Verified July–August 2026 reports on the evolving landscape of global hardware shortages and supply chain volatility.
IDC reports PC shipments fell 5% YoY in Q2 2026 to 68.2 million units, ending nine consecutive quarters of growth. The memory shortage is pricing budget PCs out of the market, and IDC warns it will not ease until early 2028.
SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung told Reuters that 2027 will be the worst supply year in the industry's history and that customer demand will remain higher than the company's supply capacity beyond 2030.
US lawmakers are targeting Chinese memory vendors YMTC and CXMT, which could remove a potential source of relief for the global DRAM/NAND shortage.
Nvidia proposed a financing program to help emerging AI cloud providers acquire GPUs. Early customers include Sharon AI (up to 40,000 GB300 GPUs in Australia) and Firmus (up to 170,000 Nvidia GPUs in Indonesia).
Nvidia demonstrated its Vera Rubin platform, claiming the NVL72 compute tray can be assembled in one minute versus 90 minutes for GB200, and early CoreWeave tests show 10x more tokens per watt than GB200.
ASE raised CoWoS and Fan-Out Chip on Substrate (FoCoS) packaging quotes by more than 20%, citing higher raw-material costs and long-term investment needs.
ASE increased its 2026 capital expenditure from US$8.5 billion to US$10.5 billion and raised its 2027 leading-edge advanced packaging revenue target to at least US$7.5 billion.
Samsung Electronics reported Q2 2026 revenue of W171.5 trillion ($119 billion) and operating profit of W89.5 trillion ($62.4 billion), up 19x YoY. Samsung's EVP of Memory said the supply shortage will persist through 2028.
TrendForce revised its 2026 AI server shipment forecast up from 28% to nearly 31% YoY. The top nine CSPs are expected to spend more than US$886.7 billion on CapEx in 2026 (+~90% YoY) and about US$1.3 trillion in 2027 (+~50% YoY).
TrendForce says DRAM supply will remain tight through 2027 and HBM4e validation schedules are uncertain. NVIDIA is evaluating lower HBM configurations for Rubin Ultra beyond the original 12-Hi HBM4e design. HBM bit shipments are projected to grow 50-60% YoY in 2027, still belo...
TSMC is expanding outsourcing of the CoW (Chip-on-Wafer) step to ASE, Amkor and SPIL to ease AI chip packaging bottlenecks. NVIDIA has reportedly reserved 800-850 k wafers of TSMC CoWoS capacity for 2026.
TrendForce expects the DRAM sufficiency ratio to be approximately -1% to -2% in 2026 and the gap to widen in 2027 as demand outpaces supply. NAND Flash is expected to enter a looser supply environment in 2H27.