If, recently, players have seen an increase in the number of new generation consoles available, production is still very affected by the lack of components. The more optimistic see a return to normal in the second half, but Foxconn sees even further.
According to the Taiwanese component manufacturer, whose comments are relayed by Screenrant, the component shortage situation could last not until the second half of the year, nor until the end of the year holidays as Bloomberg suggested, but at least until the second quarter of the year 2022.
This would concern all the players in the sector, who will from car manufacturers to smartphones, obviously including console manufacturers.
In a call with investors last week, Yong Liu, Chairman of Foxconn, would have declared that the constraints could extend at least until next spring, and order shipments could decrease by 10%.
As the PS5 and Xbox Series are not a priority in the order books, production difficulties could continue. Tweaktown, a site specializing in tech, lends the CEO the following words:
Supply (in the) first two months of this quarter was still good, as our customers are all very large, but we started to see changes happening in March.
Sony like Microsoft have repeatedly stated do everything in their power to produce as many consoles as possible and thus meet the demand, but that it did not depend only on them. The main challenge for console workers is therefore to secure their component orders against other market players.