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Aug 6
DRAM price surge lifts Samsung and Micron as SK Hynix loses share
Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology are benefiting more strongly from rising conventional DRAM and NAND prices than SK Hynix, whose focus on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) has slowed the expansion of its traditional DRAM business despite its leadership in HBM.

AI memory startup NEO Semiconductor has unveiled X-SRAM, a new architecture designed to address the difficulty of scaling conventional SRAM at advanced logic process nodes.

Huawei executive director and Consumer Business Group chairman Richard Yu warned on August 5 that sharply rising memory costs could trigger widespread smartphone price increases, saying handset makers risk losses if they continue selling devices at previous price levels.
Former White House National Security Council chief of staff Alexander Gray has called on South Korea to deepen supply chain cooperation with the US and avoid following the European Union's digital regulation path.
Transcend Information said the global memory shortage remained severe and could persist through 2027, with little sign of improvement in 2026. The Taiwanese storage maker said upstream suppliers had warned that supply in 2027 could be even tighter than in 2026, keeping price increases in place for an extended period.
V5 Technologies reported record consolidated revenue of NT$273 million in July 2026, as demand for AI chips and semiconductor packaging capacity expansion lifted orders. Revenue rose 7.78% from June and 63.4% from a year earlier, while revenue for the first seven months of 2026 climbed to NT$1.692 billion, up 86.26% from NT$908 million in the same period of 2025.

Samsung Electronics will pay Netlist up to US$897 million in gross licensing fees over five years under a series of agreements that settle years of litigation and renew a commercial relationship covering server memory, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), product supply, and technology cooperation.

Largan announced on August 5 that July revenue reached NT$4.877 billion (US$150.8 million), up 31% month-over-month and 11% year-over-year. For the first seven months, consolidated revenue totaled NT$34.086 billion, up 7% year-over-year, as the company entered the traditional peak season.

On August 5, Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council said it had completed the central government's 2027 budget plan, with NT$182.3 billion (US$5.7 billion) earmarked for technology spending, up about 9.5% from 2026. The biggest increase goes to sovereign AI computing power and infrastructure as Taipei pushes ahead with its Smart Nation 2.0 initiative.

Ample Electronic, a supplier of conductive paste materials for passive components, said strong artificial intelligence demand has helped drive a hot multilayer ceramic capacitor market and pushed customer orders higher. The Taiwan-based company reported July consolidated revenue of NT$269 million(US$8.33 million), a record high, while earnings per share for the second quarter of 2025 also reached a quarterly peak as downstream demand accelerated.

Rashi Peripherals, a national distribution partner for global technology brands in India, has entered a joint venture with Japanese electronics and technology company Restar Corporation. The move pushes the distributor beyond product distribution into engineering, design, and field application support for India's manufacturing sector, according to ScanX, IT Voice India, and CRN Asia.

Elite Semiconductor Microelectronics Technology (ESMT) has benefited from a severe supply shortage in the niche memory market. July revenue jumped 40% from June to a monthly record, extending an explosive second-quarter 2026 performance. The company said higher product prices and tighter supply-demand conditions are driving the surge, and it expects the extreme capacity crunch to continue, with the second half of the year likely to outperform the first half.