Financial
• The continuing strong momentum of AI products is set to drive 24% growth in foundry revenue in 2026. This amounts to a YoY increase of $218,8 billion. TSMC is expected to post the largest increase of around 32% for the year, while Samsung Foundry has reported a notable increase in orders for its 5 and 4 nm-class nodes.
• Conventional DRAM contract prices are forecast to rise between 58–63% QoQ in Q2 2026, while NAND Flash contract prices are expected to rise by 70-75% during the same quarter driven by demand from AI and data centres. The NAND capacity is increasing being allocated to enterprise SSDs, while consumer applications scale back due to pressure from increased costs.
• Despite the high prices currently experienced on all NAND Flash products, the average smartphone storage capacity is set to increase by 4,8% in 2026. The market previously forecast that smartphone brands would need to reduce storage specifications to protect their margins, but this has now been reversed as many smartphone manufacturers discontinue their low-capacity models in favour of higher-end devices.
• The top eight CSPs, namely Google, AWS, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu, have a combined CapEx exceeding $710 billion in 2026, according to TrendForce. The expected growth within these top eight companies is 61% YoY. TPU systems are expected to account for nearly 78% of AI servers shipped to Google, maintaining the company’s leadership in ASIC adoption.
Companies
• As one of the country’s largest consumer electronics manufacturers, Hisense SA recently celebrated its 30th anniversary in the country. During the Buy Local Summit & Expo held in Johannesburg, the company reinforced its commitment to local manufacturing using its R350 million manufacturing facility in the Western Cape as an example. This facility in Atlantis has the capacity to produce up to 1 million televisions and 500 000 refrigerators annually for both the local and export markets.
• STMicroelectronics recently announced the start of general-purpose STM32 microcontroller deliveries manufactured in China with the first batch of STM32 wafers fully produced in China by Huahong in customers hands. This milestone is a major step forward in ST global supply chain strategy, with additional STM32 families, including performance-oriented, secure, and entry-level microcontroller series, planned for local volume production in 2026.
• Mycronic has published its annual report for 2025, announcing a record year in terms of order intake and net sales. Order intake totalled 7757SEK million (1SEK approx. $0,11) with net sales of 7938SEK million. This amounts to a gross profit of 4163SEK million and a gross margin of 52,4%, a YoY percentage change of 11,94%. Dividends were calculated at 3,25SEK per share.
• Indium Corporation recently received Electronics Manufacturing Asia Innovation Awards for its halogen-free CW-807RS flux-cored wire and Indium12.9HF solder paste products. A formal presentation ceremony was held at the Productronica China trade show in Shanghai.
• Sungrow, a global PV inverter and energy storage system provider, has signed a landmark agreement with Herholdt’s Group, its official distribution partner in South Africa. The agreement will see them deploy a total of 1155 MWh of commercial and industrial battery energy storage systems. The deployment will be carried out in phases, with projects rolled out across South Africa to support a wide range of C&I; use cases.
• Microchip Technology has earned the IEC 62443-4-1 ML2 Industrial Automation and Control System certification from UL Solutions. This certification demonstrates that its new product development process meets globally recognised ‘secure by design’ criteria - it provides audit-backed assurance that products are developed under a mature, repeatable, and independently verified cybersecurity framework. The secure development lifecycle includes threat modelling, secure design practices, rigorous implementation controls, verification and validation, and long-term defect and patch management.
Technologies
• As CSPs like Google and Amazon increase their internal chip development, ASIC-based AI servers are forecast to represent 27,8% of all AI server shipments in 2026. This percentage is expected to grow to nearly 40% by 2030. In response, NVIDIA has shifted its focus toward deploying AI inference applications across multiple industries, marking a departure from its previous emphasis on cloud-based AI training. The company is promoting a diversified product portfolio, which includes GPUs, CPUs, and LPUs, to address both training and inference workloads.
• Indium Corporation received a Circuits Assembly New Product Introduction (NPI) Award for its Indium12.9HF, a halogen-free solder paste engineered for cost-effective, low-silver alloys, including SAC105 and SAC0307. Indium12.9HF is specifically formulated to accommodate fine feature printing. It offers unprecedented stencil print transfer efficiency, works across a broad range of processes to boost SPI yields, and delivers best-in-class voiding performance.
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