5G, Chip Demand Won't Soon Ebb: Jabil
Consumer demand for chips and faster mobile communications won't ebb soon, said executives at a major manufacturer of consumer electronics for other companies. "Things will be back to more normal conditions” in January-March 2022, said Jabil CEO Mark Mondello of…
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semiconductor supply-demand balance. “We think this thing will start to show levels of relief” in fiscal Q1, ending late November, “and for sure as we get into calendar '22,” he said. Demand for semiconductors “has never been higher, with the accelerated convergence of technologies and the associated data generation and storage needs,” Chief Financial Officer Mike Dastoor told a call Tuesday for fiscal Q2, ended Feb. 28. “Nearly every part of the economy runs on silicon.” Jabil is seeing what “finally looks to be reasonable plans in terms of the 5G wireless rollout,” said Mondello. “That’s here to stay, not a number of months, but a number of years,” he said. “That’s going to have all kinds of tangents tied to it as well, once the 5G rollout gets underway, in terms of derivatives to other parts of our business.” The technology is speeding the “secular expansion of cloud adoption and infrastructure growth,” he said.