The third phase of the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund has 19 equity investors, led by the Ministry of Finance and the country’s major state-owned banks.

The largest US semiconductor equipment maker is being probed by authorities for sending gear to SMIC via South Korea without Washington’s approval.

Nvidia’s H20 chip is being sold in some cases at more than a 10 per cent discount in China, compared to Huawei’s Ascend 910B, sources said.

SMIC accounted for 6 per cent of global chip foundry sales in the first quarter, behind industry leader TSMC’s 62 per cent share and Samsung’s 13 per cent share.

Seoul aims to help boost South Korea’s global market share in non-memory chips, such as mobile processors, to 10 per cent from the current 2 per cent.

The risk of cross-Strait conflict with mainland China appears to be chipping away at Taiwan’s long-held dominance in the semiconductor industry, underpinning a sense of urgency in diversifying hi-tech supply chains.

Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC and Dutch machine supplier ASML have ways of disabling their equipment, sources told Bloomberg.

The funding will help set up a pilot line in Europe that will develop and test future generations of advanced semiconductors.

The computers, which run chips from Qualcomm, are 58 per cent faster than Apple’s top-of-the-line MacBook Air M3, according to Microsoft.

But one legislator warns of impacts of possible sanctions, which he says may prevent city from importing technology it needs to produce chips.

An analysis from TechInsights has found 33 China-sourced components in the standard Pura 70 handset, compared with five sourced from overseas.

The mainland’s e-commerce sector achieved a 12 per cent overall growth in the March quarter, according to data from JPMorgan.

Foxconn reported a net profit of US$679 million in the first quarter, which missed analysts’ average estimate of US$897 million.

The deal, unveiled on Tuesday, marks one of the biggest takeovers in Taiwan outside the semiconductor industry.

The Tokyo-based company earned a better-than-expected net income in the March quarter, helped by investment gains.

Readers discuss Malaysia’s revival of its semiconductor industry, the exclusion of an elevated cycle track from Hong Kong’s Trunk Road T4 project, and the need to prevent work-to-rule-style bureaucracy .

The US is expected to triple its domestic chip-making capacity by 2032 and dwarf China’s output in advanced integrated circuits, according to a report published by a semiconductor trade group.

A project to mine gallium in a national forest would help reduce US reliance on China but it faces local opposition from conservationists.

Huawei’s latest high-end smartphone features more Chinese suppliers, including a new flash memory chip and an improved processor, a teardown analysis showed.

China’s strengthened push to use RISC-V, an open-source chip-design architecture, is facing new risks amid scrutiny by the US and Google’s move to stop supporting it on Android.

American vulnerability to Chinese overcapacity also a concern being tackled, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo tells key House Appropriations committee.

On Tuesday, the US revoked licenses allowing Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant blacklisted by the US, to buy semiconductors from Intel and rival Qualcomm Inc.

Further restrictions on access to Intel and Qualcomm chips would pose challenges to Huawei’s PC business, which has been gaining ground in the China market.

Alat CEO Amit Midha said the only request so far has been to keep supply chains separate, but it would divest if asked because the ‘US is the number one partner for us’.

In addition to improvements like an OLED screen, the M4 chip comes with a faster neural engine that Apple says can handle AI tasks on device.

The move comes after the tech giant released its first AI-enabled laptop, powered by a new Intel processor.