Industry to Miss 5G Phone Target Due to Chip Crunch: Qorvo CFO

Qorvo sees the industry "working through” chip shortages, even if the crunch forces 5G smartphone OEMs to leave some business on the table for calendar 2021, said CEO Bob Bruggeworth on a call Wednesday for fiscal Q2 ended Oct. 2. Chip shortages for tech devices are most acute in SoCs for MacBooks, not “RF front-ends” for 5G smartphones, “at least not from us,” said Bruggeworth, who chairs the Semiconductor Industry Association board. Chief Financial Officer Mark Murphy said the outlook for fiscal Q3 ending early January is for an 11% revenue decline sequentially even at the high end of guidance, reflecting “broad-based challenges in supply,” he said. “Our external supply chain is still recovering from disruptions in September, including shutdowns in Southeast Asia. Beyond that, select materials, products and production capacity remain tight.” In smartphones, “even where channel inventory for certain parts is healthy, customers lack silicon chips” to produce finished handsets, he said. “Given the supply and demand effects, we now see 5G smartphone volumes coming in below” the previously targeted 550 million handset shipments globally in calendar 2021, he said.