For any business involving semiconductors, you must have heard or seen about the chip shortage lately. Well, creating a chip is an extremely long, entangled and expensive process, which definitely puts it in the spot of shortage.
Chips (Semiconductor or microchip) have made many things possible today. These are the major elements for any gadgets or you can simply refer to them as the life of the gadgets. And for this semiconductor industry, Taiwan dominates over everyone in this entire world. It is even responsible for more than half of the global market share of generating these chips.
But lately, in the pandemic of Covid-19, a major shortage of these silicon chips have been noted. According to a report by IEEE Spectrum, the automakers abolished the production of vehicles at the very beginning of the pandemic and ordered huge amounts of chips.
Looking at these statistics, the chipmakers thought that other industries will also follow this and this resulted in decreased chip production. But what actually happened was entirely the opposite of what the chipmakers thought! Demands for chips rose because of the digital remote of the classrooms and offices.
Because of this, some of the biggest companies across the world got affected pretty badly. And that’s what we are discussing in this article. We have described how some of the top companies got affected by the shortage of chips. Let’s get started!
Top 3 Companies affected by Global Chip Shortage
Apple
This might come as a little shocking to you that a company as big as Apple gets affected by the chips shortage! But this is true.
As of April 2020, Apple published its second-quarter revenue report which clearly outdated the estimation made by the analysts. Within the same period, the CFO Luca Maestri, through a conference call, warned the company that because of the supply limitations, the revenue can be decreased by $3-4 billion, that is, its third-quarter revenue. He mentioned that because of the shortage in the chip’s supply, the sales of iPads and Macs can be majorly affected.
These gadgets carry a very high demand among the customers, especially in the pandemic when everything went digital. The CEO of the company, Tim Cook said that the chip shortage only affected the “hereditary nodes” of the previous chips, although the company didn’t really reveal the specification of the chip.
Apple entirely relies on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, for the production of chips needed for the creation of Apple’s products.
Alan Joseph
Nintendo
The company, Nintendo, has already established itself with some very serious complications. This was mainly because the investors questioned how Nintendo’s aging Switch gaming console could survive or beat the PS5 and Microsoft’s Xbox series consoles. But the company proved everyone wrong when it came out with a tremendous fourth-quarter revenue report, beating the estimation made by the analysts.
Nintendo got majorly affected because of the chip shortage and brought hard competition to the robust sales of the company throughout the pandemic. Because of this, the company is expected to decrease the operating profit up to 9% and 22%. Alongside, the annual Switch console shipment will also decrease by around 11%.
Nintendo uses the fast NVIDIA chip along with the Samsung OLED display for the development of its upgraded Nintendo Switch OLED. But because of the chip shortage, it became difficult to launch these.
Sony
The very famous Sony came out with the latest PS5 consoles at the end of 2020. Chips were expected to play a very vital role in this as they would enhance the gaming and networking services segment. This alone holds the revenue of 30% along with 35% of the operating profit in the fiscal year 2020.
The gaming and network services rose up to 35% in revenue in the year 2020 which increased the sales of PS4 software alongside the launch of PS5’s launch. In fact, the PS5 also witnessed huge profit at the beginning of its sales. Sony sold around 7.8 million PS5 units by the end of March 2020 and the estimated data showed that the sales would increase more vibrantly throughout the year.
But because of the global chips shortage, the PS5 console could not reach the growth trajectory which was expected to rise with great heights. The chip shortage caused delays in the third-party game publishers that resulted in the postponing of the PS5 console among the larger audience.
Abinaya Arangarajan
Conclusion
The global chips shortage resulted in some major losses for companies. Although both Sony and TSMC are working on speeding the production of chips all over the world. Still, many doubt that won’t be possible on a larger scale. Many theories and speculations have been made on this venture but still, no proper answer has been finalized for a better cause.
The chips/microchips/semiconductors are the basic element for any electronic gadgets and companies like Apple or Sony that produce these on a massive scale face major issues and losses during such crises. In this article, we highlighted the three major companies that faced a major crisis because of the shortage of chips.
FAQ
Why is there a silicon chip shortage?
The reason behind global chip shortage is supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic and a sharp rise in demand for electronic goods.
How long will the chip shortage last?
According to some analysts the shortage will likely last until 2023.
Which is the largest chip manufacturer?
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. or TSMC, is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of the semiconductor chips.
