China's rare earth supply chain faced renewed uncertainty after a deadly explosion at a steel plate plant operated by Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Union, compounding market concerns driven by falling exports and tighter trade controls

Amkor Technology, the US-based semiconductor packaging and testing company, said it will close its Hakodate plant in northern Japan by December 2027, citing weak demand stemming from a slowdown in the global electric vehicle (EV) market. The factory, located in the town of Nanae in Hokkaido, specializes in packaging chips used in automobiles

Canon said on January 13 that it has developed a new wafer planarization technology designed to uniformly smooth surface irregularities during semiconductor manufacturing. The process applies resin materials using inkjet printing and then presses a glass plate onto the surface, using a stamping-like method to achieve planarization

Taiwan-based passive component maker Yageo said Japan's Shibaura Electronics was officially delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on January 13. Following the completion of the share consolidation, Yageo now holds 100% of the voting rights in Shibaura Electronics as of January 15

Xiaomi's second-generation in-house mobile processor, the Xring O2, will skip TSMC's 2nm process and instead use the company's 3nm N3P node, underscoring a trade-off between performance, cost, and supply availability. The choice also suggests the chip may not power Xiaomi's most premium flagship smartphones