DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

Lightel posts record first-half revenue, profit as LEO satellite demand rises

DIGITIMES — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:26:26 GMT

Lightel Technologies reported record first-half results for 2026, with consolidated revenue reaching NT$590 million (US$18.7 million), net profit at NT$107 million, and earnings per share of NT$4.34. The Taiwan-based optical components maker said the gains came as shipments tied to low Earth orbit satellite projects continued to scale up.

Samsung launches Galaxy S26 FE with lower price

DIGITIMES — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:25:44 GMT

Samsung Electronics launched its Galaxy S26 Fan Edition in the second half of 2026 with a starting price of 1.045 million won in South Korea, or about US$714, as it sought to round out its smartphone lineup and address rising component costs. According to ET News and Bloomberg, global sales of the 256GB model were set to begin on September 4.

India roundup: India broadens semiconductor and AI ambitions across manufacturing, design, materials and data centers

DIGITIMES — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:25:24 GMT

India's semiconductor ambitions are expanding from packaging and testing to chip design, materials, mobile devices and data centers. New investments by CG Power, Infineon, Foxconn, Samsung and LG highlight rising industrial activity, while skills shortages, environmental constraints and import dependence remain challenges. Government incentives increasingly seek deeper domestic capabilities and higher value creation.

Podcast highlights: Xiaomi's 3nm chip cap, HBM in Malaysia, and Nvidia's margin tradeoff

Lily Hess — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:25:00 GMT

Can Xiaomi's in-house chip reach 2nm? Is HBM rerouting to Malaysia TSMC giving Intel a pass? Can Nvidia hold a 75% gross margin or protect market share? Ahead of Apple's September 10 event, the pre-event technology lull was anything but quiet, and DIGITIMES analyst Luke Lin broke down three stories and the industry logic behind them.

China optical display investment shrinks 80% in 1H26

Kevin Wang — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:24:18 GMT

China's optical display industry is cooling after years of aggressive panel fab construction that has reshaped the global display landscape. Investments in China's optical display sector fell 80.3% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, underscoring a slowdown in capacity expansion with capital now shifting toward optical materials and mini/micro LED (MLED) displays.

USI advances optical interconnect push with ELSFP laser module

DIGITIMES — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:23:36 GMT

Universal Scientific Industrial (USI), part of ASE Technology Holding, is expanding its optical interconnect footprint for AI data centers. EugenLight Technologies, in which USI holds a controlling stake, has launched its ultra-high-power (UHP) external laser source form-factor pluggable (ELSFP) module series, targeting high-speed optical interconnect demand in next-generation AI compute clusters, high-performance computing (HPC), and high-density data centers, with mass production scheduled for the first quarter of 2027.

Nan Juen to ship Vera Rubin rails in August, ramp ASIC in September

DIGITIMES — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:23:16 GMT

Server rail maker Nan Juen International (Repon) began shipping Nvidia's Vera Rubin rack products in August 2026, with ASIC server rack rails set for mass production in September. The higher average selling price of Vera Rubin rack rails, along with a growing number of end customers, is expected to lift the company's second-half performance.

Tex Year's specialty chemicals push could reshape its growth mix as AI and optics expand

Jingyue Hsiao — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:22:48 GMT

Tex Year is widening its specialty chemicals business beyond LCDs and electronics into AI servers, in-vehicle electronics, Mini LED, and optical lenses, while also targeting optical communications, silicon photonics (SiPh), and advanced packaging. The company says the segment is set to become its second growth engine as demand shifts toward higher-value applications.

MCE expands auto electronics capacity to defend Malaysia's domestic market

Charlene Chen — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:22:20 GMT

MCE Holdings Berhad (MCE) is expanding its product lines and capacity as Chinese competitors intensify pressure on Malaysia's auto parts industry, with the company aiming to defend its position as a leading local supplier.

AI pushes autonomous driving toward a more pragmatic commercial model

Jingyue Hsiao — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:21:59 GMT

AI is reshaping the autonomous driving competition by shifting automakers away from an all-or-nothing race toward higher levels of self-driving. Instead, the industry is focusing on Level 2+ systems that mimic Level 3 performance, while building data, revenue, and regulatory groundwork that could matter for drivers and markets worldwide.

Taiwan boosts talent retention with innovation law changes

DIGITIMES — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:21:31 GMT

Taiwan's Legislative Yuan on August 27 passed amendments to parts of the Industrial Innovation Act, extending the startup eligibility period from under 5 years to under 8 years and raising the tax deferral cap on employee stock compensation from NT$5 million to NT$10 million. The changes, aimed at strengthening corporate talent retention and recruitment amid global competition, will take effect from January 1, 2027.

Innodisk says AI demand is lifting margins while memory supply remains tight

Jingyue Hsiao — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 23:42:30 GMT

Innodisk said its AI-focused product mix is driving stronger revenue and profitability, a sign that global demand for memory and infrastructure hardware remains robust. The company also warned that tight supply and rising prices may continue for years, with implications for AI builders, industrial users, and enterprise customers worldwide.

Shinkong Synthetic Fibers eyes cautious 2H26 on higher-value, recycled materials

DIGITIMES — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 23:40:17 GMT

Shinkong Synthetic Fibers Corporation (SSFC) is taking a cautiously optimistic view of operations in the second half of 2026. Despite geopolitical volatility and disruption to Middle East oil supply keeping international crude prices elevated in the short term, the company said its business should gain support from the US market's relative tariff advantage, gradual ramp-up of new higher-value products, recycled materials, AI applications, and the group's diversified investments.

China writes its first national liquid-cooling standard as AI racks approach 1MW

DIGITIMES — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 23:34:18 GMT

AI infrastructure is entering a phase in which GPUs are no longer the only constraint. Nvidia's Vera Rubin generation is pushing rack power high enough to force parallel changes in cooling, power delivery and data center design.

Humanoid robot shipments top 22,000 in 1H26 as industrial use gains ground

DIGITIMES — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 23:33:52 GMT

As embodied intelligence takes physical form amid widespread production-capacity expansion in the humanoid robot sector, it is becoming increasingly possible to envision a society in which the boundaries between human intelligence and machine activity grow progressively blurred under AI's expanding reach.

Commentary: China's robot games offer Taiwan a reality check

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:40:51 GMT

China's second humanoid robot games, held in Beijing from August 22 to August 26, 2026, sent videos and clips racing across social media and underscored how fast humanoid robotics is advancing. For Taiwan, the spectacle also highlighted both the promise and the risks of robots in policing, firefighting, and even warfare.

China's dexterous-hand makers take center stage as three technology paths vie for humanoid robotics

Scarlett Yu — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:40:15 GMT

China's humanoid robot industry is flourishing, and the recently concluded World Robot Conference (WRC) 2026 in Beijing revealed a notable shift in focus. Unlike previous years, when walking and motion capabilities dominated the competition, attention is increasingly moving toward robots' end-effectors.

Qualcomm's HBC play pulls Samsung and SK hynix into a new race beyond HBM

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:39:59 GMT

The AI infrastructure race has spent the past few years fixated on high-bandwidth memory as one of the most indispensable building blocks of accelerated compute. Yet as model sizes, context windows and inference workloads continue to expand, the bottleneck is increasingly shifting from how much memory can be stacked toward how efficiently data can move between memory and compute.

Research Insight: Humanoid robots near mass production as suppliers face precision, ramp-up test

Scarlett Yu — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:39:35 GMT

Research Insight: Humanoid robots near mass production as suppliers face precision and ramp-up test

A smuggled motorcycle exposes what Taiwan's makers stopped building

Yunnie Cheng — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:39:21 GMT

The seizure of a Zhang Xue 820RR, a Chinese heavyweight motorcycle smuggled into Taiwan as parts and hand-assembled locally, has expanded far beyond a customs enforcement case. Following public, aggressive pushback from brand founder Zhang Xue, the dispute quickly escalated from a trade violation into a high-profile debate on the structural health of Taiwan's motorcycle industry and the regulatory gray areas surrounding cross-strait commerce.

Inside TSMC's 238-page sustainability report: nine things that matter more than they look

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:39:03 GMT

Buried in 238 pages of targets and inventories are the things nobody puts in a press release: a formal corporate policy on shoe soles, a fish that lives in a fab, a lizard evacuation in Germany, and a workforce that is quietly out-reproducing the rest of Taiwan by a factor of four. Nine small stories from the world's most important chipmaker.

Exclusive Interview: Turning scale into value — AUO chair's post-LCD ambition

Scarlett Yu — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:38:38 GMT

Price wars. Capacity races. Years of losses steep enough to earn a lasting nickname.

Update: ABF substrate maker Unimicron searched in origin-labeling probe

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:51:50 GMT

(The latest status of the probe as of August 29th is updated below.)

AI data center 800VDC power architecture takes shape; future hurdles require balancing multiple key factors

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:11:46 GMT

DIGITIMES believes that 2026 will be a pivotal year in the stabilization of 800VDC power architectures for AI data centers.

Winstar's AI push gains momentum with some orders extending into 2027

Yunnie Cheng — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:55:00 GMT

Winstar Display is accelerating its expansion into AI applications, with its products already integrated into data centers, power management systems, controllers, testing equipment, and semiconductor facilities. The company projects AI-related orders to grow by 30% to 40% in 2026, with AI revenue share rising from 3–4% to 5% in the near term.

Humanoid robot demand boosts planetary gear reducers

Lily Hess — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:45:00 GMT

Apex Dynamics is optimistic about its business outlook for the second half of 2026, with planetary gear reducers emerging as a key growth driver. The company said its results for the first half of the year posted double-digit profit growth, while the reducer business continued to lead expansion.

Foxconn eyes higher margins with push beyond contract manufacturing

Sherri Wang — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:25:00 GMT

AI adoption continues to expand, but putting the technology to work and integrating it into everyday operations remain key hurdles. Speaking at the 2026 Taiwan Sustainability Summit, Yung-Hui Li, director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Center at the Hon Hai Research Institute, outlined Foxconn's approach to the generative AI era, covering the group's strategic direction, the technical path behind its in-house large language model FoxBrain, and the application of AI in smart manufacturing, energy conservation and carbon reduction.

ASIC makers see CSP orders stay strong through 2028

Lily Hess — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:18:38 GMT

The four major US cloud service providers (CSPs) have already rewritten their 2026 capital expenditure records, and ASIC vendors are increasingly confident that demand will remain strong through 2028 as customer spending and supply-chain visibility both extend farther out.

Apple's M6 marks a transitional step before wider 2nm adoption

Lily Hess — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:06:51 GMT

Apple on August 25 unveiled the M6 and M5 Ultra chips without holding a launch event, with the M6 becoming the company's first processor built on TSMC's 2nm process and debuting in the new Mac mini. But industry watchers say the M6's short-term significance lies mainly in showcasing 2nm design technology, not in delivering immediate commercial gains.

Huawei targets 100 million HarmonyOS 6 devices, paving way for global expansion next

Levi Li — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:05:00 GMT

Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu said at the HarmonyOS Ecosystem Conference 2026 in Shenzhen on August 28 that the HarmonyOS ecosystem now has more than 100,000 native applications, while HarmonyOS smartphones can access more than 400,000 apps. As of August 20, the number of devices running HarmonyOS 6 had exceeded 80 million and is expected to surpass 100 million in the fourth quarter of 2026.

China chip profits jump 18.5-fold on AI demand; advanced-node self-sufficiency seen at 66% by 2035

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:55:00 GMT

China's AI investment boom is translating into sharply higher semiconductor profits while accelerating a longer-term expansion of domestic advanced-node capacity, memory production and chipmaking equipment.

Jingwei Hirain targets Malaysia, ASEAN smart mobility supply chains

Charlene Chen — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:45:00 GMT

China's largest domestic Tier 1 auto parts supplier, Jingwei Hirain, is stepping up its push into Malaysia and the ASEAN market, with President Chengjian Fan saying the region will become an important window for auto supply chain planning over the next 3-5 years.

KKCompany taps PressPlay to expand into knowledge learning, creator economy

Willis Ke — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:30:00 GMT

KKCompany Technologies, parent of KKBOX, will officially list on the Taipei Exchange's Emerging Stock Board on August 31, with chairman and CEO Steve Wang detailing, for the first time, the group's integration of PressPlay during a pre-listing investor briefing. The transaction, completed in the second quarter of 2026, is designed to expand KKCompany beyond music and AI multimedia into knowledge learning and the creator economy.

Anthropic sets sights on custom hardware to fuel AI ambitions, reportedly eyed $7B MatX deal

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:19:49 GMT

In an effort to accelerate its custom silicon initiative and curb reliance on external hardware suppliers, artificial intelligence developer Anthropic held discussions to acquire AI chip startup MatX for roughly US$7 billion, according to Reuters. While the acquisition talks have since evolved into potential partnership discussions, the move underscores Anthropic's ambition to expand its proprietary hardware capabilities.

Anthropic wins key ruling as judge voids Pentagon blacklist

DIGITIMES — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:11:50 GMT

A federal judge in San Francisco has blocked the US Department of Defense from placing Anthropic on a supply-chain risk blacklist and ordered the Trump administration to lift restrictions on the company's technology. Bloomberg and Reuters reported that the Pentagon moved to designate Anthropic as a supply-chain threat after negotiations collapsed over the company's refusal to let the military use Claude for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons deployment.