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TrendForce’s latest analysis of the HBM industry reveals that as the ongoing expansion of AI infrastructure continues to fuel GPU demand, NVIDIA’s upcoming Rubin platform is expected to become a major catalyst for HBM4 adoption once mass production begins. The three leading memory suppliers—Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron—are now in the final stages of HBM4 validation, with completion anticipated by 2Q26.
On February 10th, Sharp announced plans to halt production at its K2 facility, a Gen 8 LCD plant in Kameyama (2160 x 2460 mm), and to seek a potential buyer for the site. The K2 plant has been a key pillar of Sharp’s display business, producing panels for notebooks, tablets, e-paper devices, and smartphones, and has long underpinned Sharp’s role as Apple’s third-largest IT panel supplier. It is also a critical source of oxide backplanes for e-paper applications. If output at the Kameyama K2 plant is scaled back as planned, the short-term supply of Apple’s MacBook and iPad models—as well as e-paper products—could face disruption.
TrendForce’s latest smartphone industry research predicts that soaring memory prices are set to weigh heavily on global smartphone production in 2026. Total output is forecast to decline 10% YoY to approximately 1.135 billion units. With memory prices showing no clear signs of easing, the growing gap between higher retail prices and consumer price tolerance is expected to further dampen end demand.
Google’s next-generation TPU, Ironwood, integrates a 3D Torus network topology with the Apollo optical circuit switch (OCS) all-optical network, marking a major step forward in AI data-center interconnect design. TrendForce’s latest research on the high-speed interconnect market indicates that this architecture will directly address the surging compute and bandwidth demands driven by large-scale AI workloads.
The current AI surge is anticipated to boost both the memory and wafer foundry sectors to record-breaking revenues by 2026, based on TrendForce’s recent data. Limited supply and rapidly increasing prices are likely to grow the memory market's total worth to $551.6 billion. Meanwhile, the global foundry market is also expected to reach a new peak of $218.7 billion, but the memory industry's scale will have more than doubled that of wafer foundries.
