NAND flash revenue will continue to decline into the first quarter of 2023 despite lower drops in memory ASPs, according to a recent TrendForce report.

R&D is the bedrock upon which an enterprise's commercial triumphs are built. Any disappointing outcome or inefficiency originating therefrom can spell out the company's economic demise in our cutthroat capitalist coliseum. Competitivity of goods and services could dwindle, leading to a sharp decline of revenue, gross and net operating profits.

Apple is expected to open its long-awaited first flagship store in India, marking Apple's efforts to expand in the world's second-largest smartphone market as the global smartphone market is plateauing.

ASUS IoT announced on March 14 the Tinker V — a versatile single-board computer (SBC) powered by a 64-bit RISC-V-based processor, which supports both Linux Debian and Yocto operating systems.

Global AIO PC shipments continued to plunge in the fourth quarter of 2022, down 15% sequentially and 44% on year to reach only around two million units since most demand had already been fulfilled in 2021 amid robust stay-at-home activities during the COVID-19 pandemic at the time, according to DIGITIMES Research's study on the AIO PC market.

Worldwide sales of electric vehicles (EV) increased 55% to 10.1 million units in 2022, according to Canalys. China was by far the largest EV market last year, accounting for 59% of all EVs sold.

Clevo, a Taiwan-based niche notebook manufacturer, expects at least 10% shipment growth in 2023, believing that demand from China's gaming market will recover, according to notebook business group president Chien Yih-long.

The global top-5 notebook brands, not including Apple, saw their combined shipments rise over 10% on month in February 2023 thanks to a low comparison base in January and channel retailers' inventory replenishment, according to DIGITIMES Research's monthly notebook shipment update.

Compal Electronics is cautious about notebook shipment prospects this year due to market uncertainty, according to company president Martin Wong.

Asustek Computer has warned that it may remain unprofitable in the first half of 2023, while Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International (MSI) both expect sales to pick up quarter by quarter throughout the year.

ODM Quanta Computer cut notebook sales as a percentage of company revenue to less than 50% in the fourth quarter of 2022, when gross margin grew 0.87pp on quarter to 6.48%.

Since PCs and servers are adopting DDR5 memory more slowly than anticipated, related conventional power management IC (PMIC) demand is unlikely to increase with improved visibility until 2024, according to industry sources.

ODM Inventec has expressed confidence in its business prospects for 2023, citing increased notebook, server, and smart device product line sales.

Wistron has reported robust sales of high-margin products, a sign of success for the notebook ODM's push into new businesses like GPU servers, automotive devices, industrial PCs, and IoT products.

Brand PC vendors have yet to place significant orders with their assembly partners' new plants in Vietnam, indicating that moving production out of China is slow, according to industry sources.

E-paper solution provider E Ink Holdings (EIH) is growing its presence in the China market, where demand for e-paper solutions from the education sector is likely to pick up significantly, according to company chairman Johnson Lee.

Power Logic, a maker of cooling fans for graphics cards, has seen customers' inventory adjustments come to an end with demand recently picking up, according to the Taiwan-based company.

The market penetration of DDR5 memory has been slower than expected and will continue to be so throughout the first half of 2023, as consumer spending power remains constrained, according to sources at memory module makers.

Qualcomm plans to launch a new notebook CPU series based on its own Oryon architecture in the second half of the year, piquing the interest of US brand notebook vendors, according to industry sources.

Taiwan makers produced over 90% of the notebooks worldwide in 2008. The top-five notebook makers - Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Wistron, Inventec, and Asustek Computer - contributed 88% of the shipments from Taiwan.

Last year proved to be tough for the global CMOS image sensor (CIS) market, with revenue registering an on-year fall for the first time in a decade, Counterpoint Research said in its recent report.

The pendulum for AR/VR headsets swung the other way through the course of 2022 as global shipments declined 20.9% on year to 8.8 million units, according to new data from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. The decline was not completely unexpected, however, given the limited number of vendors in the market, a challenging macroeconomic environment, and a lack of mass market adoption from consumers.

Memory module house Apacer Technology has started sampling its consumer-grade PCIe Gen5 SSD series, with volume production slated for the end of the second quarter, according to the company.

A wave of USB interface upgrades, as well as a potential PC replenishment later this year, will drive demand for USB device chips in 2023, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

ODMs Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics remain cautious about their near-term shipment prospects, as the notebook market is still in the doldrums.