Running at full production capacity, the global microchip supply that makes up the innards of just about every piece of modern machinery had already been just about meeting the demand and so when the health crisis hit in 2020 and the production plants were required to temporarily close, the already at demand production fell behind schedule.

The automotive industry was one hit hard by this, modern cars can often have up to 3,000 of these microchips and more for newer electric vehicles and those that weren’t able to secure a surplus had to limit production or close plants temporarily – Toyota has been the latest to announce that production will be cut this year because of this shortage. Manufactures such as Tesla have always had longer lead times on their vehicles but with over a year in delivery time this isn’t set to change, and other more reliable manufacturers are experiencing the same delays to a lesser extent with months between delivery but also leading to regular cancellations on delivery too. 

Other electronics have been impacted too, despite online businesses thriving during this period of time particularly related to sports as players can see BetRivers Affiliate code in Ontario for regular usage largely through a growing audience and changing demographic, but less impacted as the likes of mobile sales had been falling prior to the shortage.

Chip manufacturer Intel have been looking to find a solution to this problem by pledging billions in funding to create new plants for manufacturing these semiconductors – a large facility in Germany and one in Ireland have already been committed to with another being announced for Ohio too. With much of the existing production being handled across Asia, these new facilities could help to offset that demand and perhaps for the first time even lead to a global surplus in these semiconductors.

It will take some time to get these plants off the ground and running though, and during that interim period the shortage will remain in place – a month ago, headlines had suggested that the shortage could be in its closing stages but to contradict that, the CEO of Intel has most recently suggested this shortage could last throughout 2024 and into 2025 too, and so those hoping to see change in the short term will be disappointed.

Having a plan in place to combat this will offer some reassurance to manufacturers and investors alike, but the shortage over the past two years has outlined the current reliance on this hardware and how quickly things can go wrong if not quickly addressed – ultimately time will tell just how long this shortage will continue on for, but with goalposts being pushed back regularly, even modest estimates could be way off.