Electronics Supply Chain Weekly Digest 7-10-26.
DATAPOINT OF THE WEEK: Passenger car retail sales in China totaled 1.60M units in June, down 23.1% Y/Y, but up 6.1% M/M, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), marking the ninth consecutive month of Y/Y declines.
Despite the broader weakness, NEV penetration matched its highest recorded level ever at 62.9% of retail sales, up 9.6 percentage points Y/Y. NEV retail sales totaled 1.01M units, down 9.4% Y/Y and up 6% M/M.
Within that, BEV sales reached 685K units, up 3.6% Y/Y and 7.5% M/M, while PHEV sales declined 28.2% Y/Y but increased 3.2% M/M. Notably, exports remained robust at 877K units, up 82% Y/Y, with NEVs comprising 57% of the total, growing 152% Y/Y.
Headlines:
Auto/Transportation
- Daimler Truck 2Q group vehicle sales rise 8% Y/Y to 86.7K units on NA demand recovery
- Micron locks in long-term memory supply deal with Ford days after GM agreement as automotive DRAM tightens
- Mercedes-Benz 2Q car sales fall 8% Y/Y as China deliveries collapse 30% on local EV competition
- Stellantis launches Fiat Topolino mini EV in US at $14K, expanding NA electric lineup
- Toyota announces $3.6B Texas, US plant, shifting Tacoma pickup production from Mexico to San Antonio by 2030
- US Senate Commerce Committee to vote July 15 on bill codifying ban on Chinese automakers entering the American market, according to Reuters
- VW 2Q deliveries drop 8.6% Y/Y globally as China volumes collapse 36.6% amid local EV competition
Datacenter
- Meta announced it is building a $9.17B Canada datacenter, its first in the country, with 1GW capacity scalable to 1.8GW
- TeraWulf announces 20-year, $19B datacenter lease with Anthropic as it pivots from bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure
Industrial
- Airbus reports 1H26 deliveries rose 15% Y/Y to 351 jets, keeping the planemaker on track for its 870 full-year target
Semiconductors
- Apple announces $30B Broadcom chip supply deal through 2031, funding $1.5B Colorado fab expansion
- Applied Materials sees multi-year equipment demand visibility as chipmakers share capex outlooks stretching to 2030, Nikkei Asia reported
- China reportedly plans to let Alibaba, ByteDance, and DeepSeek buy limited quantities of Nvidia H200 chips, according to The Information
- DeepSeek reportedly developing in-house AI inference chip to reduce reliance on Nvidia and Huawei silicon, according to Reuters
- Global semiconductor sales double Y/Y to record $120.6B in May as Americas lead 132% regional surge, according to SIA
- KYEC to invest up to $1.4B in US chip-testing facility to localize capacity
- Meta announced September production start for in-house Iris AI chip as it targets 14GW of computing capacity in 2027
- Micron breaks ground on $9.3B Hiroshima HBM fab expansion with $4.8B in Japanese government backing
- Micron announces expanded US investment plan to $250B through 2035, adds GlobalWafers 10-year silicon wafer supply deal
- Netherlands and China cooperating to resolve Nexperia dispute as Dutch trade minister makes first Beijing visit since 2018
- Nvidia’s next-gen Rosa CPU may tap TSMC’s A16 with back-side power delivery, extending TSMC dependency deeper into CPUs, as reported by Commercial Times
- onsemi announces sale of two chipmaking plants to Greatek and Silex under Fab Right cost-cutting strategy
- Samsung announces 19-fold Y/Y jump in 2Q operating profit as AI tightens DRAM and NAND supply
- Wolfspeed sues Navitas in Delaware federal court alleging infringement of five SiC and GaN power semiconductor patents
Consumer
- China smartphone sales drop 13% during 618 festival as memory costs squeeze OEM discounting room, according to Counterpoint Research
