Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha plans to double production capacity for high-purity titanium dioxide used to make dielectric materials for multilayer ceramic capacitors, as rising AI server power requirements increase demand for the components.
Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology are reportedly scaling back or shelving plans to commercialize internally developed Compute Express Link (CXL) controller chips, shifting more controller work to specialist fabless suppliers while continuing to develop CXL-based memory products.
Chinese AI developer Z.ai has completed a giant data center running exclusively on domestically made chips, a milestone in Beijing's drive to replace restricted Nvidia silicon for future AI development.
At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, held July 17-20 across "three districts and four venues" with more than 1,100 exhibitors, one phrase recurred across vendor booths and keynotes: the "token factory".
South Korean semiconductor materials and parts supplier CMTX has developed a roughly 590mm single-crystal silicon ground ring for chip-etching equipment and plans to begin customer validation as it scales production of the 600mm-class ingots used to make oversized chamber components.
China's AI hardware race is shifting from individual accelerators to supernodes, optical interconnects, advanced packaging and cloud-scale systems.
India's smartphone market was hit by a sharp second-quarter decline that may matter well beyond the country's borders, as higher component costs lifted prices and dampened demand. The drop underscores how global memory shortages, inflation, and weaker spending are reshaping handset sales, especially in value-driven markets across Asia and emerging economies.
Amid the global boom in AI infrastructure investment, Southeast Asia is evolving from an electronics-component manufacturing base into a critical node for AI servers, high-speed networking equipment and semiconductor supply chains. The transition is also serving as a major catalyst for the region's PCB industry to move up the value chain.
