Tablet and Smartphone Component Shortage Getting Serious

It looks like yet another report has emerged in support of the rumors going about the web, as to how the smartphone and tablet market segments aren't doing as well as they could in terms of component supply.

Even though a bunch of tablets (not counting the iPad) have been officially announced already, a fairly low number of them have actually started shipping, and even those aren't in too high supply.

The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer can be considered exhibit A, since it supposedly went on sale a while ago but is almost impossible to find online.

ASUS did say that high demand is mostly to blame, even though some reports said it was because of component shortages, fairly serious ones even.

Now, Digitimes reports that component shortages definitely are in effect, and even growing, because of multiple factors that cannot really go by ignored.

The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, is the biggest of those causes, having disrupted the activity of various factories, among other things. There is also the matter of the labor shortages that China seems to be facing.

One thing this will definitely cause, in addition to lower product availability, it increased costs for all affected devices.

Another problem is that, with lower component inventories, the rate of defective products might rise as well.

All in all, things are beginning to get complicated and the real challenge for smartphone and tablet makers will come in June.

Granted, the official word is that supply will be normal, until the end of May at least, but so-called sources form upstream component suppliers say that Acer, Motorola, HTC, ASUS, Compal, Quanta and even Apple will all go through some trials sooner or later.

Considering that Computex is when new slates are expected to show up, the timing of this can classify as even more unfortunate than usual.