General Electric plans to break itself up into three companies.

A silicon shortage is upending the $500 billion chip industry, and many of the shifts are likely to outlive the pandemic-fueled dearth. The lack of the tiny components — which has pinched makers of cars, game consoles, medical devices and many other goods — has been a stark reminder of the foundational nature of chips, which act as the brains of computers and other products.

Chief among the changes is a long-term shift in market power from chip buyers to sellers, particularly those that own factories that make the semiconductors, The New York Times’s Don Clark reports. The most visible beneficiaries have been giant chip manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which offer services called foundries that build chips for other companies.

But the shortage has also sharply bolstered the influence of lesser-known chip makers such as Microchip Technology, NXP Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics, Onsemi and Infineon, which design and sell thousands of chip varieties to thousands of customers. These companies, which build many products in their own aging factories, now are increasingly able to choose which customers get how many of their scarce chips.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/09/business/news-business-stock-market