Many industries are suffering a huge crisis due to the shortage of components, but for semiconductor companies it seems that the tables are turning in the opposite direction and that they are experiencing a sweet moment, or at least that is what the Intel CEO in a statement made yesterday.
The golden decade of semiconductors … for a few
Kissinger said in an interview on Wednesday that the current market is experiencing a great period of expansion, and predicts that there are still at least 10 more years ahead of good times because the world is becoming increasingly digital, and the digitization requires semiconductors.
This is not the first time that Kissinger has expressed optimism about the expansion of the semiconductor market for the future; while the industry expects the semiconductor shortage is resolved for next year, Intel believes this will take longer, at least a few years until things stabilize and supply is able to keep up with demand, and that means semiconductor manufacturers will be selling the its entire manufacturing capacity.
Behind Kissinger’s unusual position, Intel recently announced the largest investment in its history in the chip manufacturing industry, and in the coming years it will spend more than $ 200 billion building two new factories to increase capacity. semiconductor manufacturing, a huge investment with which they intend compete head-to-head with TSMC, Samsung and other members of the industry. Another approach to this is in their own 7nm chip factory, although they certainly don’t expect to ship these chips until at least 2023.
The fact is that this period of component shortage is being very bad for most and even disastrous for a few, but it is also being very good for semiconductor manufacturers since, as we have said before, they are manufacturing to the maximum of their capacity and even selling in advance each and every one of the chips that leave their factories, so their income level is literally at the maximum, and more if the prices of the chips go up as TSMC announced a few weeks ago.
So, seen in this way, it is normal for the CEO of Intel to be optimistic about the future of the semiconductor industry, and proof of this is that they have made a huge investment of 200,000 million dollars to build two more factories and thus, expand its manufacturing capacity and compete face-to-face with the two largest in the industry: TSMC and Samsung. We’ll see how they play, but if, as Kissinger has predicted, we are entering a golden decade of semiconductors, this investment will certainly be worth it.
