Samsung Electronics recently announced its wafer foundry now serves over 100 customers. Based on current conditions, the wafer foundry market in 2022 looks to be just as hot as it was in 2021. As a result, the South Korean industry is optimistic about Samsung's wafer foundry, which is about to enter a full-scale growth stage. However, Samsung is still relatively new to the automotive and AI chip fields. Whether or not Samsung's future development in these fields goes smoothly will be the key to the continued expansion of its wafer foundry business.

TSMC has outlined plans to spend a record US$40-44 billion in capital expenditure for 2022, which could further strengthen its lead as the world's largest logic IC foundry, according to Korea's local media.

Leadframe supply for IC packaging remains tight, and suppliers such as Chang Wah Technology (CWTC) have been keen to expand production capacity to satisfy strong demand for processing automotive MCUs and power management ICs (PMICs), according to industry sources.

Prices for smartphone-use rigid and flexible AMOLED panels remain at high levels in January 2022, mainly because demand is still strong and OLED driver ICs continue to be in short supply, according to CINNO Research.

TDDI (touch/display driver integration) chip prices have fallen further in the first quarter of 2022, as brand handset vendors with excess inventories of such chips have slowed the rates at which they place orders, according to market sources.

LED epitaxial wafer and chip maker Epistar disclosed that it is expanding miniLED chip production capacity in China and will bring the capacity into operation in the second quarter of 2022. LED probing, testing, and sorting equipment maker FitTech said it is expanding production capacity in Taiwan by 30-40%, with the additional capacity to gradually come into operation in the first half of 2022.

Norway-based Freyr Battery, a startup specializing in lithium-ion battery cells, and Taiwan-based Aleees, a producer of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode materials for batteries, have signed a deal to jointly establish an LFP cathode plant in the Nordic region.

India's Hero MotoCorp, the world's largest two-wheeled vehicle brand, is investing more in Ather Energy, an Indian electric two-wheeler startup with the third highest market share in India. The two EV makers are collaborating on building a charging network together.

The Vietnamese automaker VinFast is currently looking for a manufacturing spot in Germany to manufacture electric buses and cars, according to German news outlet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

PChome Online, a web portal and online shopping service provider in Taiwan, has seen significant success with PChomeSEA, its online shopping platform specifically for the Southeast Asia market, according to the company.

Superior Plating Technology, dedicated to electroplating and metal surface treatments, has secured new orders for niche-market applications such as server-use cooling modules and networking connectors, according to company chairman SP Lee.

Taiwan records 2021 machine tool export value of US$2.783 billion

MediaTek has released its 6G Vision White Paper outlining how 6G standardization will accelerate digital transformation globally. The white paper covers the timeline for 6G rollouts, the key drivers of 6G innovation and practical considerations for the implementation of 6G. The white paper also articulates the opportunities and challenges with 6G mobile performance enhancement, network architecture design, spectrum resource usage efficiency, communication and computing integration and energy efficiency.

Despite the agreement among Taiwanese server makers that 5G open radio access network (O-RAN) will become the next growth driver for the server industry, they are rather pessimistic about the technology's implementation in public networks and believe the architecture will shine in the private network area, according to Digitimes Research's finding.

Chinese smartphone brand Realme saw its handset sales in Taiwan climb 20% in 2021. Realme is set to focus more on promoting midrange and high-end 5G handset models while continuing to cement its market share in the budget-level segment, so as to bolster its sales in Taiwan.