India launched an incentive scheme to support local production of lithium batteries amid an EV trend in 2021. However, all the approved applicants failed to begin production to avail of the benefits after nearly four years.
Chicony Power Technology, a prominent player in the power supply solutions market, is projecting a cautious start to 2025, with the first quarter likely to be subdued due to ongoing political and geopolitical challenges. However, the company remains hopeful for a stronger performance throughout the year, driven by the launch of high-value product lines, the acquisition of new customers, and the gradual ramp-up of new production capacity in Thailand.
The global compound semiconductor market is projected to reach US$25 billion by 2030, growing at an annual rate of nearly 13% from 2024, according to Yole Group’s Activity Manager Ezgi Dogmus. This surge, fueled by demand in the automotive, telecommunications, and consumer electronics sectors, is set to outpace the broader semiconductor industry.
The concept of digital twins initially emerged in consumer applications for AR/VR/MR, but its future lies in smart manufacturing. Like quantum computing, this is not a technology that will take 20 years to materialize, but a tangible reality within the next decade. Hardware evolution may progress even faster than expected, but the real challenge lies in educating users and making these new technologies mainstream applications.
As US President Donald Trump marks the first month of his second term in office, the reforms and fiscal austerity measures of Trump 2.0 have exceeded expectations compared to his campaign promises. Whether it is the various cuts proposed by the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) led by Elon Musk or the recently passed tax reduction and spending cut bill that narrowly cleared the House of Representatives, the pace of these initiatives is astonishing, and their impact is profound.
TSMC’s announcement of an additional US$100 billion investment in the US, including three new wafer fabs, two advanced packaging facilities, and a major R&D team center, has sparked conflicting reactions from market and industry observers.
The South Korean firms’ strategy of expanding investment into a crisis-stricken market succeeded in sending them to the top of the global memory market. However, Chinese memory makers are copying this strategy, posing strong challenges to their dominance in a market that has been hit by slow demand over recent years.
AWS has entered the quantum computing race with Ocelot, a chip featuring built-in error correction aimed at dramatically slashing development costs. The move follows IBM, Google, and Microsoft, highlighting the intensifying competition among cloud providers. AWS claims Ocelot can reduce costs by 90% compared to existing quantum error correction methods. The research findings were published in Nature, with potential applications spanning drug discovery, material science, and financial modeling.
The debut of DeepSeek in early 2025 jolted the AI industry, triggering ripple effects across related sectors. Alibaba’s Damo Academy recently announced support for the DeepSeek-R1 series distilled models, fueling discussions in the semiconductor space. The rise of RISC-V as an open-source alternative is gaining momentum in China’s AI race, reshaping chip architectures.