Saturday, April 20, 2024
The pandemic certainly turned the semiconductor industry on its head. Despite record production of semiconductors, shortages everywhere led to months-long waiting lists for many consumer products. To meet consumer demand, semiconductor makers ramped up supply even more. But then inflation arrived and decided to stay awhile. Central banks responded by raising rates, and economies slowed. […]
Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) has been my favorite semiconductor company for a very long time. It is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of advanced processor chips. And now, Warren Buffett has joined the Taiwan Semi fan club. On November 14, a filing with U.S. securities regulators showed that Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B and BRK.A) had purchased […]
The current state of the global semiconductor industry can be described by the famous opening words of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” The global chip supply crunch triggered by the pandemic is likely to be drag on for the next two […]
Despite the view from Wall Street analysts and their rose-colored glasses, the woes of the semiconductor industry continue. Last month, a warning came from Peter Wennick, CEO of ASML Holding (ASML), a manufacturer of chip-making equipment. In an interview with the Financial Times, Wennick said: “Next year and the year after, there will be shortages. […]
There has been a lot of happy talk coming from Wall Street lately about how semiconductor shortages will be over soon. Don’t believe a word of it. Semiconductor Shortage Persists According to the U.S. electronic component distributor Sourcengine, lead times for chip orders in early February grew from five to 15 weeks longer from where […]
Soaring demand for semiconductors used in smartphones, laptops, and other gadgets during the pandemic has led to an acute chip crunch, keeping order books full at Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), the world’s most valuable and largest semiconductor manufacturer. No wonder it reported a record quarterly profit. Taiwan Semiconductor’s revenue growth went above 20% year on year […]
According to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, for example, demand could exceed supply through 2022. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says the shortage won’t end until 2023. “We’re in the worst of it now, every quarter, next year we’ll get incrementally better, but they’re not going to have supply-demand balance until 2023,” he told The Independent. STMicro […]
It was just last week when I told you that Intel’s deal to sell its loss-making NAND flash memory unit was the beginning of a move toward greater consolidation in the semiconductor industry. And sure enough, a few days later, another major deal was announced. This time Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) agreed to buy rival […]
