That’s despite manufacturers rushing to step up production to meet demand. The CEO made similar comments back in October and last week visited Malaysia as Intel announced an expansion to its back-end manufacturing capabilities, as reported by Nikkei. “The overall semiconductor shortage is quite significant and the semiconductor industry was growing about 5% per year before COVID,” said Gelsinger. “COVID disrupted the supply chains, causing it to go negative…Demand exploded to 20% year-over-year and disrupted supply chains created a very large gap…and that exploding demand has persisted.” The Malaysian expansion is part of an investment across the US, Europe and Asia, with new sites due in the near future. “It just takes time to build this capacity to respond to the spike,” said Gelsinger. The global chip shortage has had a major impact on console and PC graphics card sales, with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all citing a strain on console production. Microsoft were even unable to obtain retail Xbox consoles for its recent Halo Championship Series event. It’s also affected Final Fantasy 14 as Square Enix has been unable to obtain new servers to cope with high demand for the MMORPG, which has temporarily been suspended from sale.
