As generative AI tools like ChatGPT capture global attention, a new frontier is emerging—physical AI, or artificial intelligence that can interact with the real world. While large language models are skilled at understanding and reasoning with words, they fall short when it comes to responding to real-world events in real time

US President Donald Trump, leveraging the vast domestic consumer market, has used tariffs as a powerful tool to steer global economic and trade dynamics. He has successfully opened previously closed markets for American products—for example, allowing US beef into Australia's large livestock industry and pushing for significant automobile exports to Japan, a major car manufacturing country. However, paradoxically, regardless of the tariff rates set, they remain subject to change at any time

Kioxia announced it will begin mass production of its ninth-generation NAND flash memory in fiscal year 2025, which runs from April 2025 to March 2026. The Japanese memory maker also began shipping samples of the new chip on July 25 from its Yokkaichi facility in Mie Prefecture

LG Display (LGD) has announced that it will ship around 6.5 million large-size OLED TVs and monitors in 2025, a year-over-year increase of 14.04%. With the depreciation of equipment at the Guangzhou OLED plant in China ending, LGD has outlined major plans to turn its operations profitable by the end of the year

While global attention focuses on the arms race in advanced semiconductor processes below 7nm, China is quietly setting up a formidable strategy in another area considered a "non-strategic sector"—the mature process node. Among these efforts, Pengsun (PST), established in March 2022, has emerged as a low-profile yet increasingly significant player on the international radar

President Donald Trump's recent flurry of trade deals have given Asian exporters some clarity on tariffs, but missing are key details on how to avoid punitive rates that target China's supply chains

While Taiwanese EMS firms aggressively capitalize on booming AI server demand, their Chinese counterparts are exploring alternative growth engines amid continued weakness in the consumer electronics market. Increasingly, Chinese EMS companies are turning their attention to long-term investments in emerging sectors such as smart glasses and robotics

The 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) opened on July 26 at the Shanghai Expo Center, highlighting the latest advancements in intelligent computing. Among the many exhibits, Huawei's Ascend CloudMatrix 384 real machine Atlas 900 A3 SuperPod made its debut, attracting attention as the largest-scale superpod showcased in China's industry

Below are the top DIGITIMES Asia stories from July 21 to 27, 2025. The top three topics include MediaTek winning Meta's order for 2nm ASIC; Asus, Microsoft revive Xbox hardware with ROG handheld launch; and YMTC plans to pilot a fully China-made NAND line in 2025

To secure its market leadership, Samsung Electronics has positioned MicroLED technology as the exclusive feature for its flagship models. However, Samsung reportedly plans to market an advanced model of Mini LED TVs as "non-self-emissive RGB MicroLED", confusing the original product strategy of MicroLED, which aimed for the very top-tier customers

BYD, the world's largest electric vehicle maker, plans to begin assembling electric and plug-in hybrid cars in Pakistan by mid-2026, aiming to capture surging demand across South Asia. The initiative reflects BYD's broader strategy to expand into emerging markets, leveraging Pakistan as both a domestic foothold and a potential regional export base

As the global competition in generative AI intensifies, the South Korean government is accelerating its AI industry policies. It seeks breakthroughs across multiple areas, including GPU resources, foundational models, semiconductors, data platforms, and talent systems to build a sovereign and competitive national AI ecosystem

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong recently marked his 1,000th day in office, a tenure that Korean media describes as filled with challenges and crises. Even though Lee officially took the chairman title only three years ago, he joined Samsung's General Affairs department in 1991 at age 23, meaning he's spent more than 30 years with Samsung

Japanese chip startup Rapidus has unveiled its first 2-nanometer chip prototype, marking a symbolic step toward its goal of mass production by 2027. The milestone comes just three months after EUV lithography equipment was installed at the company's IIM-1 fab in Hokkaido and three months after the company began trial production in April 2025