According to Bloomberg and Nikkei, citing respective sources, Renesas Electronics is set to divest its clocks and timing device business to US chip design company SiTime for around US$3 billion, in a move aimed at sharpening its focus on microcontrollers for automotive and industrial applications. The potential sale comes amid slowing demand for automotive semiconductors and rising interest in high-speed data center components.

MediaTek posted fourth-quarter 2025 revenue of NT$150.2 billion (US$4.75 billion), marking a 5.7% quarter-on-quarter increase and an 8.8% rise from a year earlier. Gross margin slipped to 46.1%, down 0.4pp sequentially and 2.4pp year on year. Operating profit came in at NT$21.85 billion, down 1.5% from the previous quarter but up 2% year on year, while operating margin fell to 14.5%, declining 1.1pp quarter on quarter and 1pp from a year earlier.

The networking industry is seeing a rebound in demand in 2026, but worsening imbalances in memory supply and demand have emerged as the biggest variable affecting operations this year. Senao Networks chairman Tommy Tsai said that major cloud service providers (CSPs) have locked up DDR4 and DDR5 capacity, leading to supply-demand mismatches for DDR3, DDR4, and even NAND flash used in networking equipment. In the spot market, there have even been extreme cases of memory prices surging tenfold. This wave of component shortages has put pressure on networking equipment makers that had been optimistic about growth in 2026. While overall order momentum remains intact, runaway memory prices could directly erode gross margins.

The US move to lower reciprocal tariffs on Indian goods to 18% is reshaping Taiwan manufacturers' India strategies, creating fresh opportunities in localization and import substitution while highlighting persistent risks tied to supply chain gaps, currency volatility, and execution challenges for Taiwanese IC and electronics suppliers.

Samsung Electronics has once again pushed its net cash above KRW100 trillion (US$68.97 billion), reaching KRW100.61 trillion at the end of 2025, up 7.8% from the same period in 2024. This marks Samsung's return to the milestone for the first time since 2022, highlighting its increasingly robust financial structure and strong capital deployment capabilities.

SK Hynix is accelerating production of 1b DRAM for high-bandwidth memory as quality testing of Nvidia's next-generation HBM4 nears its final stage, according to Korean media and industry sources.

Record demand for artificial intelligence applications propelled Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to milestone financial results in 2025. On January 29, 2026, the two South Korean memory giants held rare, nearly simultaneous earnings calls to signal their respective positions in the race for the next generation of high-bandwidth memory.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have both secured production-ready technology for 16-layer stacks of sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, known as HBM4, positioning the two South Korean memory makers for a pivotal contest in 2026 as demand from artificial intelligence accelerators expands. While each company has demonstrated technical readiness, industry participants say yield performance, rather than headline specifications, is likely to determine market share, profitability, and supplier standing in the next phase of the HBM cycle.

Recent reports suggested a stall in investment between Nvidia and OpenAI, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has confirmed that their collaboration remains on track. Huang stated in a CNBC interview that Nvidia will participate in OpenAI's latest funding round and is interested in joining the company's planned initial public offering (IPO).

Benefiting from specification upgrades in AI servers and switches, the content per box of NOR Flash is set to grow by multiples, with high-capacity specifications likely to face severe supply shortages. NOR Flash price increases in the second quarter of 2026 are expected to jump 40–50% quarter-on-quarter from the first quarter, with some product lines even seeing customers willing to pay premiums to secure supply. As for legacy-process products with tight supply, such as SLC NAND and MLC NAND, price hikes are even more aggressive. Second-quarter contract prices are rumored to see year-on-year increases of up to 400–500%, prompting Winbond Electronics to accelerate the expansion of its SLC NAND capacity.