TrendForce has outlined 10 key trends shaping the technology landscape in 2025.
Generative AI leads the way: Humanoid and service robots receive major upgrades
Robotics is poised to remain a central focus in 2025 as advancements in AI and robotics accelerate, driven by major players like NVIDIA and Tesla. The development will emphasize training machine learning, digital twin simulation platforms, collaborative robotics, mobile robotic arms, and humanoid robots to adapt to various environments and enable seamless human-machine interaction.
Humanoid robots, backed by substantial investment from U.S. and Chinese manufacturers, are set to begin mass production starting in 2025. The global humanoid robot market is forecast to achieve a staggering CAGR of 154% between 2024 and 2027 and potentially exceed $2 billion in market value. Industrial robots primarily focus on tasks like arm-based picking; service robots, powered by generative AI, will enable multi-modal interactions, information retrieval, text summarisation, and scheduling. These advancements will boost their mobility, companionship, and versatility, positioning service robots as the next frontier in robotics innovation.
Market standardisation driven by technological advancements: AI Notebook penetration to reach 21,7% in 2025
AI-enabled notebooks are expected to become standard in the coming years with rapid advancements in technology. By 2025, AI notebook penetration is projected to reach 21,7% - climbing to nearly 80% by 2029. This surge will significantly contribute to the adoption of Arm-based architectures, which offer greater energy efficiency and scalability compared to traditional x86 architectures.
AI server shipments to grow over 28% in 2025, with HBM 12hi yield improvement in focus
The growing demand from CSPs and enterprise clients for AI infrastructure is driving substantial growth in the AI server market. In 2024, global shipments of AI servers, including those equipped with GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs, are projected to grow by 42%. By 2025, fuelled by strong demand from CSPs and sovereign cloud operators, annual shipment growth is expected to exceed 28%, accounting for 15% of the overall server market.
Starting in 2025, HBM3e 12hi will emerge as the mainstream stack height, with NVIDIA’s B300 and GB300 platforms expected to adopt this confirmation. SK hynix is leveraging Advanced MR-MUF technology in its 12hi generation, introducing a mid-temperature pre-bonding process during each die stacking step.
Conversely, Samsung and Micron are sticking with the TC-NCF stacking architecture for their 12hi products. While this method offers easier warpage control, it faces challenges such as longer process times, greater cumulative stress, and reduced thermal dissipation performance.
Advanced processes and AI drive semiconductor innovation and strong growth in CoWoS demand in 2025
As semiconductor manufacturing progressed beyond the 7 nm process node, the adoption of EUV lithography pushed FinFET architecture to its physical limits at 3 nm. This prompted a divergence in advanced process technologies. In 2023, both TSMC and Intel continued using FinFet for their 3 nm products. Meanwhile, Samsung sought to lead the transition to GAAFET with its MBCFET architecture, initiating production in 2022. However, widespread adoption of Samsung’s approach has yet to take hold.
TSMC will introduce its nanosheet transistor architecture at the 2 nm node by 2025, while Intel plans to adopt its RibbonFET technology for its 18A node. Samsung will continue refining its MBCFET-based 3 nm process as it aims to achieve large-scale production by 2025. This marks the official entry of all three players into the GAAFET race, targeting superior transistor control through four-sided gate contact and promising higher performance, lower power consumption, and increased transistor density per unit area.
The launch of NVIDIA’s Blackwell platform in the first half of 2025 will significantly increase demand for CoWoS-L - surpassing CoWoS-S - with CoWoS-L expected to account for over 60% of the total.
AI as a double-edged sword in 2025: Enhanced cybersecurity defence and threat detection to counter complex attacks
The current focus of global cybersecurity lies in the hardware and software of the cloud-driven IoT era. The complexity of both attack and defence strategies has grown significantly compared to the past as various technologies continue to advance, prompting companies to gradually shift their focus from IoT to AI. Meanwhile, generative AI is seeing two major trends in enhancing cybersecurity defences through empowering operators and accelerating threat detection.
AMOLED expands into medium-sized applications, boosting notebook market penetration to 3%
In 2024, Apple officially launched its iPad Pro series featuring RGB AMOLED panels, signalling the expansion of RGB AMOLED technology into medium-sized product applications. Beyond tablets, the trend of integrating AMOLED panels into notebooks is also gaining momentum. While Apple plans to introduce AMOLED panels to its MacBook series between 2026 and 2027, the company has already begun encouraging panel makers to scale up investments. They are now transitioning RBG AMOLED production lines from 6th-generation to 8,6 or 8,7-generation configurations to meet anticipated demand.
Vision Pro transforms VR/MR from entertainment to productivity tool
The most pivotal development in the VR/MR headset market in 2024 was Apple’s launch of the Vision Pro, which redefined VR/MR devices by shifting their primary use case from entertainment and leisure to productivity tools. This repositioning is expected to inspire other manufacturers to release innovative new products. The Vision Pro’s display leverages OLEDoS technology, delivering resolutions exceeding 3000 PPI and making it the preferred near-eye display solution for high-end VR/MR devices. TrendForce forecasts that VR/MR device shipments will reach 37 million units by 2030.
Miniaturisation and low-cost production of cubesats drive global communication and IoT revolution in 2025
With the guidance of 3GPP Release 17 for satellite application, the number of CubeSats within low Earth orbit constellations has been growing exponentially. Emerging satellite companies are leveraging low-cost production techniques for small CubeSats and deploying large-scale satellite constellations to provide global low-latency satellite communication coverage.
Looking ahead to 2025, satellite miniaturisation is set to accelerate. Small and medium-sized emerging satellite operators are utilising modular satellite platforms and commercial-off-the-shelf components to launch large-scale CubeSat production, which is set to significantly reduce production costs. In parallel, these companies are deploying CubeSat constellations for Space Situational Awareness (SSA), focusing on monitoring and clearing space debris. Additionally, the development of satellite IoT applications is progressing rapidly, which is supporting remote IoT device monitoring in areas such as agricultural sensors and driving innovation in connectivity for remote and underserved regions.
Modular end-to-end model production and level 4 robotaxi commercialisation accelerate in 2025
Autonomous driving, a key application area for Edge-AI, is seeing rapid advancements, with Tesla spearheading the adoption of end-to-end (E2E) models. This trend is prompting other automakers to accelerate their investments in AI technology and computational power, with 2025 expected to mark the beginning of mass production for this architecture. However, most manufacturers are anticipated to adopt modular end-to-end models, which offer advantages in interpretability and debugging.
EVs and AI data centres drive battery and energy storage innovations in 2025
The growth of the EV market is slowing, with BEVs experiencing the most pronounced deceleration. By 2025, the BEV growth rate is projected to shrink to 13%. Range anxiety remains a significant barrier to BEV adoption, prompting the industry to focus on solving this challenge. In battery technology, CATL has introduced LFP batteries with a 4C charging rate, capable of delivering 600 km of range with just 10 minutes of charging. These batteries are expected to see broader market adoption by 2025. Additionally, semi-solid-state batteries entered mass production in 2024 and are expected to accelerate integration into vehicles by 2025, while fully solid-state batteries are projected for commercialisation post-2027.
Furthermore, the rapid expansion of AI-powered data centres is driving a surge in demand for advanced energy storage systems. With continuous technological advancements and declining costs, global energy storage installations are expected to reach 92 GW/240 GW by 2025, representing an annual growth of 25% in capacity and 33% in energy. The swift growth of AI technologies has significantly increased electricity demand, making energy storage systems essential for stabilising renewable energy output and providing backup power during outages, and thereby improving data centre reliability.
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