Sinolink: TSMC's CPO Makes Progress, Poor Performance of Chinese Consumer Electronics in November.

Sinolink released a research report stating that overseas chat assistant AI applications like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude have hit bottom due to the holiday season and their activity levels are rebounding. Domestic applications like KimiChat and Wenxin Yiyi have seen a slowdown in growth, with Byte Bean surpassing KimiChat in webpage activity to become the most visited application domestically. In the video generation field, Sora's visits have declined while Kuaishou Kelin continues to grow steadily, with overall visits surpassing Sora. In addition, CES 2025 showcased AI glasses from multiple manufacturers, with Halliday launching a new technology based on retinal projection. With the participation of mobile phone manufacturers, the AI glasses market is expected to boom in 2025. Sinolink's main points are as follows: - TSMC has made breakthrough progress in the field of silicon photonics technology and plans to launch samples in 2025. - TSMC has made significant progress in the field of silicon photonics technology, integrating optical-electrical co-packaging (CPO) with advanced packaging technology to upgrade performance from electrical signals to optical signals. They plan to launch samples in 2025. Their optical engine (COUPE) technology roadmap gradually increases the depth of optical-electrical integration, providing efficient solutions for high-performance computing and AI applications. However, the current application of CPO technology is mainly focused on communication between switch nodes, making it difficult to achieve large-scale interconnection within high-performance computing cards directly, especially in terms of cooling and wiring at the cabinet level still need breakthroughs. Despite this, the initial application of CPO technology lays an important foundation for future higher-integration optical-electronic solutions and further consolidates TSMC's leading position in the field of advanced packaging. - Smartphone sales in China reached approximately 24 million units in November, a year-on-year decrease of 7.47%. - Laptop sales in China reached approximately 1.88 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 16.34%, while desktop sales reached approximately 1.41 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 7.08%. This is related to Singles' Day falling about 10 days earlier this year. Looking at trends in the smartphone market, major Android manufacturers are launching new models to promote the integration of AI into smartphones, leading the market to continue its recovery stimulated by AI. - Apple's protection of data becomes more stringent. As Apple advances with its Apple Intelligence and combines edge-cloud mode, the company's protection of data becomes more stringent. This will also urge Apple to transfer its cloud from Amazon AWS to its own data centers. Currently, Apple is upgrading the packaging of its MacBook M series chips from 2D InFO packaging to 3D SOIC packaging in order to turn the M series chips into computing cards for its own data center serv