China’s leading DRAM maker CXMT has unveiled new DDR5 and LPDDR5X chips with performance now viewed as comparable to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The launch has unsettled South Korea’s memory sector, especially since CXMT reached this level in under a year after pivoting from low-cost DRAM to premium development in early 2025.

As global supply chains realign and tariff barriers rise, Taiwan’s manufacturing sector—at the heart of this storm—feels the uncertainty acutely. At the Fortinet Cybersecurity Carnival 2025 held on November 26, 2025, in Taipei, IDC senior research analyst Yvette Lin stressed that amid geopolitical tensions and rising operating costs, manufacturers must treat cybersecurity not as a simple cost of protection but as a core competitive advantage that ensures uninterrupted production and reinforces operational resilience.

China’s industrial overcapacity and a prolonged real estate slump continue to weigh on cement demand across both sides of the Taiwan Strait, prompting Taiwan Cement Corporation (TCC) to accelerate its overseas expansion. The company is leaning on high-margin, low-carbon cement operations in Turkey and Portugal, along with its fast-growing European energy-storage business, as its next major growth engines. TCC said its Europe-Africa cement operations and new-energy ventures have become its third and fourth pillars, and it is targeting Europe’s coming wave of urban renewal and a EUR10 billion (approx. US$11.5 billion) electricity-market opportunity.

Taiwan’s optical component makers are stepping up spending on augmented reality glasses to capture rising demand worldwide, while Chinese competitors accelerate development of cheaper, integrated AR models. The industry sees AR as the next personal computing device tied closely to smartphones.