Global chip shortage could drag on until 2023

The great chip drought is set to continue until 2023, according to the latest prediction on the ongoing silicon shortage – one of a number of gloomy forecasts in recent times which cast dark and foreboding shadows over the supply and demand prospects for the whole of next year.

Kotaku flagged up a report from Bloomberg which highlights Toshiba as one of the firms impacted by the component shortage, and struggling to meet orders and demand. Takeshi Kamebuchi, head of semiconductors at Toshiba, told Bloomberg: “The supply of chips will remain very tight until at least September next year. In some cases, we may find some customers not being fully served until 2023.”

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So, we’re looking at a scenario of supply problems continuing throughout 2022, at least going by what Toshiba believes to be the case for the component supply lines (and it isn’t alone – we’ll come back to that). Specifically, this is the supply of power-regulating chips used in all manner of consumer electronics, as well as cars.

Indeed, car production has really felt the pinch, as has Sony, with Bloomberg observing that production for the PS5 in Q2 of 2021 fell short of the numbers of units mustered with the PS4 previously.

Analysis: How doomy and gloomy can it get?

Things aren’t looking too clever, then, and we’ve already seen the impact of this kind of supply shortfall with processors and graphics cards (particularly the latter), and other components in the PC arena, plus the console world too as mentioned.

The most worrying thing is that these predictions that supply is in trouble for the long haul are being echoed across the tech world, which very much underlines the gravity of the situation.

Chip shortages being felt until 2023 is the forecast we recently heard from Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger, who observed that while shortages will ‘bottom out’ in the latter half of 2021, it’ll “take another one to two years before the industry is able to completely catch up with the demand”.

TSMC and IBM have both issued some fairly dire warnings on the component situation, too, with the latter predicting that shortages could last through to the start of 2023. The hope is that these, and other, tech behemoths are being overly pessimistic is starting to fade rapidly.