balanced revenue distribution between the first and second halves of the year. The company's server, EV charging station, SSD storage device, and mobile payment businesses have all entered mass production.

The Shanghai AI Laboratory recently unveiled its DeepLink hybrid inference solution, emphasizing heterogeneous chip collaborative computing capabilities. This move marks a breakthrough in integrating China's AI computing infrastructure and is seen as a localized alternative amid limited access to advanced GPUs and interconnect technologies.

The semiconductor market's supply-demand imbalance is affecting more than consumer gadgets, with industrial PC (IPC) makers reporting component shortages and price hikes that dented profitability in the fourth quarter of 2025 and could ripple into 2026, raising risks of order delays and strained supply stability for industrial customers worldwide.

Taiwan's central bank sharply raised its 2026 GDP forecast to 7.28%, citing substantial capex from international cloud service providers and aggressive investment expansion by domestic manufacturers as the main engines sustaining the economy. The Ministry of Economic Affairs reported strong early-year export order growth that supports the outlook.

At its GTC 2026 conference, Nvidia showcased a slate of technologies and new products squarely aimed at the next wave of artificial intelligence inference. With the integration of Groq's LPU technology, Nvidia's portfolio appears markedly more competitive on the inference side — widely seen as a strategic effort to defend its market share and discourage customers from turning to application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs.

Computex 2026, set to take place in June, has once again invited Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon as the opening keynote speaker. In recent years, Qualcomm has stepped up its efforts at Computex to promote its AI PC business, with Cristiano Amon becoming a regular presence in keynote sessions.

Apple CEO Tim Cook struck a conciliatory tone at the China Development Forum, praising Chinese developers and manufacturing capabilities while emphasizing shared goals in innovation and sustainability, just days after renewed state media criticism of Apple's App Store practices, according to Bloomberg.

Industrial computer (IPC) maker IEI Integration held an investor briefing on March 18, during which IEI president Jordan Jiang stated that several projects the company has been developing in the networking sector will begin shipping in phases in 2026, becoming the primary driver of revenue growth for the year.

Niche copper-clad laminate (CCL) manufacturer Ventec expects to achieve double-digit revenue growth in 2026, driven by ongoing product price increases and strategic expansion into specialized markets such as defense aerospace and semiconductor test interfaces. Currently, special materials account for 50% of its revenue, positioning the company for what it predicts will be a robust order fulfillment phase.

The global PCB industry continues to deepen its Southeast Asia footprint. Among the latest moves, Allied Circuit (ACCL) and Japanese firm Meiko have recently announced a joint venture to build a new factory in Vietnam focused on high-layer count (HLC) PCB capacity. The plant is expected to enter mass production by the second quarter of 2027, prioritizing the AI server PCB market opportunity.