The US and China may soon be locked in a recruitment battle for Taiwanese semiconductor talent as the world's most powerful nations bid to ramp up their computer chip capacity

Kioxia said on Wednesday it plans to jointly build a new flash memory fabrication facility at its plant in northern Japan with Western Digital Corp, for about 1 trillion yen ($8.3 billion)

Taiwan's export orders leapt 21.1% from a year earlier to $51.56 billion last month on sustained technology demand

Shipments of smartphones within China fell 31.8% year-on-year to 14.5 million handsets in February, the China Academy of Information and Communications (CAICT) reported on Monday.

Kyoto-based Murata, the top global supplier of ceramic capacitors used in smartphones and cars, said it aims to restart two facilities in Fukushima prefecture

Another US chip firm and Apple supplier, ON Semiconductor, said its manufacturing facility in Shenzhen would be closed March 14-20

Japanese auto giant Toyota says it plans to hack back its April global production by 17% to 750,000 units

Japan chip heavyweight Renesas, which has suspended work after the earthquake, makes nearly a third of the microcontroller chips used in cars around the world

Samsung's foundry business would look for new clients in China, where it expects high market growth, and focus on increasing supply capacity

The multipurpose facility could make microchips, electric-vehicle components and other electronics like displays

Musk retweeted an article saying the Ukraine-Russia conflict had sent commodity prices to their highest levels since 2008, and said his companies "are not alone"

The key to this broader access to 5G service is the falling price of the specialized semiconductors needed for 5G phones, a trend that analysts expect to continue.