This is not a problem unique to ST. There is a worldwide shortage of many different types of chips. And because of that, anyone who has need of chips for a production run in a few months but sees the chips they need available now will buy them now and hold onto them to be sure thst their production run happens. This makes the current chip shortage worse as so many people are hoarding all that manufacturers like ST can produce. And other people, seeing the shortage, will buy up stock to sell on at vastly inflated prices to those desperate to build products but can’t get stock from the regular distributors.
No-one can say with any certainty when things will get back to normal because it isn’t simply a case of when ST will be making chips at a rate faster than they are used, there is the psychology of the many people hoarding components.
