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OZ CE Retailers Face New Stock Problems & Limited New Product Launches

Australian consumer electronics retailers could face a lack of new product launches this year due to a backlog of parts manufacturing by Chinese manufacturers, they also face problems getting replacement stock for products they already sell.

Overnight Broadcom who make key parts for Apple’s iPhones and Samsung smartphones, advised customers that disruptions to the global supply chain caused by the Covid-19 pandemic means they’ll need to place orders for parts six months ahead of time.

ChannelNews has heard the same story from several other manufacturers.

This morning Lenovo launched a new gaming notebook range which will not be available in Australia until June/July 2020.

Customers will be able to place orders on the Lenovo web site ahead of the launch.

Suppliers to the Australian market have told ChannelNews that COVID-19 lockdowns in India, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines have seen the closure of operations with staff stopped from going to work in factories manufacturing components.

“Where the problem was initially China this has now spread to several other manufacturing Countries.

Bloomberg claims that according to a letter to customers from Nilesh Mistry, Broadcom’s vice president of sales, dated April 13 he wrote “Air and sea transport options have become unreliable and become more expensive and have increased delays,”

Broadcom is a critical part of the supply chain for products ranging from mobile phones PC’s to data-centre hardware.

Any delays in the delivery of its semiconductors could spread throughout that supply network, potentially leading to missed launches of some of the world’s most high-profile and widely used electronic devices claim analysts.

Key Broadcom customers for their wireless products include Hewlett Packard, Apple, Samsung Electronics, Lenovo, as well as Chinese smartphone maker Oppo who objected to Broadcom’s proposed takeover of Qualcomm.

Hundreds of Companies selling to Australian retailers use Broadcom chips to add Wi-Fi and other connectivity to some of the world’s best-selling smartphones.

In networking, its switch chips are the market leaders, going into machinery that’s used by all of the biggest equipment makers, including Amazon, Cisco and Huawei.

“We hope that as the global community finds better methods to address the Covid-19 pandemic, the conditions will abate and we will be able to resume our normal operations,” Mistry said in the letter.

Bloomberg said that Broadcom is part of the same supply chain that most of the world’s chipmakers use to outsource production, testing and packaging of their products.

Products from companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices all products found in the new Lenovo range of notebooks are built mostly by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing then tested and packaged by other companies in China and Southeast Asia. Some companies perform elements of the process in-house, and a shrinking group are capable of doing all the steps themselves.



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