Covid-19 Surge in Asia Threatens Manufacture of Ceramic Bits in iPhones and PlayStations
Source: The Wall Street Journal.
TECH
Covid-19 Surge in Asia Threatens Manufacture of Ceramic Bits in iPhones and PlayStations
Top maker of tiny critical component shuts factory for week, highlighting role of the rice of electronics
By Jiyoung Sohn and Yang Jie
https://twitter.com/jiyoungjsohn
jiyoung.sohn@wsj.com
jie.yang@wsj.com
Updated Aug. 30, 2021 8:22 am ET
Hidden inside the newest smartphones are more than a thousand tiny bits of ceramic to control the flow of electricity. Inside an electric vehicle, there are more than 10,000.
They are called MLCCs, for multilayer ceramic capacitors, and the surge of Covid-19 infections across East Asia is raising the risk that factories wont be able to make enough of them.
Murata Manufacturing Co. of Kyoto, Japan, the biggest MLCC maker, closed a major factory for the final week of August because of a virus outbreak. Japans Taiyo Yuden Co. , another major maker, said in August that it suspended some operations at its factory in Malaysia because of employee infections.
MLCC supply will remain very tight, said Forrest Chen, an analyst at Taiwan-based research firm TrendForce.
The world has seen this year how a shortage of normally little-noticed components can hit the global supply chain. Global makers of cars and electronics have shut down factory lines and missed potential sales because they dont have enough semiconductors.
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Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-surge-in-asia-threatens-manufacture-of-ceramic-bits-in-iphones-and-playstations-11630316100
LiberatedUSA
(1,666 posts)Well, you can always pay a scalper an insane amount for it, they should not be rewarded for helping short the supply.
dalton99a
(81,485 posts)no_hypocrisy
(46,097 posts)intheflow
(28,466 posts)I can only hope.
Response to mahatmakanejeeves (Original post)
Xoan This message was self-deleted by its author.