Component scarcity: is there any light at the end of the tunnel?

Fewer electronics products sold worldwide

As a result of the general turbulence on the world market due to, among other things, rapidly rising energy prices, the armed conflict in Ukraine, higher interest rates and ever-increasing inflation, there is a decline in sales of electronics products worldwide (e.g. in the first half of 2022, 8.5% fewer mobile phones were sold than in the same period last year).

Component scarcity status: cautiously positive

So we are cautiously positive regarding the availability of electronics components. Certain components do come to us earlier than expected and we see for the first time -since the beginning of 2021- that the prices of some components at brokers are on a downward trend. Obviously positive news, but in addition there are still components that are very difficult to obtain! For instance, we feel that power components -which are also widely used for electric cars or charging stations- are hard to get hold of and also still have very long delivery times.

We hope that chip manufacturers will continue their investments in expanding their production capacity, because the demand for electronics components will only increase further in the next few years, driven by new technologies such as 6G communication and quantum computers. If these investments do not go ahead or only go ahead to a limited extent, we may soon find ourselves in trouble again with the whole sector. And we would rather avoid that.