China's optical industry is confronting significant challenges as several lens module manufacturers reportedly plan layoffs early in 2026, prompted by sluggish smartphone sales and intense price competition. Industry sources indicate that the sector's difficulties are unlikely to abate in the coming year due to persistent market and macroeconomic pressures.

Microsoft's latest financial results point to accelerating demand for AI and cloud infrastructure, with Intelligent Cloud growth approaching 30% year on year. The figures underline mounting pressure on data center capacity and capital spending, signaling continued tightness across the AI infrastructure supply chain.

Tesla's latest earnings showed softer vehicle demand but improving margins, while management and analysts focused on the company's accelerating investments in custom chips, AI compute, and robotics as key to sustaining growth across its automotive, autonomy, and energy businesses.

Meta Platforms' latest results point to a sustained escalation in AI infrastructure investment, with capex set to rise sharply in 2026. The outlook suggests growing implications for data center capacity, chip demand, and the broader AI supply chain, even as investors weigh rising costs against resilient earnings.

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology advances, the robotics market is maturing rapidly. South Korean electronic component makers are reportedly viewing robots as their next growth engine. According to ChosunBiz, major South Korean component manufacturers now consider parts for humanoid robots among key mid-to-long-term growth drivers.

Seagate Technology posted record revenue, profit, and total storage capacity shipped in the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 (2QFY26, ended January 2), fueled by strong AI-driven data center demand, with its nearline storage capacity for 2026 fully booked.

The surge in AI demand is driving massive memory consumption, pushing the memory industry into a bullish phase. Market consensus expects tight memory supply and demand conditions to ease only by 2028. This shift is impacting industrial PC (IPC) manufacturers not just through short-term inventory fluctuations but evolving into mid- to long-term structural changes. IPC players are now comprehensively adjusting pricing mechanisms, product platforms, and procurement strategies to adapt to this new environment.

The Japanese government has agreed to become the first international partner in a US-led initiative accelerating scientific research through AI. According to media outlets including Nikkei and The Register, on January 27, 2026, Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) announced its formal participation in the Trump administration's Genesis Mission program.

After preparing for half a year, China-based smartphone maker Vivo has reportedly decided to terminate its AI glasses project. Its exit was not due to a lack of technical capability, but rather the identification of three fundamental challenges facing the smart glasses market.

I describe the close integration of Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics industries as the spillover of chip economic value. In earlier phases of the industry, economic value creation in electronic systems was highly concentrated at the chip level. Advancing process nodes alone was sufficient to capture most of the value. That model no longer holds. Today, improvements in manufacturing technology must propagate beyond wafer fabrication to packaging, testing, and ultimately system-level integration to translate into tradable economic value.

Global technology companies, including Google, are increasingly shifting new product introduction (NPI) stages away from China to reduce geopolitical risks, with recent reports indicating Google has begun relocating NPI for its premium smartphones to Vietnam. Industry insiders note initial progress but emphasize significant structural hurdles in this complex transition.