Severe shortages impact key commodity components

With demand exceeding supply, availability remains extremely tight for widely used analog ICs and memory ICs. The supply situation is even more critical for standard logic ICs and power management discretes such as low-voltage MOSFETs and tantalum capacitors, which now are experiencing shortages and effectively are on allocation status, meaning suppliers are unable to respond to un-forecasted demand, the market researcher points out. Lead times are longer than forecasts indicated a month ago. The lead time in June was 20 weeks for power MOSFETs and small signal transistors, and 18 weeks for bipolar power devices and rectifiers. This compares to normal lead times of approximately 10 to 12 weeks. The attached figure presents lead times for bellwether electronic products. "When lead times enter the 20 week range, they indicate a major schism between component supply and demand", said Rick Pierson, senior analyst for semiconductors and component price tracking at iSuppli.