Renesas Electronics Corp’s top executive warned that a global shortage of auto semiconductors might persist into the second half of this year, joining other industry leaders in bracing for a chip crunch to snarl production of vehicles and gadgets well past the summer.
Industry giants from Continental AG to Innolux Corp have in the past few weeks warned of longer-than-anticipated deficits thanks to unprecedented demand for everything from vehicles to game consoles and smartphones amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Renesas is running its most critical plants at full capacity to try and sate demand, but there was no way of telling when the market might balance out, chief executive officer Hidetoshi Shibata told reporters.
Photo: Reuters
“Supply will remain tight through the first half of the year,” Shibata said this week. “And the way things look now, the situation will continue into the second half, but it’s anyone’s guess.”
Chipmakers such as Renesas and its partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are at the forefront of a global effort to plug a shortfall in supply of chips, the building blocks of a plethora of consumer products.
Automakers got hit first in part because of poor inventory planning and are expected to miss out on US$61 billion of sales this year alone.
Some analysts say that shortages could get mostly ironed out in the next few months, but the concern is that tight supply in certain segments — such as in more mature semiconductors where it takes time to build capacity — might eventually throttle the broader consumer electronics industry and jack up prices if it persists.
Semiconductors are now near the top of official agendas from Washington to Brussels.
Renesas, which vies with NXP Semiconductors NV and Infineon Technologies AG to supply automakers, is a prime barometer for the sector. It gets about half of its revenue from chips for vehicles and counts all the major automakers among its clients — Toyota Motor Corp, Ford Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co.
It also outsources some production of more advanced chips to TSMC, the world’s largest contract manufacturer.
Renesas’ 200mm wafer line on the southern island of Kyushu is operating near full capacity, while its 300mm fab in Naka, north of Tokyo, is in “overdrive.”
For every 40-nanometer microcontroller it makes at the Naka fab, it orders six from TSMC, a proportion that has not changed with the shortage, Shibata said.
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