According to Bloomberg, the latest survey found that the "lead time" of chips from order to delivery was further extended to 25.8 weeks in December last year, meaning that customers waited for chip delivery for nearly half a year, and also highlighted the lingering semiconductor shortage problem that has impacted the growth of many industries for several months.
According to a research report by Susquehanna Financial Group, the time from order to delivery of semiconductors purchased by the industry in December last year has been extended to about 25.8 weeks, an increase of 6 days from November, and the longest record since the start of tracking data in 2017.
Chris Rolland, an analyst at Haina Group, said on Tuesday: "Lead time extension growth has been erratic, but it picked up again in December, with delivery times of almost all chip types setting a new record, with power management chips (PMIC) and microcontrollers (MCUs) having the longest lead times."
Susquehanna recently changed the way it calculates delivery times, adding more data sources and revising previous estimates based on the new system.
Summary of chip delivery data for the past 9 months:
The industry knows that after the chip fell into a long-term shortage in the past, there is still a period of overcapacity cycle with the gradual balance of supply and demand. The reason is that someone may overbook and ask to cancel the order after a certain period of time. The industry calls this phenomenon "repeated orders".
Research shows that while average lead times have been stretched again, some large suppliers are delivering products to customers in a more timely manner, for example, Broadcom's lead time "moderately declined" to 29 weeks in December.
In December, companies from Apple to Ford faced billions of dollars in lost revenue because they could not obtain enough semiconductor supplies to meet product demand, and efforts to strengthen access to parts also pushed up production costs.
Prior to this, Arrow Electronics, the world's largest component dealer, also mentioned in its "Q4 Market Trend Report" released in the middle of last month that the overall delivery time of various products is on the rise.
Among them, under the analog classification, the delivery time of amplifiers, comparators and voltage regulators is 31-35 weeks; the delivery time of 8-bit MCUs is 30-48 weeks, and the delivery time of 32-bit MCUs is 24-41 weeks; the longest delivery time of FPGA and SPLD is 45-65 weeks, and the price of most products shows an upward trend.