Taiwanese OSAT provider Sigurd Microelectronics and its subsidiary Winstek Semiconductor held a joint investor briefing on October 6. President Charles Yeh reported that surging demand across AI CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, silicon photonics, and memory is severely tightening testing capacity, prompting long-term contracts, price adjustments, and a potential upward revision to 2026 capex.
Taiwan-Asia Semiconductor Corporation (TASC) expects a stronger second half of 2026 as new Apple Watch demand lifts sensor orders. The company said weak consumer electronics demand has not materially affected its business, with smartwatch and earphone orders arriving faster than expected. More sensors per device and seasonal demand should lift fourth-quarter performance above the third, making the second half clearly stronger than the first.
As the global communications industry moves toward the 6G era around 2030, front-end modules supporting frequency ranges such as D-band at 130-150GHz and W-band at 77-95GHz have become major research priorities across academia and industry.
The traditional market divide between the third-generation semiconductors gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) is seeing greater overlap in 2026, with SiC increasingly encroaching on GaN's territory.
Memory module maker Kingston Technology announced that, according to TrendForce's revenue rankings, it held a 62% share of the global third-party dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) module market in 2025, retaining the top spot for the 23rd consecutive year. The company noted that enterprise, data center, and industrial clients are showing an increasing need for stable supply, product reliability, and long-term technical support, making B2B operations a primary growth engine.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics (Semco) has secured another major AI server order, signing a KRW290 billion (about US$216 million) contract to supply multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) to an undisclosed global customer throughout 2027. The deal is its sixth disclosed long-term supply agreement this year.
South Korean materials company Chemtronics has delivered glass interposer samples to Samsung Electronics, with customer evaluation now underway, according to Korean business outlet DealSite. This step moves the technology from supplier-side development into physical testing by one of the world's largest chipmakers.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission have released the 15th Five-Year Plan for the development of the electronic information manufacturing industry, aiming to push revenue at large-scale enterprises above CNY30 trillion (US$4.5 trillion) by 2030 and foster world-class companies in semiconductors, advanced computing, consumer electronics, basic electronics, and energy electronics.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics is investing KRW6.78 trillion (approx. US$5 billion) to expand FCBGA capacity in South Korea and Vietnam. The projects are backed by customer funding and medium- to long-term volume commitments, as demand for high-performance package substrates pushes Korean production lines toward high utilization.
Nittobo is expanding production of its T-Glass glass cloth as demand from AI chip makers tightens a critical part of the global semiconductor supply chain. The move matters beyond Japan because shortages of this insulating material could slow advanced chip production, raise costs, and affect technology markets worldwide.
Skyworks Solutions (Nasdaq: SWKS) has completed its combination with Qorvo, creating a US-based supplier of high-performance radio frequency (RF), power management, and analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. The company expects annual cost synergies of US$500 million or more, and says the deal will add to non-GAAP earnings per share right away.
As AI computing clusters continue to expand, performance requirements for scale-out interconnects between racks are rising rapidly. This is pushing traditional pluggable optical transceivers from 800G to 1.6T and accelerating the transition toward future 3.2T products, a shift reshaping printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing from substrate materials to processing technologies.
Jedec released a new standard for silicon photonics (SiPh) testing and manufacturing controls to promote consistent reliability practices. The standard comes as SiPh experiences rapid growth due to its potential to replace copper interconnects amid AI infrastructure demand surges.
South Korean outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) provider LB Semicon is expanding power semiconductor backend capacity at its Gumi plant as it steps up efforts to reduce its reliance on display driver integrated circuits (DDIs) and a highly concentrated customer base, backed by new business from Qualcomm and Renesas and KRW30 billion (approx. US$22.3 million) in planned equipment investment.
China's WG Tech has reportedly begun the second phase of investment in its through-glass via (TGV) glass substrate production line, with total future capacity projected to reach 1 million square meters a year. Analysts say Chinese makers have moved ahead of South Korean rivals by building production lines first, then accelerating product output and customer validation, giving China an early lead in glass substrate commercialization.
Severe floods triggered by days of extreme rain in Thailand have paralyzed transport in Bangkok and several other areas, disrupting local auto and components supply chains and drawing attention to damage at Taiwanese companies with factories in the country. The flooding has also slowed shipments from Taiwan PCB makers in Thailand as road and airport transport remain affected.
Chunghwa Precision Test Tech (CHPT), a supplier of semiconductor test interfaces, posted record revenue for September and the third quarter of 2026 as demand for AI-related chip testing kept capacity utilization high. Revenue for the first nine months of the year also reached a record.
Prices for low-cost 6-inch silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, after years of capacity expansion and brutal price wars, are now showing clear signs of bottoming out in the second half of 2026. The cheap material has also unleashed wave after wave of demand, with China's domestic stimulus tightening SiC wafer fabrication capacity and spilling over into Taiwan's supply chain.
The resilience of global goods trade amid tariff escalation and an energy shock is real, but it rests on a narrow base. A breakdown of ITC Trade Map export data shows that a handful of AI hardware categories, led by servers, processors and memory chips, account for well over a third of the growth in world exports, and that the gains are flowing overwhelmingly to a small group of East Asian exporters and their North American customers.
As Elon Musk's Terafab ambitions advance, the realities of modern silicon manufacturing become increasingly apparent, prompting Musk to enter talks with industry mainstays like Intel and TSMC for assistance.
The AI server boom is spreading into the market for collaborative robots (cobots). The share of cobots on AI server production lines is rising as Wiwynn expands their use at its Mexico and Texas plants, while Quanta has also deployed robotic arms from Techman Robot on its server lines.
General Interface Solution (GIS) Holding is gaining traction in optical communications and other new products despite weak consumer electronics demand caused by rising memory prices. Its laser-source packaging and testing business has entered customer qualification and, if progress stays on track, could begin shipments in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a larger revenue contribution from the first quarter of 2027.
Nvidia is testing glass-free PCB material systems for its next-generation AI server platforms, evaluating polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and hydrocarbon (HC) resin formulations for possible use in the Rubin Ultra NVL576 Switch Tray, which is scheduled for mass production in the second half of 2027.
Chip-performance gains have long been driven by an industry-wide focus on shrinking transistor nodes and tightening integration. While major economies including the US and Taiwan have historically sat at the summit of semiconductor manufacturing excellence, China has spent years building its own capabilities amid increasingly restricted access to some leading-edge technologies.
