Toshiba: Global chip shortages will continue for at least another year

Toshiba warns that global chip shortages will affect the availability of goods for at least another year. In some cases, semiconductor buyers will experience problems with deliveries until 2023.

So says Takeshi Kamebuchi, a top executive at Toshiba who is in charge of semiconductors at one of the business units. He tells the American financial news agency that the problem currently lies mainly with the chips that are responsible for the distribution of energy over the various parts of devices. Such a part is not as complex and expensive as memory or processors, but just as important for the entire device.

About which parties will be given priority in the event of a shortage of chips, the Toshiba CEO says that ‘we will look at which customer has the most serious situation’. Examples he mentions are ‘companies where the entire production line comes to a standstill without the component in question, or where the company goes under without an influx of chips’.

Bloomberg further writes that Toshiba will invest a total of about 460 million euros between March 2021 and March 2024 in scaling up its production capacity. The company also does not rule out the possibility of opening an additional factory.

The worldwide chip shortages mean that certain products, such as the Xbox Series X and S and the PlayStation 5, are very difficult to obtain. Car factories are also noticing many of the shortages: production lines are temporarily stopped here and there, fewer cars are rolling off the production line and certain functions are being canceled.