[viraptor]

It's a recent thing on a world scale. But it's always been an issue and applies to anything you buy - the more sophisticated, the fewer items are stocked in warehouses. It's not that they wouldn't be available, it's that once you start ordering hundreds, the lead time will change from days to weeks at some point.

[varjag]

Hundreds is really a loose retail quantity if we talk about microcontrollers, the first real price break point is typically 1000pcs. Smaller quantities are cut and priced by distributors themselves.

In normal times, most products not marked as EOL would be available in tens of thousands with short lead times.