Pokde.NET Tech And Gaming Outlook 2026

Since we’re halfway into 2026 by now, here at Pokde.NET we figure it’s a good opportunity to take a look at the tech and gaming industry at large and see where we’re heading for the next six months. Heads up – there will be some speculations involved on our part, but here’s what we think you can expect from the two.

At Large: Outside Of AI, It’s A Long Winter Ahead

Well, unless you live under a rock for the past several years, you certainly has heard the magical two-letter term “AI” thrown around more times than you can count. Companies are racing to fit, cram, and shove as many features with AI as they can, oftentimes to the detriment of user experience – but it’s not showing signs of slowing down at the moment. Compounding on top of that is the sheer demand that inevitably caused the memory pricing shortage, which means a lot of consumer product development has been severely impacted as a result.

The quick takeaway is this: don’t expect too much out of consumer tech brands as they tighten up their financials to survive with the limited memory supply for their products for the near future. It is widely believed that the said shortage will only alleviate by 2028 at the earliest, so the knock-on effects may still change how the tech industry looks like from the perspective of a consumer.

Smartphones: Batteries Get Even Bigger, Designs Slowly Unify

Smartphones are reaching a point where hardware differences between brands are becoming less obvious, even in the flagship segment. Take any flagship today and chances are it comes with high refresh rate OLED displays, highly-capable cameras, premium build, to name a few – so there’s not a whole lot for a smartphone maker to make its model stand out these days.

Battery technology is expected to become one of the biggest areas of competition for the foreseeable future, as silicon-carbon batteries is a major update to the longstanding lithium-ion technology that allows brands to fit more capacity without noticeably increasing thickness or weight. It’s largely why smartphones – especially Chinese-branded models – easily go beyond 6,000mAh these days, and we’re looking at numbers approaching five digits pretty soon as the tech gets further refined.

Simultaneously (and perhaps less excitingly), smartphone designs are slowly becoming more uniform. Think flat frames, flat displays, big rounded corners, and large circular or rectangular camera modules – these pretty much sums up smartphone releases of late, with fewer brands experimenting with unusual shapes or materials, especially as “infinity edge” display designs are going out of fashion mostly due to UX and ergonomic troubles. This one is a bit of pet peeve for me, as I’m not a believer that flat frames are the be-all-and-end-all in terms of ergonomics.

That being said, foldables remain one of the few areas where manufacturers can still visibly differentiate themselves, especially through thinner chassis, reduced creases, and improved durability. There’s even murmurings of new form factors like widescreen book-style models (where each half of the chassis is much shorter than a typical ~19.5:9 aspect ratio of modern smartphones) that allows the inner screen to properly fit the widescreen aspect ratio for content consumption, and leaks suggests both Apple and Samsung are experimenting with this as HUAWEI leads the way with the Pura X Max foldable.

Related Article

Xiaomi 17T Series Debuts In Malaysia With Two Variants Now Available

How Does HONOR Magic V6 Stay Tough And Durable As A Foldable Smartphone?

Dongfeng & Volt Auto Reaffirm Malaysia Commitment, Outline EV Expansion Plans

We also predict that gaming smartphones category may continue to shrink. Since ASUS has dropped its smartphone business altogether, that leaves REDMAGIC and several small-scale players in this segment, where it has become harder to justify specialized designs over regular flagships. Owing to common framerate limits in most mobile games, almost all flagship smartphones can game just as well, especially as they all largely share the same silicon under the hood – with the bonus of not worrying about the longevity of dedicated cooling fans or the software support for specific gaming-related features.

Laptops: Memory Is Not The Only Reason Behind Price Spikes

The laptop market as a whole is pretty mature in the 2020s, as the development pace is not quite as aggressive as you’ll see in the smartphone scene. While major redesigns usually come and go every two or three years on average, the internals is the one aspect that always maintains freshness as chipmaker releases new silicon to power the existing chassis. While that has worked for a long time by now, the RAM crisis is unsurprisingly putting a dent on the market as a whole.

Surprisingly, we haven’t seen laptops aggressively cutting RAM capacity as a result – while there are examples here and there (we believe the Lenovo Yoga 7a we recently reviewed, which comes with 24GB of RAM, is somewhat of a victim of this), laptops generally still stick to 32GB DDR5 as standard. The approach from laptop makers, then, is to raise the price to compensate, which makes laptop pricing look quite terrible these days if you compare a similarly-configured laptop just a year ago.

Will this trend of raised price continue? While signs point to yes, there’s also the matter of actual supply itself. No amount of money can pay for things that do not exist (despite the fact that AI industry seems to prove us otherwise), so we think budget laptops – think sub-RM5,000 – might take a pretty bad hit come next year once existing supply agreements expire, and the situation has not manage to improve by then. As for gaming laptops, well, let’s just say we’re all at the mercy of Jensen Huang at this point, so… good luck to us!

PC Components: It Couldn’t Get Any Worse, Could It?

PC enthusiasts are entering the worst timeline right now. First it was cryptocurrency, then it was Covid, and since last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s “letter of intent” has wrecked so much havoc in this particular industry that not only consumers become disgruntled, even the brands themselves are having troubles keeping themselves afloat (or at least the gaming divisions of such). We suppose the upcoming COMPUTEX 2026 will be the live example of this.

In an alternate timeline, we also would’ve seen NVIDIA’s RTX 50 SUPER series by now, and probably expecting RTX 60 series by year end or early next year. Thanks to the AI mafia though, we won’t see RTX 60 until 2028 at earliest. On the opposite side of the barely-existent GPU rivalry, AMD is – as they say – “never missing the opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Don’t expect Team Red to change the status quo if the infamous “NVIDIA minus $50” pricing strategy continues.

While regarded as the only hope to break the duopoly, Intel’s GPU business is also looking pretty dire. Leaks suggest Celestial is no more, and even its own laptop will soon be paired with NVIDIA-based graphics in part thanks to US government’s involvement in somewhat marrying both companies together (in other words, NVIDIA owning ~5% of Team Blue) in the name of national security. Would the GPU department survive in the consumer space at all? We have doubts.

Okay that’s perhaps a bit too much doomerism at this point, but there’s things to be looking forward to. The biggest one is perhaps Intel Nova Lake, which is widely seen as the chipmaker’s best opportunity to strike back against AMD in years. The rumored architecture is said to feature bLLC (Big Last-Level Cache) to mimic AMD’s X3D technologies in some models, while the massively increased core counts on the top end will also give the 16-core models from Team Red a run for their money.

Meanwhile on AMD’s CPU department, not much has been heard on “Zen 6”, though the company just recently confirmed that it is in production, though not for consumer hardware. In fact, it’s heading to datacenters first – just like before – for the EPYC ‘Verano’ models, and there’s a high chance that we won’t be seeing any of this on the shelves until 2027. That should probably give Intel the head start on the desktop market, which it desperate needs right now.

We want to take a quick detour to focus on gaming monitors. While the latest trend seems to be DFR (dynamic frequency and resolution) and ever-faster refresh rates – including one from LG that exceeds 1,000Hz at 1080p – this space is where innovation still remains strong, and we can also look at TV development to see where the monitor market heads next.

In particular, there is a newly emerged panel type called Micro RGB, and you can think of it as Mini LED on steroids: instead of a white zoned LEDs, three individual LEDs behind the panel can boost colors even further, which should make it plenty competitive against QD-OLED panel types without the black level penalties or burn-in risks involved. We may even see monitors that begin to target BT.2020 color spaces instead of DCI-P3, which is pretty ubiquitous by now.

Cars: Two Completely Different Ideas

China has made big strides in the Malaysian market in the recent years with the introduction of several brands, key among them being the Chinese EV giant BYD. Many Chinese brands followed, including GWM, JAECOO, Zeekr, Xpeng, Leapmotor, Chery, and perhaps a few more smaller brands that all pretty much have a similar philosophy of vehicle design, sometimes jokingly called “iPad on wheels” – you can thank Tesla for starting this trend of over-minimalist interiors for better or worse.

Consider me the biggest hater of giant screens in cars: if texting and driving (which involves looking at a screen) is considered illegal, shouldn’t touchscreens in cars be treated the same? Traditional carmakers has gone through their deserved share of criticism for over-reliance on touchscreens for even the most basic of vehicle functions (i.e. AC controls), and Volkswagen in particular has made amends by returning to buttons and dials again; Chinese brands, however, are seemingly still stuck in the mindset of engineering cars like smartphones.

In terms of the direction this automotive industry heading in the near future, incumbents like Toyota and Honda will likely focus on delivering hybrids, since it’s unlikely that EV market as a whole would overtake ICEs/hybrids when it comes to Malaysia’s automotive climate. Proton’s e.MAS 7 PHEV seems to suggest that is the case, too, and it simply comes down to two factors: policy and infrastructure. That will limit EV’s adoption at large, even if China is throwing massive amounts of money at it.

Home Electronics: More Touchscreens, More AI

Let’s face it: virtually every new home electronics introduced these days can’t escape AI marketing. This segment is where the two letters are egregiously plastered all over the product as soon as said function involves any kind of computational feature, and at this point I do wonder if the general public are buying into this at all (try count how many times ‘AI’ has been mentioned in Samsung TVs).

Perhaps equally annoying is the tendency from manufacturers to slap touchscreens wherever there is a flat surface available, some of which are being abused as an advertising vehicle more than anything else. Again, seriously, Samsung? Another trend that is potentially problematic is the over-reliance of smartphone apps for some of the functions found in a specific device. Allow us to point out things didn’t go well for brands like Sonos when they last broke compatibility for its speakers and various devices.

Anyhow, here’s our quick thought of how this segment will move forward, hardware-wise. For TVs, the most immediate technological race will be towards 100% BT.2020 gamut coverage with latest panel technologies, as it is only achieved by select few flagship TVs on the market today; brightness is another metric which has seen gradual improvements over time, so expect brighter and more colorful TVs in the foreseeable future.

For other types of appliances, price will likely be the primary selling point as room for development is very limited in devices like vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, refrigerators, washing machines, etc. To that end, Chinese brands know a thing or two about price wars: Xiaomi has carved a market of its own thanks to value, and even PRISM+ is making solid progress using similar strategies as well.

Cameras: Each Category Has Their Place

We don’t expect the status quo of the camera market to change that much. While gimbal cameras like the DJI Osmo Pocket series have exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to their superior flexibility and use cases (especially for small-scale or solo creators), traditional mirrorless cameras will remain powerful for high-level professional productions willing to spend extra for quality. Same applies to action cameras, with DJI, Insta360, and GoPro all serving a segment that certainly has its place.

Even though we have seen smartphone makers trying to crack open this market with ultra-flagship smartphones with dedicated lens kits (like the vivo X300 Ultra and Oppo Find X9 Ultra), we believe this will be a niche by virtue of sensor limitations. There’s a reason why cameras like Sony a7S is still a solid choice among videographers today – you can’t beat having a physically bigger sensor to have excellent quality, and bulkiness is secondary to quality if pros are given a choice.

Peripherals: Less Experimentation, More Hegemony

Remember the days of crazy-looking peripherals like the SteelSeries Apex 350 (pictured above)? Don’t expect to see anything like it anytime soon, as peripherals – be it keyboard, mice, headphones, and more – are slowly merging into the similar-looking devices as the equation of user experience and ergonomics are slowly but surely getting solved. It’s why most esports-grade mice pretty much look the same, short for some very subtle differences in shapes.

Similarly, keyboards from traditional gaming brands are also adopting the 3-pin/5-pin standard used by custom keyboard makers, as it has been proven that such designs are quite popular among gamers. Eventually, models like Logitech G512 X and ROG Azoth Extreme has support for aftermarket switches, with the usual lubing and sound dampening characteristics that is pretty much ubiquitous in all gaming-related models.

Gaming: Do You Expect Anything Other Than GTA 6?

“Elephant in the room” doesn’t even begin to describe how big of a deal GTA 6 is in the gaming industry today. It’s all of the superlatives combined and then some – while not coming to PC just yet, Grand Theft Auto 6 will be landing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles this November, so long as Rockstar is not delaying the game for the bazilionth time at this point.

As we’re writing this, Activision just dropped another new Call of Duty title for year end, titled Modern Warfare 4 (it seems to be revolving around Korean peninsula given the leetspeak-style ‘사’ in the title, which happens to mean ‘4’ in Korean). So that’s another big blockbuster for 2026, and CoD is one of the very few franchises massive enough to even dare facing Rockstar head-to-head when it comes to launch dates.

As of right now, Forza Horizon 6 is the prime attention-grabber which could land it on some awards come year end. It just recorded a five-fold increase in peak player count since the previous title (now at 300K+), and it looks the majority of the gaming crowd is loving this arcade racer fused with Japan’s unique culture. Even PRAGMATA from the month before is highly praised, and look, who doesn’t love Diana? All in all, gaming in 2026 is looking to be big – if not the biggest in recent history.

So, these are all our takeaways and outlook in the tech and gaming space for the rest of 2026, and by year end we’ll take a look once again and see what happens in the space, and discuss accordingly by then. Until then, be sure to follow our updates on Pokde.NET for the latest news!