➀ Apple preemptively shipped five planeloads of iPhones, PCs, and other devices from India to the U.S. in late March to avoid paying 10% import duty in the U.S. and to stabilize prices temporarily in America.

➁ This move gives Apple an inventory buffer in its largest market, allowing it to assess the impact of new tariffs on its supply chain without urgency.

➂ Apple's manufacturing base spans several countries, with some models produced in India and others in China, Vietnam, and Texas.

➀ The United States has targeted China, its country with the highest trade deficit, with high tariffs.

➁ Additional tariffs have been imposed on exports to the US from countries with high import duties, such as India, Tunisia, and Algeria.

➂ The EU and China have also seen increased tariffs due to other practices, with China facing a rate of +54 percent.

➀ China has introduced new export restrictions on materials containing scandium and dysprosium, which are critical for RF and storage applications, potentially impacting key players in these industries.

➁ These restrictions follow previous rounds of tightening rare earth export rules and reflect a calculated strategy targeting the high-tech manufacturing supply chain.

➂ The impact of these restrictions is yet to be fully assessed, but they are expected to cause disruptions in the semiconductor industry.

➀ According to Knight Frank's 2025 Wealth Report, technology was the biggest wealth generator among billionaires in 2024, accounting for $2.6 trillion across 342 billionaires.

➁ However, the largest number of 2024 billionaires – 427 – came from the financial sector.

➂ Over the last decade, manufacturing produced the most new billionaires – 509, half of whom are in China, while technology produced the second highest number – 443, with China leading.

➀ China's AI data center expansion in 2023-2024 has led to significant underutilization of billions of dollars in infrastructure;

➁ Rushed projects resulted in poor planning and technical irrelevance;

➂ Market shift towards inference workloads has reduced demand for high-end GPUs, leading to a decrease in rental prices.

➀ Chinese chipmakers are gradually shifting production to domestically-made tools to support the local wafer fab equipment ecosystem and reduce reliance on foreign tools.

➁ SiCarrier Technologies, a Huawei-linked startup, has revealed a comprehensive catalog of wafer processing tools at Semicon China.

➂ SiCarrier is working on advanced process nodes and future advanced nodes, and has partnerships with Huawei for proprietary production flows.

➀ Power semiconductors, once a rising star with AI chips, are now facing challenges due to a slow EV market;

➁ Major players are reducing staff and delaying investments, with over 8,800 layoffs reported;

➂ The struggle is further compounded by the emerging competition from China.

➀ SEMI announced a 2% year-over-year growth forecast for front-end fab equipment spending in 2025, reaching $110 billion;

➁ This growth is driven by demand in HPC and memory sectors, as well as the increasing integration of AI;

➂ The Logic & Micro segment is expected to be a key driver of growth, with investments reaching $52 billion in 2025 and $59 billion in 2026.

➀ The telecom equipment industry experienced its biggest decline in 20 years with a 14% drop in total equipment revenue in 2024;

➁ The decline was driven by factors such as excess inventory, challenging macro environment, and difficult 5G comparisons;

➂ Despite the decline, Huawei and Ericsson saw improvements in their positions in the global market.

➀ The historical development of Japan's electronics industry from the Meiji Restoration to the present day, focusing on the rise and fall of key companies like Sony, Panasonic, and Toshiba.

➁ The impact of the internet and smartphones on the global supply chain and the decline of Japan's consumer electronics industry.

➂ The strategic transformation of Japanese electronics brands and new positions in the international division of labor.

➀ Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, raising concerns about potential layoffs and the future of Intel Foundry.

➁ China's chip smuggling continues with individuals and companies importing restricted AI servers, while Huawei is accused of tricking TSMC into manufacturing banned processors.

➂ AMD releases the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, dominating Intel's chips in gaming performance with its 3D V-Cache technology.

➀ Deepseek, a China-based AI company, is focusing on developing new models, R2 and V4, instead of seeking revenue like its Western competitors.

➁ The company is said to be funded by its founder, Liang Wenfeng, who is also the founder of a leading hedge fund in China.

➂ Deepseek's team of 160 employees is dedicated to the development of advanced AI technologies, with a focus on reaching Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

➀ The power module packaging materials market is expected to reach nearly $6.1 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of nearly 11% between 2024 and 2030;

➁ Packaging materials costs accounted for approximately 32% of the total cost of power modules in 2024;

➂ The market is being reshaped with new entrants, M&As, and strategic shifts.

➀ The scarcity of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs has led to inflated prices on platforms like eBay.

➁ Smugglers in China are selling illegal GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards at high prices to meet the demand for DeepSeek's R1 AI model.

➂ Despite US sanctions, the RTX 5090D variant is available in China, but it has lower AI performance.

➀ Huawei reportedly acquired two million Ascend 910 AI chips from TSMC last year through shell companies;

➁ TSMC manufactured large quantities of Huawei Ascend 910B chips for shell companies and shipped them to China;

➂ There are questions about the availability of HBM for integration with the chips;

➃ The report by CSIS suggests Huawei's stockpiling strategy;

➄ The Ascend 910B and Ascend 910C yields are low, with most parts shipped with disabled compute elements.

➀ An inauguration ceremony has been held for a $3.2 billion SiC fab in Chongqing, China, a joint venture between Sanan Optoelectronics and STMicroelectronics.

➁ Sanan holds a 51% stake, with ST holding 49%. The fab is expected to start volume production of 8” SiC ICs in Q4 2025 using ST's SiC process technology.

➂ When fully operational in 2028, the fab will have a capacity of 40k wpm. Sanan will also build an 8-inch SiC substrate facility to supply wafers to the JV under a long-term agreement.

➀ The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported that January 2025 semiconductor sales reached $56.5 billion, up 17.9% year-on-year compared to January 2024;

➁ Despite a slight decline from December 2024, the global semiconductor market maintained momentum in January, achieving its highest monthly sales total for the month of January;

➂ Sales increased by more than 17% year-on-year for the ninth consecutive month, with a significant increase of 50.7% in sales to the Americas.

➀ China plans to release guidelines encouraging the national use of RISC-V-based chips, according to a Reuters report.

➁ The RISC-V architecture is attractive due to its openness, allowing anyone to freely obtain, learn, modify, and extend it.

➂ RISC-V has been embraced by global companies like Alibaba, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA, contributing to its rapid development.

➀ The Chinese government is shifting its focus from x86 and Arm CPUs to promote RISC-V chips, aiming to reduce reliance on foreign technologies.

➁ The new policy is expected to be announced soon, marking the first official government push for RISC-V adoption in China.

➂ Chinese companies like Alibaba and Nuclei System Technology are investing in RISC-V, and the technology is gaining traction in the country.

➀ The investor community is in a state of uncertainty about Intel's future;

➁ TSMC's preference for building its own fabs over taking over Intel's has raised concerns;

➂ The US administration's view on Intel's capability to be a leading-edge domestic supplier is questioned.