TrendForce: notebooks least affected in impact of components shortage
Various chip shortages in the past two years have affected shipments of various hardware, including PCs and even mobile phones. Although the major foundries began to expand their production capacity last year, the new production capacity will not be put into service until at least 2023, so the shortage of chips should not end in the short term. However, according to TrendForce analysis, the shortage of parts for some notebooks and desktops is easing.
A 2 nm wafer fabricated at IBM Research’s Albany facility. The wafer contains hundreds of individual chips. Courtesy of IBM
According to TrendForce, the shortage of raw materials for PC components has eased since November last year, allowing major PC ODMs and OEMs to increase shipments in the fourth quarter of 2021. The parts that are currently in short supply are those SSDs that require a PCI-E 3.0 controller, and PC parts built around Intel’s 12th-generation Core processors. Lead times for these parts are currently around 8 to 12 weeks. At the same time, the delivery time of chips with low unit price but very high demand, such as ordinary power IC management chips, WiFi controllers, USB Type-C, and power supply controllers, is also improving.
Generally speaking, PC shipments decline significantly in the first quarter of each year, but due to improved component supply, TrendForce predicts that shipments of notebook PCs owned by ODM manufacturers will only drop by around 5.1% in the first quarter of this year.
But it’s not all good news for other devices. For example, the foundry’s current mature cycle capacity for the production of display driver ICs and touch screen controllers is still quite insufficient. For example, the chip of the server LAN still needs to be delivered in about 40 weeks at the fastest, while the delivery time of the FPGA is more than 50 weeks. As a result, TrendForce expects server shipments to drop by around 8% in the first quarter of this year.
