IF / News – Daily News / Weekly Summary / Regular Discussion

4-12 #Rage : TSMC allegedly could face a penalty of USD1B or more; vivo will launch a Photography Kit X200 Ultra flagship; Luxshare is in talks with customers on ways to respond to U.S. tariffs by shifting more production outside China; etc.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) allegedly could face a penalty of USD1B or more to settle a U.S. export control investigation over a chip it made that ended up inside a Huawei AI processor. The U.S. Department of Commerce has… Read more ›

4-5 #StepByStep : Intel and TSMC have discussed a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture; Apple is reportedly designing the hinge with liquid metal; OPPO has introduced Lumo; etc.

TSMC has invested billions into its facilities in the United States, including its active Arizona chip foundry and a second facility due in 2028. TSMC is preparing to start operations at its second Arizona plant by 2028, which will be… Read more ›

3-30 #BusyBusy : Samsung may offer 2nm-based Exynos 2600 with Galaxy S26 in 1Q26; SMIC is slated to complete its 5nm chip development; Apple will launch its foldable iPhone in 2026 with a ~USD2,000 price tag; etc.

Loop Capital analyst Ananda Baruah has said that Apple is in the process of placing orders for about USD1B in Nvidia GB300 NVL72 systems. That equates to about 250 servers at USD3.7M-4M each. Apple is working with server builders Dell… Read more ›

3-16 #ImmersiveWorking : Samsung is planning to transfer the Exynos chip unit to MX division; Meta is allegedly testing its first in-house chip for training AI systems; Apple is reportedly preparing a significant software overhaul; etc.

Samsung is reportedly reviewing a plan to transfer the Exynos chip unit from the LSI division to the mobile experience (MX) division. This is the unit responsible for Samsung Galaxy phones, tablets, watches, and more. However, there is “significant internal… Read more ›

3-11 #InsomniaSucks : The first Apple foldable will launch in late 2026; Honor allegedly has a self-developed 1-inch camera sensor; Xiaomi will expand the availability of its large home appliances globally in late 2025; etc.

TF Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo reports that Apple is working on a “refreshed C1” for 2026, which support mmWave. The current C1 supports sub-6GHz 5G only. It consists of a 4nm or 5nm baseband, 7nm low-frequency transceivers, 7nm also for… Read more ›

3-4 #MWC2025 : TSMC will make an investment of USD100B in the US; Xiaomi has showcased Xiaomi Modular Optical system; Apple has announced a USD500B program of investment in the US; etc.

Intel may allegedly split its chip business, with Intel and TSMC participating and operating it together. While the United States provides subsidies for the Chip Act, TSMC will help strengthen Intel’s 2nm and 3nm advanced processes. Tristan Gerra, an analyst… Read more ›

2-18 #FailedtoBreak : ARM will unveil its first chip made in-house as early as summer 2025; Samsung’s next-gen S series may feature bigger battery; Apple is actively working on robots for the smart home; etc.

Arm Holdings reportedly plans to launch its own chip in 2025 after securing Meta Platforms as one of its first customers, in a major shift to the chip tech provider’s model of licensing its blueprints to other companies. Rene Haas,… Read more ›

2-3 #YearofSnake : The Pebble smartwatch is coming back; Apple has allegedly canceled a project to build advanced AR glasses; Google has now announced a “voluntary exit program”; etc.

The DeepSeek R1 LLM (large-language model) was trained on Nvidia H100 but uses an Huawei Ascend 910C chip for inference, which is the action of using the trained model to generate responses. However, the Ascend 910C’s relatively lower performance limits… Read more ›

1-28 #HappyCNY : SK Hynix reportedly plans to ship samples of HBM4 to Nvidia as early as Jun 2025; Tata Electronics has acquired a controlling 60% stake in Pegatron Technology India; HTC VIVE and Google have announced a definitive agreement; etc.

Samsung Electronics has announced a significant reduction in its foundry division’s facility investment for 2025, cutting the budget by more than half compared to the previous year. Samsung Foundry has set its facility investment budget at around KRW5T for 2025,… Read more ›

1-21 #TechonEyes : TSMC has begun producing advanced 4nm chips in Arizona; ARM [lans to hike prices by as much as 300%; George Zhao is resigning from his position as Honor CEO; etc.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has begun producing advanced 4nm chips for U.S. customers in Arizona, according to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. In Nov 2024, Commerce finalized a USD6.6B grant to TSMC’s U.S. unit for semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona.… Read more ›

1-10 #NoNoNo : TSMC’s Arizona factory has reportedly picked up a second Apple product; Apple’s first foldable iPhone is allegedly to be released in 2026; Samsung Display has showcased its slidable displays; etc.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is stepping up its efforts to expand its CoWoS (Chip on Wafer on Substrate) advanced packaging capacity with plans to double its monthly capacity to 75,000 wafers by 2025. This ambitious objective comes amid heightened… Read more ›

1-8 #TalkTalkTalk : MediaTek and Google collaborate on the design of a new 2×2 multi-radio solution; Samsung is reportedly planning to launch a dual-foldable phone in 2H25; Samsung and Apple may adopt new technologies to increase the capacity of next-gen smartphone batteries; etc.

Nvidia is leaning into robotics as it looks to expand beyond its dominant AI chip business. The company plans to launch Jetson Thor, a new compact computer designed for humanoid robots, in 1H25. Deepu Talla, Nvidia’s vice president of robotics,… Read more ›

1-1 #Happy2025 : CXMT DDR5 yield rate is expected to reach 90% by year end; OPPO will release its flagship Find series phone twice a year; vivo has announced that it will be unveiling a MR headset in 2025; etc.

TSMC’s Arizona facility is reportedly set to initiate mass production of the 4nm process by 2H25, with clients such as Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, and Qualcomm being the primary beneficiaries. TSMC’s 4nm process will be under production at the Arizona facility… Read more ›

12-28 #PostHolidayMood : UMC has no immediate plans to set up a production site in the United States; Huawei’s outward foldable smartphone project has allegedly been suspended; Foxconn has announced a partnership with Porotech to enter the AR glasses market; etc.

The US government plans to blacklist a Chinese company whose TSMC-made chip was illegally incorporated into a Huawei artificial-intelligence processor. The Chinese company, Sophgo, drew attention after a chip found on Huawei’s Ascend 910B multi-chip system matched one it ordered… Read more ›

12-20 #Compromise : Google is reportedly testing the MediaTek T900 modem in its Pixel 10 prototypes; Samsung allegedly to introduce the Qi2 wireless charging standard to S25 series; Google has announced Android XR; etc.

Apple is reportedly switching over to a new Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chip that it designed in-house starting in 2025. The combined Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chip will replace components from Broadcom, allowing Apple to reduce its reliance on the company. The… Read more ›

12-7 #Optimized : Qualcomm could increase the price of the 2025 flagship chip by a “significant” amount; Apple is betting that its upcoming in-house 5G modem; TSMC has successfully conducted a trial chip production of its 2nm N2 process with a 60% yield rate; etc.

Qualcomm could increase the price of the 2025 flagship chip by a “significant” amount. The chip has been dubbed the Snapdragon 8 Elite “Gen 2”, with the report alleging that “various internal and external factors” are the situation’s primary catalyst.… Read more ›