China's zero-COVID policy has sparked huge shortages of materials and serious disruptions to the electronics supply chain
The international research firm Gartner has now released a new survey report, which stated that the leading ten OEMs have decreased their spendings and investments on semiconductor in 2022 that is around 7.6 percent. This is due to the fact that the global demand for PCs and smartphones have flattened owing to the increasing inflations.
Speaking of total spending, BBK and Dell’s share reached 3 percent, Lenovo 3.5 percent, Samsung Electronics 7.7 percent, and Apple turned to be the highest spender for the fourth consecutive time with 11.1 percent. Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, said, "The zero-Covid policy in China also caused serious material shortages and short-term disruptions to the electronics supply chain. A lingering semiconductor shortage in the automotive, networking and industrial electronics markets, raised chip average selling prices (ASPs) and accelerated semiconductor revenue increases in these markets.”
Interestingly, most of the OEMs decreased their spending in 2022 like HP by 18.9 percent, Apple reduced it by 2.6 percent, while Huawei did the same by 19 percent. In this perspective, Sony and Samsung were the only two global firms that are leading the race by 16.5 percent and 2.2 percent. The report added that Sony’s spending was increased due to the high demand for playstation 5 consoles, while for Samsung, there is a huge demand for foldable smartphones.
As per a report of the Mint, Apple reduced its spending on micro-processing units (MPUs) by 11.7% as it shifted to its in-house-designed application processors. However, Apple has increased spending on non-memory chips by 2.8%. Unlike CPUs which handle a wide range of functions, microprocessors are meant to execute specific and repeatable actions. Gartner's senior director analyst Masatsune Yamaji, stated that China's zero-COVID policy has sparked huge shortages of materials and serious disruptions to the electronics supply chain.
Yamaji further added, "A lingering semiconductor shortage in the automotive, networking, and industrial electronics markets, raised chip average selling prices (ASPs) and accelerated semiconductor revenue increases in these markets. Consequently, these factors resulted in the top OEMs decreasing their share of overall semiconductor spending in 2022 from that in 2021."
