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Aug 17
Record orders, yet profits squeezed: Asia-Pacific electronics supply chain caught in cost crunch

Global Electronics Association survey data show that demand across the global electronics manufacturing industry maintained steady expansion in the first half of 2026, with orders, shipments, and capacity utilization strengthening in most months. Capacity utilization, in particular, reached an all-time high since the survey began in June.

India is moving into the next phase of its electronics manufacturing strategy, using its progress in downstream assembly as a base to build domestic capabilities in components, materials, and manufacturing equipment.

AI server supply chain ramps up capital, talent, and capacity
Aug 18, 10:19
The AI server supply chain continues to expand capital expenditures, pouring in cash, building factories, and hiring aggressively, to heighten barriers to entry. On top of rapid product iterations and increasingly complex designs, the competitive gap between players is widening. Multiple supply chain sources note that the AI server ecosystem will become more concentrated: top players will continue to secure large orders while gaining leverage to negotiate better commercial terms with customers.
Elon Musk has made SpaceX's AI hardware strategy unusually clear: future infrastructure will rely exclusively on Nvidia chips and technology. Yet AMD, Nvidia's largest rival in AI accelerators, still owns roughly 3.3 million SpaceX shares worth more than US$565 million.

Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) is preparing the second-phase quantum research program, known as the "Quantum Leap Project," for 2027 to 2031, while a Request for Proposal for the National Center for High-Performance Computing's (NCHC) quantum computing (QC) host is expected soon. The move has raised questions over whether NSTC Minister Wu Cheng-wen's recent US trip could include talks with leading quantum computing companies on potential Taiwan-US cooperation.

ByteDance and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) have reached an agreement to strengthen copyright safeguards for the Chinese tech giant's AI video and image-generation models, marking a notable shift from confrontation toward cooperation over generative AI and intellectual property.
A new joint venture between South Korean and Indian chemical firms is betting that semiconductor materials can be made without touching China at any stage, positioning itself as an alternative supply route just as the US-China conflict pushes chipmakers to rethink where their raw materials come from.
As the AI race increasingly evolves around who can secure the most compute, develop the strongest models and convert them into commercially viable applications, SpaceX has moved another step toward controlling all three layers under one expanding ecosystem.
MediaTek widens ASIC services as market share surges
Aug 18, 07:53

MediaTek has reportedly landed major orders for Google TPU products in recent years, even appearing to challenge Broadcom's position. At a recent earnings call, MediaTek also raised its 2027 ASIC market share target to 15% to 20%, and industry watchers largely credit that goal to the breadth of MediaTek's ASIC services.

Around 2019, a friend working at a large cloud services provider excitedly shared that his team had trained a CNN model for document text recognition with good results, but the computing cost was too high to deploy directly. They then used distillation to train a smaller model for service, and it turned out to be highly effective.

The intensifying US-China technology rivalry is moving beyond export controls and semiconductor restrictions. What comes next could matter more: the formation of competing international AI ecosystems.

AI server demand pushes high-end MLCC lead times toward 40 weeks
Aug 18, 07:50
Multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) supply is increasingly diverging by product specification, with mainstream components remaining relatively stable while lead times for some high-capacitance, high-specification parts used in AI servers stretch toward 40 weeks.