According to Guardian Australia, Acer’s co-chief operating officer, Tiffany Huang, said that the rate of the global chip shortage cannot keep up with the demand of consumers. Huang noted that Acer “can only fill 50% of the worldwide demand.” “It will continue to be slow until the first quarter or second quarter of next year,” she said in the interview published on Monday. “We have a severe shortage, and it’s not simply just to make sure every family has a device to use, every person has to have a device for working or education.” Acer recently announced a new lineup of gaming laptops as the Predator Triton 500 SE and the Helios 500. These laptops—which boast 11th Gen Core processors and GeForce RTX 3080 graphics—reportedly are set to hit the US market later this month and in August (respectively), but it’s unknown if the chip shortage would impact their availability. According to Business Insider, there’s a global chip shortage impacting automakers and consumer electronics companies, resulting in the demand outpacing supply worldwide. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously warned that supply issues of the company’s new M1 chip could affect products that feature it. “We expect to be supply-gated, not demand-gated,” Cook told analysts, according to BBC. “We have a good handle on our demand.” Experts say the key to solving the chip shortage is a bigger national investment in chip manufacturing. A bill introduced to Congress last year known as the CHIPS for America Act would provide companies with incentives to enable research in the semiconductor industry and secure supply chains.
