Electronics demand soars due to a “perfect storm”: As working and learning from home has become the norm during COVID-19, growing demand for electronic devices such as consoles, PCs, smartphones, and connectivity has skyrocketed. The industry already faced long production and delivery times (about 18 weeks), and building additional capacity requires six to nine months and billions of dollars. Making matters worse, chip shipments themselves have been delayed due to reduced flight numbers and airway closures caused by the pandemic. Furthermore, global shipments of COVID-19-related items are tying up flight capacity, and the global grounding of dozens of Boeing 777s due to engine failures has further strained air cargo capacity. Furthermore, the production of substrates, the foundation on which chip components are based, is limited in supply due to a fire at a factory in Taiwan. This “perfect storm” triggers a collapse in chip availability, impacting first the automotive sector, then automatic machines, the consumer sector, and so on. Finally, the global chip business produced by silicon foundries is 63% in Taiwan, 18% in Korea, and 6% in China, creating a dangerous bottleneck. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) alone has 50% of the chip market and 90% of the latest-generation microprocessors, and TSMC and Korea’s Samsung are the only companies capable of producing 5nm technology (transistor channel length).
