They control the world and we didn't realize it. Microchips are the invisible heart of cars, refrigerators, microwave ovens, smartphones, elevators, video game consoles and a thousand other devices that accompany us in everyday life. The coronavirus, however, has made them rise to the limelight. Yes, because the planet almost suddenly discovered that it was dry. The few manufacturing factories had in fact unanimously decided to cut production in the spring of 2020, assuming a thud in requests during the pandemic. Never was a prediction less accurate.
New life
While businesses and offices closed at the beginning of last year, life has indeed moved within the home. Business meetings have turned into video conferences, lunches and dinners have become online takeaway orders and the school has accelerated distance learning. In order to make forced quarantine more comfortable, homes have been enriched over time with small and large new generation appliances. Without forgetting the interpersonal relationships between friends and relatives, for a long time filtered exclusively from the screens of phones, PCs and tablets on Whatsapp, Zoom, Skype and other social networks.
In short, a race to mass digitalization has taken place in a short time, which paradoxically has caused a surge in demand for electronic "devices", and consequently for the microchips that manage them, thus taking the giants of every sector off guard. From car manufacturers to smartphone manufacturers, through household appliances and personal computers. All desperate for microchips and now forced to review delivery times and revenue estimates.
International intrigue
To further tangle the matter, an international intrigue is also thinking about it. In fact, there are those who, like China, sniffed the problem in advance by deciding to grab huge stocks of components from all over the world, thus leaving rival countries dry-mouthed. The Asian giant, among other things, has long occupied a dominant position in the market: 63% of semiconductors worldwide (the metal components of chips such as germanium, gallium arsenide and especially silicon) are produced in Taiwan, while the 91% of the world's chip production is based in Asia. A concentration of resources and infrastructures that has triggered the alarm in the United States, so much so that President Joe Biden has to hurry up an emergency plan to make the United States more autonomous thanks to an allocation of 50 billion dollars that it is already helping to set up four microchip factories. Even the European Union does not stand by: Brussels has in fact approved the Digital Compass program, to reach 20% of world production by 2030.
