COVID-19 Impact on Microphone in Semiconductors and Electronics Industry
COVID-19 is a pandemic which started from China to almost in every country has affected the world’s economy drastically. It has affected almost everything including human life, world economy, automotive sector, industrial sector, consumer electronics, security and surveillance and others as a result demand and consumption rate gets lowered. The nature of spreading of virus is the reason behind initiating lockdown in many countries to lower the risk and control spread. Lockdown, shutdown and social distancing are so far is considered to be the better solution observed in the many countries but it also has an adverse effect on the economy. The immense population of many countries that is more than 2 billion people was under lockdown, and 91% of the world’s population, or 7.1 billion people, live in countries with border controls or travel restrictions due to the governmental instructions to prevent countries from virus. However, now almost in every country the factories are started to reopen by taking some prevention such as 20%-50% employees are working on the field, social distancing is been following properly, extreme hygiene measures and others to support the economy. It is supporting the economy and helping to lower the recession rate at certain level.
Many electronic consumer devices, such as smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, laptops and notebooks, televisions, MP3 players, cameras, videogame consoles and automotive vehicles have microphones embedded in them. Thus increasing/decreasing demand for these devices directly impacts the demand for microphones.
COVID-19 has highly impacted the microphone market. The low demand for electronic devices due to lockdown measures had a huge impact on the microphone market. The continuous downfall in the demand and export for automotive vehicles has also expected to negatively impact the microphone market.
IMPACT ON DEMAND AND SUPPLY CHAIN
The pandemic brought a huge drop in sales for the microphone market as the lockdown prevailed in most of the regions. The lockdown led manufacturers and consumers to completely stop the processes for few months. The demand for microphone market faced drastic downfall due to shut down of various airlines, transport and electronic industry. However the things are getting normal day by day, government is taking initiatives to unlock business step by step. Post COVID-19 microphone market will see an increased demand.
The pandemic has also a huge impact on the supply chain of microphone market. The logistics and transportation of assets has deteriorated a lot. The supply chain was adversely affected as the lockdown prevailed in many regions globally, government has limited the workers. Market players are making their operation to work according to the government regulations by making limited workers work in different shifts. However now there is an improvement in the supply chain as most of the facilities and travel restrictions have opened and working in the most optimum capacity. The supply chain of microphone market is experiencing shipment delays during this unlock COVID-19 situation.
For instance, In April 2020, STMicroelectronics faced 10% drop in their second-quarter revenue due to the COVID-19 as there is declining demand of automotive sales which directly impacts the microphone market.