Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata: Automotive chip shortage will be relieved by mid-2023

According to DigiTimes, automotive semiconductor maker Renesas Electronics top executive officer Hidetoshi Shibata said the current chip shortage is bound to continue until the middle of next year.

He said the problem is not the shortage of key semiconductors, but the lack of secondary chips (minor chip) for peripheral devices. Shibata Hidetoshi said that people may be surprised by the shortage of minor chips, demand relief will take time.

Renesas is one of the world's top three automotive chipmakers, alongside the Netherlands' NXP and Germany's Infineon. Erik Shibata and other industry insiders expect the chip shortage to ease around the end of this year, but sporadic shortages are expected to continue to exist until the middle of next year.

Renesas, founded in 2002 and merged with Hitachi and Mitsubishi chip unit, generated record sales of 993.9 billion yen last year, as well as an operating profit of 173.8 billion yen, with estimated sales of 1.1 trillion yen in the first nine months of this year.

Hidetoshi Shibata was responsible for a 130 billion yen investment in Renesas when he was an executive of a fund operated by the Japanese government and private sector. Renesas has become a major player in the embedded chip market, which is increasingly used in home appliances and automobiles.

Hidetoshi Shibata said he wants to develop Renesas Electronics into a major player in the embedded semiconductor market, distinguishing it from competitors in the memory chip sector dominated by South Korea and Taiwan. He said Renesas' strength lies in having products and technologies that span the entire semiconductor chip sector, not just manufacturing memory chips.