The hottest topic recently is the supply-demand relationship of chips. For now, the supply of chips is very short, and the demand exceeds supply. The production capacity of chips is very tight, but the demand remains high.
Why there is a shortage of chips?
COVID-19 that broke out is one of the main reasons for the shortage of chips.
Due to the outbreak of the epidemic, people need home office and entertainment, which has driven the demand for electronic products such as laptops, tablets and smart phones. The hot selling of these electronic products has increased the demand for chips.
By 2021, the global damage caused by COVID-19 will be reduced, when people hope that the chip problem will be alleviated. Nature is joking again. First, Japan suffered a 7.3 magnitude earthquake, and semiconductor factories such as Toshiba and Fujitsu were damaged.
Immediately after, Texas was hit by a rare snowstorm, and several semiconductor manufacturing plants were shut down. This includes two Samsung semiconductor factories. According to data, these two factories account for about 28% of Samsung's total chip production capacity. This makes the already tight chip supply even worse.
Another reason, foundry capacity is very tight at present, and the delivery time has been extended a lot. The delivery time before was about two months, but at present it has reached four months. Even with such a delivery date, it is still being snatched wildly, otherwise there will be a huge risk of delivery failure.
In 2021, almost all raw materials cost are rising, the cost of production increase brought us a lot of troubles.
How to deal with the chip shortage
We advice keeping inventory appropriately in case of supply interruption and maintaining normal business operations. Obviously, this is the main and feasible solution.
Since the second half of last year, Feasycom bought many chips as stock to meet our customers’ demands. There has been a substantial increase in orders, some of our module stock couldn’t meet all orders requirements. Under this pressure, we developed new product for replacing parts in shortage, chips like CSR BC417, CSR57E, QCC3007, and ST MCU are all in shortage, we use QCC3024 to replace CSR57E and QCC3007, the part number of the module is FSC-BT1026C, it’s pin to pin with our FSC-BT1006A (QCC3007), we also use Realtek RTL8761 and Chinese vendor’s MCU to replace the BC417 and ST MCU, the part number is BT836G.
In any case, in order to maintain a good economic operation, we recommend placing an order in advance and properly reserve inventory to ensure the good operation of the company. Of course, we will do our best to help customers through this difficulty together.
