[nsb1]

Unfortunately there's another angle here which is that the little fish are competing for supply with higher priced, higher volume products like cars, where a 10x increase in one component can be amortized over a much higher total cost and passed on to the customer. Nobody is going to notice an extra couple hundred bucks on the price of a car, but they'll definitely notice when it's on something that itself only costs a couple hundred bucks.

Big consumers are able to outbid even companies like DigiKey because they can afford to spread the cost around. TI had one of its best quarters ever over the last 12 months, but just try to buy TI parts anywhere - they're being priced through the roof. A $0.30 TI regulator was going for $30.00 on the secondary markets. I feel for any small company trying to build hardware right now.

[MichaelZuo]

Indeed that seems like the market telling small manufacturers of lower priced goods, who are unable to increase the price of their product, that other manufacturer’s goods are providing more value.

For those who were expecting cheap electronics to be preordained forever this serves as an effective wake up call, and that nothing on this Earth is truly guaranteed even one second into the future.