As the new year begins, the challenges surrounding lead-times within the electronic component market look set to continue for some time to come. For Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMS) there will be the continued need to make adjustments to the design, and the choice of components, for their printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs). For those OEMs working with Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) providers, the importance of maintaining regular communication and continuing to share forecast information will remain paramount.
In this blog post we summarise the latest news on the condition of the electronic component marketplace as of January 2019.
Report highlights
Multi layer ceramic capacitors (MLCC’s) are still the most problematic components within the marketplace. Most MLCC manufacturers are still quoting excessive lead-times, or in some cases allocation. The stock that is becoming available is subject to significant price increases with the inability to schedule purchase orders.
MLCC shortages have now been commonplace for over a year and it is not certain if any improvement in the market will be seen until 2020.
Memory market - After more than two years of pricing uncertainty and allocation it appears the memory market is slowly starting to recover, with price decreases seen on some NAND and DRAM products.
Capacity and Lead-Time Issues
Infineon have issued an End Of Life (EOL) notice for small signal products with a Last Time Buy (LTB) of the 31st December 2019.
Nexperia are still struggling with allocation on some product lines, most notably diodes and mosfets in cases sizes SOD323, SOT223, SOT23 and SOT232; this issue is still ongoing.
Rohm are also struggling to meet demand with extended lead-times continuing and allocation confirmed on EMD2, EMD2M, PMDU, PMDUM, TUSH, TUMD2S, UMD2M and USM products until further notice.
Xilinx lead-times are also extending making it vital for original equipment manufacturers to share their long term forecast information with their supply chain partners in order to help maintain continuity of supply.
NXP have placed a 15%+ price increase on some of the former 32bit Freescale processors, however lead-times appear stable.
It is reported that some manufacturers have increased MLCC pricing by up to 40% compared to 6 months ago.
Pricing Uncertainty
PCB technology
The annual Chinese New Year celebrations will see factories close between around 31st January 2019 and 10th February 2019. Disruption to lead-times should be expected for a couple of weeks either side of these dates. Copper pricing started to fall at the start of December, but is now slowly climbing with pricing now more in-line with the historic prices we saw back in August 2018.