The worldwide semiconductor shortage will persist through 2021, and is expected to recover to normal levels by the second quarter of 2022. The chip shortage started primarily with devices, such as power management, display devices and microcontrollers, fabricated on legacy nodes at 8-inch foundry fabs, which have a limited supply. The shortage has now extended to other devices, and there are capacity constraints and shortages for substrates, wire bonding, passives, materials, and testing, all of which are parts of the supply chain beyond chip fabs.

Shipments of mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, and wearable cameras, with embedded machine vision technology, will increase from 45 million in 2018 to over 590 million in 2023, according to a new forecast by ABI Research. That amounts to a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 67 percent.