Concept
The 2020–present global chip shortage is an ongoing, worldwide chip shortage affecting more than 169 industries. The crisis has led to major price increases, long queues and reselling among consumers and manufacturers for automobiles, graphics cards, video game consoles, computers, household appliances, and other consumer electronics that require integrated circuits (commonly called "chips"). From early 2020, the effects of and the mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic caused disruptions in supply chains and logistics which, coupled with a 13% increase in global demand for PCs owing to some countries' shift to a stay-at-home economy, impacted the availability of key chips necessary for the manufacturing of a broad swathe of electronics. The pandemic's impact on the manufacture of semiconductors in South Korea and Taiwan was cited as a cause for the shortage, with constrained supply impacting industries as broad as console gaming and the automotive industry. In February 2021, market analysts IHS Markit were cited by the BBC as forecasting the impact of the dearth to last through to the third quarter of 2021; lead times on chip supply at this time had already extended to 15 weeks, the longest lead time since 2017. By April 2021, lead times for semiconductors from Broadcom Inc. had "extended to 22.2 weeks, up from 12.2 weeks in February 2020". Severe weather events including the droughts in Taiwan during the summer of 2021 were also a significant contributing factor. The droughts affected the production due to the lack of available ultrapure water that is needed to clean the factories and wafers. At the end of Quarter 1 2021, used car prices in some countries were increasing due to the demand from both economic recovery, as well as the chip shortage. The price of some cars increased as much as 10% in Q1. The global chip crisis is due to a combination of different events described as a perfect storm with the snowball effect of the COVID-19 pandemic being the primary reason for accelerating shortages.
Yusuf Leblebici, Lukas Kull, Thomas Toifl