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The US has finalized reciprocal tariffs with several countries, but supply chain sources say customer attitudes toward relocation vary. While server supply chains moving to North America continue to gain momentum, the pace of consumer electronics production shifts—such as notebooks relocating to Southeast Asia—has clearly slowed. The main reason is that increased costs from relocation are now close to the tariffs paid when producing in China, reducing the incentives to move....

The year 2026 is set to mark the commercial debut of 2nm mobile SoCs, with Qualcomm, Apple, and MediaTek among the first to release 2nm process chips for smartphones. The market expects Qualcomm to introduce two flagship platforms: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro. Xiaomi's upcoming 18 series is poised to secure the first adoption of these 2nm chips among Chinese smartphone brands. The Xiaomi 18 Pro will lead by featuring the Gen 6 Pro version, while the Xiaomi 18 Ultra may arrive later in the year, signaling that China's Android ecosystem is officially entering the 2nm generation....

On January 19, 2026. China's Premier Li Qiang hosted a forum including MiniMax founder Yan Junjie, marking increased recognition of AI large model enterprises in national policy. This reflects AI's evolving role from a tech topic to a core factor in China's economic and competitive strategy during the 15th Five-Year Plan....

On January 12, 2026, Japan's scientific drilling vessel Chikyu slowly departed port, heading toward the waters near Minamitorishima Island, about 1,900km southeast of Honshu. This mission is not merely a scientific expedition but a critical test tied to Japan's national economic security and the restructuring of global critical mineral supply chains....

AI technology company Bravo iDeas announced on January 20 that it is entering the AI toy market with an emotional AI toy that combines AI chips with large language models (LLMs). The toy features a character-driven AI architecture that enhances interaction by delivering intelligent conversations and emotional engagement aligned with each character's persona....

Due to memory shortages and price hikes, Chinese smartphone brands are expected to reduce their 2026 inventory by at least 10%, mainly affecting cost-sensitive mid-to-low-end models and related SoCs....

Supply chain sources report that Chromebook shipments have stabilized under Google's support. Despite facing a memory market turmoil, Google has set a full-year shipment target of 19.5 million units for 2026, matching 2025 levels. Intel, Qualcomm, and MediaTek remain optimistic about Chromebook demand and continue launching new platforms to expand their market share....

As trends in autonomous driving and edge computing continue to evolve, oToBrite Electronics is upgrading its core competitiveness from automotive sensing hardware to full-domain visual AI solutions. Through a product lineup of automotive-grade camera modules ranging from 1 to 8MP, oToBrite is not only strengthening its position in the commercial and passenger vehicle markets but also crossing over into the unmanned vehicle and robotics sectors, building a multi-dimensional sensing moat....

The Financial Times reported that Apple's decision to partner with Google to integrate Gemini technology into the next generation of Siri was driven in part by OpenAI's ambition to develop AI products that could eventually compete with the iPhone. As potential conflicts of interest between the two companies became more pronounced, Apple opted to work with Google instead of OpenAI....

Vietnam has officially begun construction of its first homegrown semiconductor chip manufacturing facility, marking a significant step in the country's plans to develop a domestic semiconductor ecosystem....

Asia Optical is positioning itself for what its chairman believes could be the next major consumer technology wave: humanoid robots. I-Jen Lai, the company's chairman, said Asia Optical has already entered the supply chains of humanoid robot makers in the US, Japan, and Europe, betting that the technology could eventually become as commonplace as household appliances....

Intel has poached Eric Demers, a veteran GPU architect, known for developing Qualcomm's proprietary Adreno GPU architecture. Demers will become Intel's senior vice president of GPU engineering. This suggests that even though Intel has long been unable to compete with Nvidia and AMD in the GPU market, it still hopes to strengthen its own GPU capabilities....

Thailand's Board of Investment (BOI) recently approved a major investment plan led by Zhen Ding Tech (ZDT), the world's largest printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer, in partnership with local firm Saha Pathana Inter-Holding (SPI). The project involves approximately THB65 billion (US$2.1 billion) to establish advanced PCB production capacity, aiming to position Thailand as a key PCB manufacturing center in Southeast Asia....

Apple is losing the preferential access it held for more than a decade at TSMC as surging demand for AI chips shifts the balance of power toward Nvidia and other high-performance computing customers. The change highlights how AI workloads are reshaping capacity allocation at the world's largest contract chipmaker, reducing Apple's ability to secure priority production at the most advanced nodes....

Nvidia unveiled its Alpamayo family at CES 2026, introducing a suite that includes the open-source AI model Alpamayo 1, the AlpaSim simulation framework, and Physical AI Open Datasets. Alpamayo 1 centers on chain-of-thought reasoning and vision-language-action (VLA) inference models designed for autonomous driving applications....

Chinese authorities have increased scrutiny on rare earth exports bound for Japan, as export volumes declined in December 2025 compared to the previous month. The move reflects Beijing's intent to exert greater control over essential materials amid escalating tensions with Tokyo....

As Taiwan and the US reached a consensus in their tariff negotiations, a long-standing cloud hanging over Taiwan's automotive aftermarket industry began to lift. Securing the most favorable treatment under Section 232—capping tariffs at 15%—was not only a trade victory but a psychological turning point for Taiwan's vehicle-parts supply chain. The agreement has injected new confidence into the sector, allowing manufacturers to shift from a posture of defensive caution to one of proactive expansion....

US export restrictions on advanced semiconductor equipment to China have become the biggest obstacle to China's domestic production of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). It has been reported that Chinese companies have begun investing heavily in equipment localization. For example, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is moving towards mass production of more advanced HBM in 2026, and other related equipment vendors are making all-out efforts to build an HBM equipment ecosystem....

As geopolitical tensions escalate, China's AI industry development is shifting from the application layer to underlying computing power and core chip technologies, with GPU- and AI chip-related companies becoming key focal points for both capital and policy resources. The Hurun Research Institute recently released the Hurun Global Unicorns Index 2025....

President Trump's recent decision to link the question of Greenland's sovereignty with punitive tariffs has sent a chill through Europe's auto industry and Asia's manufacturing supply chains. What might once have been dismissed as a trade dispute now looks more like a form of geopolitical brinkmanship; an attempt to bind industrial lifelines to strategic demands....