Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) and NXP Semiconductors' joint venture, VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC), officially opened its 12-inch (300mm) wafer fab on September 28 in Tampines, Singapore. Vanguard and VSMC chairman Leuh Fang said the AI-driven crowding out of capacity has spread across the global semiconductor supply chain, leaving almost no company able to say it has sufficient capacity.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, arrived at the White House on the evening of September 24 US time to attend a state dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.
South Korean electronics component suppliers are under growing pressure as rising memory prices drive chip inflation deeper into the supply chain. Finished-goods makers are asking for price cuts of 10% to 20% starting in the third quarter of 2026, while Chinese rivals have been offering bids that are 20% to 30% lower, according to Chosun Biz.
Multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) prices for AI servers have continued to climb, while prices for general-purpose components used in consumer appliances have dropped sharply. The split in the market has opened more room for Chinese suppliers in midrange and general-purpose categories as major manufacturers shift capacity toward higher-value products.
South Korea's exports of the customs category that carries high-bandwidth memory (HBM) are no longer a two-destination story. Unit-value data show that the chips going to Taiwan and Malaysia are worth several times more per kilogram than those shipped to Hong Kong, China, or Vietnam. That points to a two-tier trade, with premium stacked memory heading to advanced packaging lines and cheaper multichip parts going to transit hubs and lower-unit-value destinations.
Apple's first foldable iPhone has become a test of how far India has come as a manufacturing base, and the answer is sobering. As India-assembled iPhones reach record export levels, Apple kept development and assembly of its most complex phone, the iPhone Duo, in China. The decision points to a gap that Pune Times Mirror summed up this way: India has become indispensable to Apple's assembly operations, but not yet to its engineering.
China is trying to carve out a foothold in semiconductor supply-chain standards with Micro Han Xin, a miniaturized version of its home-grown barcode designed for chips and other components too small for conventional labels.
