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Rising Prices and Empty Warehouses: PC makers warn of busy transport companies bringing hardware from most Asian countries to global trade. The occupancy rate is already high, which leads to a doubling or tripling of transport costs in the intermediate trade, as he has heard from various sources heise online.
Some air travel uses excess space in passenger planes, but air traffic has decreased significantly due to the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, manufacturers can reserve less space. This also has an impact on shipping, which has gotten more expensive in recent months.
The Web site The register summarizes the rumors of Dell’s PC makers, among others, that the delivery situation could worsen by early 2021 if health authorities allow corona vaccines. So the worldwide distribution of these vaccines also begins by air.
Increased demand for RAM and SSD
However, there are other factors that could lead to a rise in hardware prices. The Taiwanese industry service Digitimes and market observer DRAM Exchange agrees that hyperscallers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft will continue to upgrade their data centers in 2021 to meet the growing demand for cloud services. On the one hand, they need memory; on the other hand, the new processors AMD (Epyc 7003, Milan) and Intel (third generation Xeon SP, Ice Lake SP with PCIe 4.0) could block production capabilities.
If hyperscalers actually buy a particularly large number of new servers in 2021, the price of DRAM memory chips could also rise by mid-year.
DRAM Exchange estimates that contract chip makers will generate around 24% more sales in 2020 than in 2019 – that would be the highest increase in the past 10 years. Modern manufacturing processes with structures of 10 nanometers and finer are said to be nearly complete at both TSMC and Samsung. The demand for exposure machines with extreme ultraviolet wavelengths (EUVs) exceeds the capacity of the supplier ASML, which is the only one to build such devices for 7nm processes.
However, there is also a shortage of older manufacturing processes, for example in the case of 28nm technology, which manufacturers use to produce WLAN chips or power management ICs (PMICs), for example. Smaller 200mm silicon wafers are often used there, but fewer of these are produced in favor of more profitable 300mm wafers according to DRAM Exchange.
Asians produce more smartphones
Meanwhile, smartphone makers are taking advantage of the trade war between China and the US to increase their market share – industry giant Huawei is cut off from the US, so the manufacturer can hardly produce its own smartphones. As a result, competitors like Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are increasing their production.
The coronavirus pandemic has ensured high demand for notebooks throughout the year. For example, PC manufacturers complain about component shortages affecting displays. Strong Digitimes Contractual disputes prevail between Sharp Display Products Corp. and Corning, which has a negative impact on the panel production of the Sharp subsidiary. Their displays are found in many notebooks. Additionally, some small Chinese suppliers who have produced special parts are said to have gone bankrupt this year – manufacturers must first find replacements for these.
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