Could stock shortages last until 2022? Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is tight, smartphone shipments may b
发布时间：2021-08-24 来源：
The technology industry has been hit by a shortage of semiconductors in recent months as surging demand for a variety of products has led to shortages of increasingly important semiconductors. The global semiconductor shortage has spread to all sectors: cars, personal computers and gaming devices.
Now, Qualcomm has confirmed that smartphones are also affected. In the first quarter of this year, when it was thought that smartphones had "escaped" the worst of the shortage crisis, there are new reports that Qualcomm has struggled to cope with the production of mobile chips, including the flagship Snapdragon 888 5G chip used in most of today's high-end phones.
"Our demand is still essentially higher than supply," Qualcomm's new chief executive, Cristiano Amon, told investors at the company's annual meeting on Wednesday.
Launched in December, the Snapdragon 888 uses Samsung's 5nm technology and has been described by the media as a "reliable flagship core within Android" due to its low power consumption at high performance levels.
On March 11, Reuters reported that Samsung is facing a shortage of Qualcomm SoCs chips, which will mainly affect some of its mid-to-low end models. At the same time, another supplier said there was also a shortage of the Snapdragon 888 chip in the GalaxyS21 series, but it was unclear if that would affect shipments of the model.
The report also quoted insiders as saying that "an executive at a leading chipmaker" said the company "faces a shortage of Qualcomm components and will therefore be forced to significantly cut handset shipments this year". At the same time, the report also revealed that the manufacturer mainly for the world's many well-known mobile phone brand chip foundry.
Other brands are sending similar signals. Last month, Xiaomi Vice President Lu Weibing wrote on Weibo that "there is a shortage of chips this year. It's not a shortage, it's an extreme shortage."
For example, a popular microcontroller chip from STmicro, originally priced at $2, now sells for $14, according to Keith Enggren, CEO of Titoma.
Simon Wan, co-founder of Roborock, a vacuum cleaner brand, said his company's chip suppliers had asked them to put extra deposits on chip orders. Paying only keeps the chips in stock.
"Everyone is placing orders like crazy when in fact they can't even run out of the chips," Wan said, declining to identify the brands of his suppliers.
The semiconductor "crisis" has already made headlines. TSMC was even recently reported to have auctioned off excess wafer capacity at a 15-20 per cent premium, but Taiwan was facing water shortages during the dry season. Taiwan's drought is likely to exacerbate the chip shortage, as fabs require large amounts of water every day.
Taiwan's foundries say the local industry has enough chip capacity to last until May, pending the resolution of the crisis. Qualcomm's new CEO thinks the worst of the crisis will be over later this year, while some think it will continue into 2022.
So far, the shortage has focused on chips made using older technology, rather than advanced phone processors designed by Qualcomm. But Qualcomm's restrictions show how complex chip supply chains are bound to spill problems in one part of the chain into others.
We don't yet know which smartphone market has suffered the most from the semiconductor shortage, but phones with high-end 5-nanometer chips such as the Snapdragon 888 could be affected.