Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Z Fold 8 weekly sales in South Korea increased by more than 20% in the week after Apple launched its first foldable iPhone Duo, according to Seoul Economic Daily and Financial News. The increase followed the iPhone Duo's South Korean debut on October 23, 2026, as reported problems involving shipment delays and cracked internal displays created additional attention for Samsung's competing foldable device.
Electronic components maker TDK will invest about JPY100 billion (US$633.5 million) to renovate an existing factory in Ojiya, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, and expand magnetic sensor production. The company aims to double capacity by fiscal 2030, which runs from April 2030 to March 2031, to capture demand from humanoid robots and other physical AI applications.
Samsung Electronics is considering a major overhaul of its TV lineup for 2027, replacing technology-based product names with three tiers modeled on its Galaxy smartphones as it looks to increase shipments and expand its services business, South Korea's ETNews reported.
Japan's Mitsui Kinzoku has announced its third capacity expansion plan since the start of fiscal 2026 for MicroThin, its ultrathin copper foil used in optical communications equipment. The company is accelerating production expansion to meet sustained growth in market demand.
China's outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies entered the fourth quarter with rising sales, high utilization, and an industry-wide price upturn. Their third-quarter results also show how much reported profit growth rests on investment gains and lower taxes, and how heavily the sector is now spending to close an advanced packaging gap that AI demand has exposed.
Geopolitical tensions, volatile crude oil prices, and tightening sustainability requirements are reshaping the global chemical industry, creating new challenges and opportunities for Taiwan's specialty chemicals sector. Against this backdrop, the government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) forecasts that Taiwan's specialty chemicals output will reach NT$185.7 billion (US$5.7 billion) in 2026, up 10.9% from 2025, partly driven by higher oil prices pushing up specialty chemical prices.
Samsung Electronics plans to shut down its remaining 8-inch foundry lines by the end of 2030, forcing South Korean chip designers to seek alternative manufacturing capacity as competing foundries operate near full capacity, The Elec reported.
China's leading solar manufacturers have reported their third-quarter 2026 financial results, showing signs of improving profitability but continued heavy losses, underscoring the persistence of excess production capacity across the industry.
China's memory chip industry heads into the final quarter of 2026 riding a global supply shortage: its leading DRAM maker booked more than CNY54 billion (US$8.11 billion) in third-quarter profit, and its chip designers are still lifting sales on tight supply. The same third-quarter results also show where risks are accumulating — rapid capacity expansion, swelling inventories, and a US policy debate that could reach the equipment domestic fabs depend on.
Malaysia is attaching tougher conditions to its data center boom, pairing a newly approved renewable energy quota with stricter screening of power and water requests and pressure on operators to supply more of their own electricity.
Micron Technology and China's CXMT have taken sharply different approaches to next-generation DRAM scaling, exposing a divide over the commercial viability of 4F-squared memory-cell architecture. While CXMT is advancing 4F-squared towards commercial production to improve bit density, Micron argues that capacitor-scaling constraints undermine its cost advantages and is prioritising 6F-squared technology and a longer-term transition to 3D DRAM. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, meanwhile, are pursuing alternative development paths, highlighting the industry's competing approaches to extending DRAM density and manufacturing efficiency.
Nvidia will showcase its expanding partnerships with South Korean companies at AI Day Seoul, where Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will present semiconductor development cases using Nvidia AI technologies. LG Electronics and Doosan Robotics will demonstrate robotics technologies, while SK Telecom (SKT), Naver Cloud, and Coupang will discuss the development and operation of AI data centers and infrastructure.
China’s push for technological self-sufficiency will continue expanding its industrial overcapacity and exporting it worldwide, according to Roy Chun Lee, senior deputy executive director of the Center for International Trade Policy at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research. Lee made the remarks at a forum on global supply chain restructuring and Taiwan-US economic and trade cooperation held in Taipei on November 2.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics (Semco) has begun mass production of a miniature, ultra-high-capacitance multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), as increasingly powerful automotive processors drive demand for smaller components capable of maintaining stable power supplies.
Samsung Electronics is reportedly in talks with Japanese motor maker Nidec to jointly develop robot motors as the South Korean company expands its humanoid robotics business and pushes to automate its factories.
