The UK component industry association ecsn is forecasting a minus 0.2% decline to 4% growth for the market in H1 2021 and a flat market to 6.5% growth for H2.

Brexit concerns are leading to buyers  to bring forward orders originally for delivery in January and February next year into December this year. 
This demand is already pushing out lead times on products.
“Key components for electric vehicles and infrastructure including SiC diodes, MOSFETs and IGBT parts are already in short supply, some microcontroller parts are already on 20 weeks lead times,” commented one distributor. “We may well hear the allocation word very soon.”

“2019 was a year of correction after two years of exceptional growth in 2017 and 2018”, says Aubrey Dunford, ecsn market analyst, “our members believed that a market upswing would commence in 2020 but what we saw was a sharp market decline.”
“Our best view is that we will see a slow return to low single digit growth throughout 2021 and that the first half of 2021 will be more or less ‘flat’ compared to the first half of 2020,” adds Dunford, “we’re hopeful that growth will increase into the second half of 2021 and the year will end showing Billings growth of around 2.7%”.
“Global demand – driven particularly by China and Asia-Pac – is rising and that lead times are extending on some key ‘commodity’ electronic components,” says Dunford, “the ‘Book to Bill’ ratio was positive in Q1’20 but declined slightly in Q2’20 during the major part of the first lockdown before it slowly improved during Q3, and into the final quarter.”
Adam Fletcher, ecsn chairman, points out: “On the plus side, the medical sector is experiencing strong growth along with the military/avionics and cloud computing / high performance computing sectors. Thee industrial sector is now also showing positive growth signs for 2021”.
“When the growth in demand driven by the roll out of 5G handsets and infrastructure is factored in, manufacturers’ output of electronic components will not be sufficient to meet global demand, which could make current lead-time extensions appear marginal,” adds Fletcher, “in a worst-case scenario manufacturer lead-times for most components might extend rapidly to well over 20 weeks. Even modest growth in 2021 might trigger a major supply problem in the global electronic components market.”
“We now know that material costs are increasing and that lead-times are very likely to extend by many weeks,” says Mouser vp Graham Munson, “nevertheless the Asia-Pac market remains buoyant and things are improving in the Americas, which in turn should have a positive effect on the supply chain.”