Qualcomm’s struggle to meet demand could hurt smaller phone manufacturers

The demand for electronic devices increased during the past year, which led to the shortage of chips that power them. The main problem currently is the shortage of chips that are made with older technologies, but the problems caused in the supply chain might strike manufacturers of more advanced chips like Qualcomm.

A fine example is the slowed-down manufacturing of the latest top-notch Snapdragon 888 chipset, which uses some parts like radiofrequency transceivers made by Samsung in Texas, where the power outages were caused by extremely cold weather closed the manufacturing plant.

But the main problem is the demand which is still higher than what Qualcomm can produce. While all Qualcomm’s focus is pointed to the production of lucrative Snapdragon 888, the supply chain for lower-end chips might be in trouble.

That caused companies to place orders like crazy, which is raising the price of chipsets. Some companies don’t rely much on Qualcomm’s low-end chipsets, like Xiaomi, and some are turning to other manufacturers, but this could slow down smaller manufacturers like HMD Global.

Qualcomm and HMD Global are working on more affordable 5G phones that are going to be using new 5G chips like Snapdragon 480 5G and maybe SD 690 5G chip. Reuters doesn’t mention if the production of these chipsets is slowed down, but if SD 888 is taking all the resources in the supply chain, that might be the case.

New Nokia devices might be coming on April 8, exactly on the birthday of Nokiamob, and the chip shortage could be the reason we are waiting longer for new announcements than usual. Well, MWC2021 could be cancelled once again, so there is still time to create a new strategy and bring new devices just before summer when folks will forget a bit about the Covid 19 pandemic.

Source Reuters

 

Cheers SirFaceFone for the tip 😉