You may have noticed by now that there’s a significant worldwide shortage on technology products… and its pretty bad. If you haven’t noticed yet.. well, you’ll come to learn pretty quick if you’re looking to refresh your PC fleet or need to get your hands on a laptop in a hurry.

So if you’re not up to speed on what’s going on, we thought it might be beneficial to provide some insight to the industry during this time, to assist you in making well informed business decisions. 

What’s happening? 

The entire IT industry is currently in the midst of a supply chain shortage. This is due to the impact of a shortage of semiconductors as a result of the outbreak of COVID19. 

In plain terms, factories which make critical and common components of electronics went into lockdown and the manufacturers (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc) who use those parts couldn’t create new stock. Distributors then could not replenish their supplies to standard operating quantities. Most stock with distributors had dwindled significantly towards the end of 2020, and manufacturers are currently struggling with the demand to replenish stock against the demand. 

For the more convoluted version Forbes have recently published a fantastic article here.

What does this mean for you? 

There is still limited stock available to choose from for standard hardware requests, but order fulfilment has become very competitive across the IT industry, with a first come/first served process for backorder. The easiest way to ensure that your order will be fulfilled in a timely manner is to provide  as much notice as possible to your IT provider so they can source options which are currently in stock or request order fulfilment prior to stock being allocated to other requests. 

What can we do to help? 

If you need hardware ASAP please reach out to us. We strongly advise against the temptation to go to a retail store as they often stock consumer grade hardware with limited warranty. If it has a fault you will need to return the device to the store and await a repair.