Richard CanonNews / Thursday, February 17, 2022

Semiconductor shortages continue to affect the entire industry

The Nikkei newspaper recently did an article on the semiconductor shortages facing the camera and other industries, and it laid out the facts that it's a lot more serious than what we actually expected. Digicame-info disseminated the article since it's behind a paywall.

According to the article, the delivery times for parts have been extended by 5 to 15 weeks and at times some parts haven't been delivered in over 90 weeks (2 years).

Because of this camera production has decreased in Japan by 20 to 30%. They mention Sony, who had to suspend orders because there was an extreme shortage of semiconductors used by LCD panels. HP when asked, stated that even if the shortages are resolved, another shortage occurs.

Nikkei goes on to state, that the current problems are like whacking a mole, where as soon as one shortage is resolved another one appears. They expect the shortages to continue.

What does this mean for us? Expect Canon to do more triage when it comes to the EF and EF-s mount system versus the RF mount system, most likely quicker than they expected. Hypothetically if you have 10 pieces and they can go in EF or RF lenses - Canon will obviously choose to put them into RF lenses.

I'm not sure what this does to Camera bodies, but I suspect the same, they will draw out camera releases to when they get enough parts in to at least deliver an initial quantity to customers. After that, it's anyone's guess when Canon can make more of them.