Daily Crunch: Coronavirus Causes Likely PC Shipment Decline
It is unlikely we will know the extent of the decline as well as the possibility of a rebound until it happens. The last few years have been plagued with a startling number of unpredictable events. While the nature of the IC market, no matter how steep a decline, has always been cyclical, this last shortage has excelled at defying expectations.
Daily Crunch: Coronavirus causes likely PC shipment decline
The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) has seen a dramatic decline in global demand over the last few months. This negative impact on economic trends has led to production cuts for PC components and other consumer electronics. Despite this, automotive components are in the news daily accompanied by tales of constraints and frustrations.
Unlike automotive components, global PC shipments are down 15% as of Q3 2022. Shrinking demand and uneven supply has contributed to the decline, but even with the significant drop sales are still well above pre-pandemic levels. Fortunately, most companies have already expected sales to fall.
For the first time in four years, South Korea experienced a decline in semiconductor output from its factories. In August, production slipped 1.7%, a massive shock to the 17.3% gain it saw in July. Chip inventories in contrast soared up to 67.3% as factory shipments dropped 20.4% in August.
A combination of worker shortages, port congestion, canal obstructions, vessel availability problems, and the coronavirus pandemic has prompted manufacturers to rely more heavily on air transport. Notably, electronic components manufacturing hubs in East and Southeast Asia have increased their airfreight shipments by 10 to over 30 percent between 2020 and 2021.
Market watchers anticipate the parts bottleneck will use it considerably by the middle of the year. Many top chipmakers and foundry service providers will bring new fabs online by that point. But overwhelming post-coronavirus pandemic demand for consumer electronics means materials costs are unlikely to decrease anytime soon.
Lenovo maintained its first place in the worldwide PC market even though its shipments fell 12 per cent to 17.5 million units in the second quarter of 2022. But HP was the OEM that suffered the biggest decline among the top five vendors as its shipments fell 28 per cent to 13.5 million units. Dell was right behind HP at third place with a relatively smaller decline of 5 per cent at 13.2 million units. Acer and Asus were the next two on the top five with declines of 19 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.
An average of 1.1 million vaccinations a day have been conducted since Jan. 21, according to figures presented by the response team. The daily vaccination rate declined over the past two days, averaging more than 845,000 doses from Jan. 25 through Jan. 26.
The vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech ran into controversy after the Indian government allowed its use without concrete data showing its effectiveness in preventing COVID-19. Tens of thousands of people have been given the shot in the past three days after India started inoculating healthcare workers last weekend in what is likely the world's largest coronavirus vaccination campaign.
There were 20,523 newly confirmed cases Saturday after 21,366 infections were reported Friday. That was about double the daily rate of increase just a week ago. Reporting normally declines on weekends, suggesting next week may bring even higher numbers.
Despite the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in Tennessee, where more than 7,800 people have died, it seemed unlikely that lawmakers would act on the call for a mask mandate. In the GOP-dominant General Assembly on Tuesday, neither the Senate nor the House speaker was requiring masks for lawmakers and few were wearing them.
Nationally, an average of just over 2,500 people have died of COVID-19 over the past seven days, according to Johns Hopkins data. The number of daily newly reported cases in that period has averaged close to 195,000, a decline from two weeks earlier.
(AP) California surpassed 25,000 coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic, reporting the grim milestone Thursday as an ongoing surge swamps hospitals and pushes nurses and doctors to the breaking point as they brace for another likely increase after the holidays.
(AP) Two new studies give encouraging evidence that having COVID-19 may offer some protection against future infections. Researchers found that people who made antibodies to the coronavirus were much less likely to test positive again for up to six months and maybe longer.
(AP) Initial shipments of the second COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the U.S. left a distribution center Sunday, a desperately needed boost as the nation works to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.
Kemp reiterated that he won't make any more orders to try to limit the spread of the coronavirus, which again set a daily record with more than 6,000 cases statewide on Thursday. Some people never show symptoms and most recover, but some sicken and die. Georgia has recorded more than 10,000 deaths.
He told lawmakers that the surge of COVID-19 cases in southern England may be associated with a new variant of coronavirus. He said officials are assessing the new strand, but stressed there was nothing to suggest it was more likely to cause serious disease, or that it wouldn't respond to a vaccine.