COMPUTEX Taipei 2026, held from June 2 to 5 under the theme “AI Together,” drew more than 1,500 exhibitors from 33 countries and set a new record in scale. The show underscored a new AI industry reality: competition has moved far beyond standalone chip compute and into a systems-level battle spanning compute, connectivity, power, and cooling.

AI adoption in PCB manufacturing is now widespread, yet fewer than 10% of companies have fully scaled deployments, underscoring a global gap between experimentation and factory-wide integration. For readers worldwide, the findings point to a sector where quality gains are real, but talent, data, and governance constraints are slowing broader industrial change.

At COMPUTEX 2026, e-paper moved beyond e-readers and electronic shelf labels, finding new applications in vehicles, signage, and smart mobility. The technology’s expansion signals a widening role in low-power displays as AI and transport applications continue to grow.

Optical communications maker PCL Technologies is expanding into high-power laser packaging, with its new Malaysia plant on track to pass customer certification by the end of 2026. Its earlier investment in US silicon photonics firm Skorpios and the acquisition of Pingood Enterprise also form part of the group’s co-packaged optics (CPO) strategy.