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Sep 24, 10:42
Qualcomm adopts 'offset PoP' packaging to cool new flagship phone SoC
Qualcomm unveiled two flagship mobile platforms at the Snapdragon Summit 2026, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, which changes its packaging approach to improve heat dissipation. During a media Q&A, Qualcomm Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile Handsets Chris Patrick said the new package still falls under existing Package on Package (PoP) technology, but the memory is no longer stacked directly above the die and is shifted to the side to create a thermal path.

Vivo unveiled its new X500 series imaging flagship phones in Shanghai on September 21, 2026, aiming to build a stronger moat in mobile imaging and break through more aggressively in the premium smartphone market. As rising memory prices force handset makers to lift retail prices, IDC expects worldwide smartphone shipments to fall 16.7% in 2026 to just over 1 billion units.

Millimeter-wave communications technology and solutions provider TMY Technology (Tmytek) officially listed on Taiwan's Innovation Board on September 22 at an offering price of NT$60 (approx. US$1.90) per share. The company said its products, which span millimeter-wave R&D and validation instruments, Lego-like phased-array antennas and subsystem modules, have moved from development and verification into commercial delivery and mass production.

Apple's latest flagship iPhone 18 Pro series is now shipping, and the choice of modem chip has drawn close market attention. A newly released teardown report has revealed an unexpected exception: the US iPhone 18 Pro Max still uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon X80 rather than Apple's newly announced in-house C2 chip.

Apple has changed its iPhone launch cadence this year, splitting its high-end releases into two waves. The iPhone 18 Pro series went on sale on September 18, with Apple's first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo, set to follow on October 23.

DIGITIMES analyst Luke Lin said on his podcast that the foldable's pricing is more consumer-friendly than expected, but Apple's across-the-board price hikes on older models will weigh on iPhone shipments in the second half of the year. He added that the packaging changes for the A20 Pro are the signal that supply chain players should watch most closely.

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) announced on September 18 that the nearly 300km-long Taiwan-Matsu submarine cable has been completed, landed, tested, and has officially been added to the Taiwan-Matsu external communications network. The project strengthens communications resilience for the outlying Matsu Islands by adding a third route with redundant backup and improving service stability for residents and public services.

Compal Electronics is buying out the shares of its listed networking arm, Compal Broadband Networks (CBN), in a cash deal that will end CBN's public listing and give Compal full control of a router and gateway business it wants to pair with its edge AI hardware.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro series will go on sale on September 18, and Taiwan's major e-commerce platforms and telecom carriers have released preorder results ahead of launch. Data show that demand for premium iPhone models remains strong, with most channels selling out quickly and reservation volumes rising one to two times from the same period in 2025.

More technical details on 2026 mobile systems on a chip (SoCs) from major vendors are emerging, and the biggest changes in chips such as Apple's A20 Pro and MediaTek's Dimensity 9600 Pro are clearly concentrated in the neural processing unit (NPU). Qualcomm also published a technical article on NPU development on September 10, saying its next-generation NPU will expand shared memory capacity to improve access efficiency and speed for model data, helping mobile AI maintain fast response times.

Global foldable smartphone panel shipments declined 13% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, with the contraction concentrated in clamshell products, according to Counterpoint Research's Quarterly Foldable Display Shipment and Technology Report.
Samsung Electronics is expected to launch its Galaxy S27 series in early 2027, marking what could be its most significant product lineup restructuring in years. Market reports indicate that the newly added Galaxy S27 Pro will substantially narrow the specification gap with the Ultra model. Both high-end smartphones are expected to share top-tier features, including 60W wired fast charging, a 200-megapixel main camera, and the latest M16 OLED display. Samsung will continue to use telephoto cameras, screen sizes, battery capacities, and S Pen support to differentiate the models, establishing a new "dual high-end flagship" hierarchy.