Barcelona (AFP).- When will the shortage of chips for high-tech products end? At the World Mobile Telephony Congress in Barcelona, manufacturers and specialists ask for patience while the war in Ukraine triggers fears of new difficulties for a market already under stress.
Logistical problems, depletion of stocks, saturated factories… “The situation continues to be very complicated for the sector, patience will be needed”warns Ariane Bucaille, a specialist in the semiconductor market at Deloitte.
The shortage of chips, derived from the boom in global demand for electronic products and the disturbances caused by the health crisis in supply chains, has shaken the entire world economy for a year.
The situation fully affected the automobile industry and the computer sectorhighly dependent on these electronic components, but also on the smartphone market, although the latter is holding up better than other sectors.
According to the analysis office IDC, mobile phone sales fell 3.2% in the fourth quarter, up to 363.1 million units. In China, on their side, they plummeted 11% in the same period, according to Counterpoint research.
This hasn’t stopped smartphone giants like Apple and Samsung from posting record profits in 2021. The shortage, however, has led to long delays in product launches, dimming the outlook for the sector.
neon and palladium
What will be the effect of the war in Ukraine on an already disrupted market? For Marina Koytcheva, analyst at CCS, it is “unlikely” that the smartphone sector “will not be affected by the impact of the crisis in Ukraine, taking into account the economic and geographical importance of Russia and Ukraine”.
Russia is a major supplier of palladium, a rare metal ubiquitous in electronics. Ukraine, for its part, has large reserves of neon, an essential gas for the lasers used in the manufacture of semi-conductors.
“Ukraine currently supplies 70% of the global demand for neon,” recalls the Taiwanese think tank TrendForce. “If the supply of these materials is cut, there will be an impact on the industry”, which will translate into a “rise in production costs”, she estimates.
On the side of the chip manufacturers, very present at the World Congress of mobile telephony in Barcelona (MWC), they send, however, reassuring messages. “We do not anticipate any impact on our supply chain,” indicated the American manufacturer Intel, which claimed to have “diversified” sources.
“We only use a small amount of neon,” a spokesman for the Dutch supplier ASML told AFP, also saying that examine alternative sources of supply.
A message similar to that conveyed by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). “The semiconductor industry has a diverse range of suppliers of key materials and gases, so we don’t think there are any immediate risks of a supply disruption,” he said in a statement.
‘Hard times’
Whatever the impact of the Ukrainian crisis, it is unlikely that there will be a quick return to normality. “The needs for semiconductors are now very high (…) The market is still unbalanced,” insists Ariane Bucaille.
According to the US bank JP Morgan, the shortage of semiconductors will last throughout the year 2022While for Deloitte, the situation would not improve until 2024, despite efforts to increase production capacities.
In recent months, the giants of the sector announced billions of investments in new factories, such as the Taiwanese TSMC or the Korean Samsung Electronics, which will inject 15,000 million euros in a production chain in Texas.
But these measures, which aim to diversify the production of chips, “will not bear fruit for two or three years”, as they are “complex technologies”, which involve finding “an extremely qualified workforce”, underlines Ariane Bucaille.
It seems that the manufacturers themselves share. “These are tough times,” with “unprecedented demand,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger acknowledged at a recent conference. A situation that should continue, according to him, “until the year 2023, maybe beyond”.
Source: Eluniverso
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