Electronic ODM makers’ surge in March revenue, driven by accelerated notebook orders and booming AI server demand, erased the typical first-quarter slump, with implications for global device supply chains and enterprise AI deployments. As major assemblers outperform expectations and reshape shipment and stocking patterns heading into the second quarter of 2026, component markets are poised to benefit.

Although Taiwanese firms have largely missed the core AI chip development battlefield, a few with critical technological barriers have broken through—most notably Aspeed and ASMedia. These two companies boast remarkable profitability and capital market performance that even outpace MediaTek, Taiwan’s largest IC design firm. Significantly, their founding management teams mostly originated from the once-dominant PC chipset giants Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and VIA Technologies.

Samsung has entered the final phase of equipment investment at its P4 fab in Pyeongtaek, issuing purchase orders (POs) for front-end tools for Phase 2 (Ph2) and Phase 4 (Ph4). According to ZDNet Korea, Samsung placed the orders in March 2026 for the two remaining phases of the four-phase P4 project.

The market continues to closely watch the deployment of co-packaged optics (CPO) technology in cloud AI, driven by the desire of the silicon photonics (SiPh) ecosystem to see a tangible revenue impact. Cloud AI vendors are also hoping that adopting SiPh will simultaneously improve both cost efficiency and computational performance limits.