Definitely, chips and other components shortages are getting increasingly serious, and costs are going through the roof; voltage regulators that normally cost 5

Definitely, chips and other components shortages are getting increasingly serious, and costs are going through the roof; voltage regulators that normally cost 50 cents have been selling for as much as $70. There is indeed a lot of demand for chips and electronic components of all kinds but I understand that manufacturers claim is not real demand, is just a spike caused by uncertainty in international supply chains. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2021/04/22/2003756110 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2021/04/22/200... Just like we all saw a lot of people buying toilet paper like crazy at the beginning of the pandemic, well, there is also a lot of hoarding by big tech companies that make this shortage likely to last well into 2022. So, they're not exactly willing to expand capacity for a demand that is most likely to go away eventually. So indeed, it is a challenging time to design and manufacture hardware; all the big players are buying it all. The only advice I could give to anyone that is starting to design their electronics to make the design as flexible as possible, leave room on the PCB for 2 or more alternative components. You could even try to make 2 different PCB layouts and choose one or the other based on price and availability of components, oh and try to delay components selection as much as possible, that's the most useful advice I've read https://titoma.com/blog/reduce-component-lead-time https://titoma.com/blog/reduce-component-lead-time