NVIDIA expects a few more months of supply constraints of GeForce RTX 30
The demand for GeForce RTX 30 series is still a lot higher than NVIDIA anticipated, and its supply chains can deliver. NVIDIA now expects that the shortage of RTX 30 graphics cards may persist past the holiday season. In fact, it may persist in the first quarter of next year.
In the recent earnings call with investors NVIDIA CFO confirmed that the long cycle times and constraints in the supply chains are the culprits of the recent GPU shortages:
“Given industry-wide capacity constraints and long cycle times, it may take a few more months for product availability to catch up with demand”
— Colette Kress, NVIDIA Chief Financial Officer
Last month NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said that the supply issues may persist through the rest of 2020. It’s the middle of November and the problems are not gone, in fact, we are just learning that it may take even more time:
“We would appreciate shorter cycle times. We would appreciate more agile supply chains. But you know the world is constrained at the moment. And so, we just have to make the best of it.”
— Jensen Huang, NVIDIA Chief Executing Officer
The graphics cards based on Ampere architecture are still out of stock at most retailers. In many cases, queue systems have been implemented with thousands of people waiting for their cards to arrive.
AMD is facing similar problems with its just-announced Radeon RX 6800 series, which were apparently at even lower supply than GeForce RTX 30 series. In many cases, retailers did not even bother to take preorders for the cards, as none have arrived.
NVIDIA had great gaming revenue in the last quarter, up 37% year to year growth and nearly the same quarter to quarter. The gaming GeForce series is definitely the driving force for the company’s revenue. However, if there are no cards then there is no revenue, so it’s in NVIDIA’s best interest to sell as many cards as possible.
