Electronics Supply Chain Weekly Digest 3-20-26.
DATAPOINT OF THE WEEK: This week, both onsemi and Alpha and Omega semiconductor announced price icreases effective April 1 on select products, each citing rising raw material, energy, and infrastructure costs as the driver. onsemi and AOS join other suppliers such as Infineon, NXP, ADI, and TI to raise price in recent months.
A growing concern for input costs is the sharp declines in Helium production as a result of the war in Iran. QatarEnergy has yet to restart helium production at its Ras Laffan complex following drone strikes on March 2 that knocked out roughly 30% of global supply, a meaningful concern for chipmakers dependent on helium for EUV lithography cooling, according to TrendForce.
Headlines:
Auto/Transportation
- Global EV traction inverter installations hit 9.65M units in 4Q25, highest in nearly two years, as 800V adoption surges, according to TrendForce
- GM CFO says gas price hikes not impacting sales, with 1Q more affected by weather and low truck inventory
- US EV market sees new sales drop 26.8% Y/Y in February as used EV demand rises 28.8% Y/Y, according to Cox
- US new-vehicle affordability improves in February, with median weeks of income needed falling to 35.4, according to Cox
- Volkswagen signals shift toward Chinese chips amid growing tension with Nvidia’s automotive platforms, according to DigiTimes
- Xpeng 1Q revenue guidance of $1.77B-$1.93B , below expectations as EV demand slump drives 40% Y/Y delivery drop in Jan-Feb
- XPeng targets double overseas sales in 2025, launching models in Mexico and eyes 70% of profit from international markets by 2030
Datacenter
- Nebius announces it has signed $27B AI infrastructure deal with Meta, including $12B committed capacity by 2027
IP&E
- MuRata plans to decouple China rare earth supply chain over next 3 years amid rising geopolitical risk, according to Financial Times
- Nvidia charts optical-copper dual-track path for AI data centers, with CPO expected to hit 35% penetration by 2030, according to DigiTimes
Semiconductors
- Analog Devices opens new Thailand facility adding wafer-level processing, chip-scale packaging and final testing capacity
- Horizon Robotics’ next-gen Journey 7 chip to outpace Nvidia’s Thor-X, targeting mass production in 2027, according to LatePost
- Huali Microelectronics readies 7nm chip production in Shanghai with Huawei collaboration, as reported by Reuters
- Infineon VP calls on Europe to scale up 300mm wafer fabs and automate to counter Chinese competition, according to Reuters
- Micron reports massive F2Q beat, guides sharply higher on surging DRAM and NAND prices and raises capex to $25B+
- Nvidia restarts H20 chip manufacturing for China after receiving US export licenses, excludes sales from $1T forecast
- Nvidia preparing China-compatible Groq inference chips ahead of May availability, Reuters reported
- Nvidia to sell 1M GPUs plus networking and inference chips to AWS by end of 2027
- Nvidia partners with Infineon, NXP, and STMicroelectronics to supply hardware for humanoid robots, says TrendForce
- onsemi to raise prices on select products from April 1 citing elevated input and manufacturing costs
- Samsung Electronics to begin volume production of Tesla chips at Texas factory in 2H27
- Samsung faces 18-day strike threat from May 21 as workers demand 7% wage hike and profit-based bonuses, per Reuters
- Samsung to supply up to 800M GB of next-gen HBM4 chips to OpenAI for its first in-house AI processor, according to Korean Economic Daily
- Samsung and AMD sign MoU to expand HBM4 and DDR5 memory supply for next-gen AI accelerators and EPYC processors
- Vanguard International Semiconductor to raise foundry prices ~10% in April 2026, citing rising input costs
- Tiancheng Semiconductor develops 14-inch SiC single crystal, marking China’s first step toward 14-inch commercialization
Consumer/Other
- Amazon reportedly developing new AI-native smartphone codenamed “Transformer,” a decade after $170M Fire Phone flop, says Reuters