2020 and 2021 will go down in history for 2 reasons: the COVID-19 pandemic and the chip crisis. Both events had a profound impact on the world of technology, for better and for worse. Ironically, IoT, one of the fields affected by scarcity, is also the key to preventing something like this from happening in the future.
The Semiconductor Shortages
Tech companies have been working job function email list under an assumption called “Moore’s Law” since the 1970s. To explain this law in simple terms, Intel cofounder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors used in electronics would double in quantity every 24 months.
While not a perfect estimation by any means, it’s been reliable enough. Unfortunately, not even Moore could account for the complete paralysis of the worldwide supply chain like the ones experienced in 2020 thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To be fair, it wasn’t just the supply chains. 2020 was the perfect storm:
- Semiconductor industries shut down completely for months.
- The demand for devices exploded as users had to stay confined in their homes.
- Companies canceled semiconductor orders because many were afraid of the losses caused by the pandemic.
Semiconductor and Chips
Modern chips are built with billions these dedicated professionals can be called of transistors (semiconductor devices). Just as an example, Apple’s A11, the chip powering the iPhone X, has 4.3 billion transistors. Consider that by 2018 there were around 50 million iPhone X on the market. You do the math.
Taiwan has a 63% market share of worldwide transistor manufacturing followed by South Korea with only 18% (thanks to Samsung). With such a figure, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the technology infrastructure of the world is carried on Taiwan’s back.
Imagine that a phone uses 5 chips (we are being conservative here) and remember that different chips are built in different factories. Odds are that the supplies of each individual factory depend partially or entirely on Taiwan.
The State of IoT
All is not doom and gloom. According india number list to IoT analytics, we expect to have 12.3 billion endpoints by the end of 2021, a 9% growth when compared to 2020. Not bad for a field that’s getting particularly hit by the shortage. There might be more repercussions down the line, though, as 2021 projections for 2025 predict only 27.1 billion connections instead of the 30+ billion forecasted in 2020.
The numbers might still be in flux, but the trends have remained rather stable. IoT is a growing field and one that investors should keep an eye out for. There are plenty of reasons to start developing IoT at this juncture in time.