The global chip crisis, which has been affecting industries such as automotive, smartphones and computers for a while, is now making home electronics manufacturers a challenge.
The global chip crisis that has been going on since last December is now also making it difficult for home electronics manufacturers to meet demand, according to US-based electronics maker Whirlpool Corp.
Chip crisis spreads to almost every industry
Jason Ai, president of Whirlpool, one of the largest white goods companies in the world, said the company fell behind its deliveries by about 10% in March due to the shortage of chip supplies. This rate goes up to 25% in some regions.
While Ai describes the current situation as ‘the perfect storm’, the company struggles to secure enough microcontrollers, simple processors that power more than half of its product range, which includes microwaves, refrigerators, and washing machines.
Some home electronics manufacturers, with the exception of Whirpool, also stated that they had to slow down some of their production lines and would delay launching new products for several months.
The chip crisis that started seriously in late December was partly due to automakers miscalculation of demand and increased sales of smartphones and laptops due to the pandemic. Later, this situation was further multiplied with the problems in some chip production factories.
