Howard Liu
11 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 South Korea urged to guard chip profitability as China’s CXMT and YMTC gain market share
Report urges Samsung, SK Hynix to sharpen cost competitiveness in commodity memory while doubling down on cutting-edge sectors such as HBM
China’s expanding semiconductor industry is fuelling mounting anxiety in South Korea, where a new consultancy report has warned local chipmakers to defend profitability as Chinese rivals scale up production and strengthen market share.
Samil PwC, the South Korean member firm of the global consultancy, said in a report made public on Monday that Chinese competition would likely heat up first in the areas of conventional memory, mature-node manufacturing, and packaging and testing.
🔮 China’s remote access alone is expected to swell to 2.8 million H100-equivalents by the end of 2027, up from roughly 1 million this year
China’s access to artificial intelligence computing power will double next year, but US-designed chips will account for about 65 per cent of that capacity, an indication of its continued reliance on foreign hardware, according to new research.
Total compute available to Chinese entities was expected to expand in 2027 from about 4.6 million to 8.8 million “H100-equivalents” – a metric benchmarked against Nvidia’s data-centre graphics processing units, according to a report by the Washington-based Institute for Progress (IFP).
🔮 Asia-Pacific AI agent market to surge 14-fold to US$11.2 billion by 2030, Omdia says
In the period to 2030, the agentic share of the region’s AI software revenue is projected to rise to 12.3 per cent from 1.7 per cent
The artificial intelligence agent software market across Asia, Australia and New Zealand is set to expand more than 14-fold by 2030, according to research firm Omdia, as Chinese tech companies increasingly deploy automated tools across office and industrial operations.
During its annual event in Beijing on Thursday, Omdia forecast that regional market revenue, which included mainland China and Hong Kong, would reach US$11.2 billion in 2030, up from an estimated US$782 million this year.
🔮 TSMC confirms talks with Elon Musk over Texas ‘Terafab’ but insists on operational control
The negotiations underscore TSMC’s push to expand production and satisfy insatiable demand for AI chips from key clients like Nvidia
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is in discussions regarding a potential role in Elon Musk’s proposed Terafab project in Texas, according to company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei, although he stressed that TSMC would retain operational control of any partner factory.
The plant “has got to be run by TSMC”, Wei said during the third-quarter earnings call on Thursday.
🔮 Chinese memory giant YMTC to grow revenue 6 times faster than peers as IPO nears: report
Country’s top NAND maker bets on enterprise SSDs and AI infrastructure to drive next phase of growth, Counterpoint says
Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YMTC), China’s leading flash-memory maker, is set to grow revenue six times faster than its industry peers this year as it expands into server-related business ahead of a planned initial public offering (IPO), according to Counterpoint Research.
The company’s server-related revenue was effectively zero in 2024, but could account for nearly 39 per cent of its revenue by 2028, according to the market intelligence firm on Tuesday.
🔮 As it begins massive output increase, China’s top memory supplier sets ‘aggressive’ target for local chipmaking equipment, source says
The firm, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Market, would spend 24.1 billion yuan on a new technology research and development project and another 10.8 billion yuan on the second phase of a wafer testing base, according to a Monday stock filing.
🔮 The sum, which Shanghai-listed Biwin Storage Technology will pour into the third phase of its advanced packaging and testing project in Dongguan, in southern China’s Guangdong province, will exceed the 3.09 billion yuan it put into the first two phases combined.
🔮 Capital expenditure by China’s major tech companies was set to more than double to around US$140 billion this year – up from US$65 billion in 2025 – and reach US$165 billion by 2027, according to Moody’s.
Also by Howard Liu
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The Aporia
