Title: Chip shortage may hit car, electronics manufacture as consumer demand bounces back, World News | wionews.com
Headings: Chip shortage may hit car, electronics manufacture as consumer demand bounces back
Chip shortage may hit car, electronics manufacture as consumer demand bounces back
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Content: But with vaccines slowly making their way to the public, consumer demand for products is slowly increasing. However, a new problem may hit manufacturing of cars and electronic devices from smartphones to televisions and more. There is a shortage of electronic chips. Industry executives and analysts are mentioning several causes for this. These include bulk-buying by U.S. sanctions-hit Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, a fire at a chip plant in Japan, coronavirus lockdowns in Southeast Asia, and a strike in France. More fundamentally, however, there has been under-investment in 8-inch chip manufacturing plants owned mostly by Asian firms, which means they have struggled to ramp up production as demand for 5G phones, laptops and cars picked up faster than expected. "For the whole electronics industry, we've been experiencing a shortage of components," said Donny Zhang, CEO of Shenzhen-based sourcing company Sand and Wave, who said he faced delays in obtaining a microcontroller unit that was key to a smart headphone product he was working on. He was quoted by Reuters. "We were originally planning to complete production in one month, but now it looks like we'll need to do it in two." Reuters quoted a source at a Japanese electronics component supplier who said it was seeing shortages of WiFi and Bluetooth chips and was expecting delays of more than 10 weeks.