The Tech Gifts That Are Hard to Buy This Holiday Season
The New York Times
The list of scarce gadgets is long, driven by a chip shortage. Don’t wait until Black Friday for the best deals.
It’s that time of the year when our inboxes are flooded with discounts galore for Black Friday, Cyber Week and all the sales promotions that follow.
But this year, we’re in a unique situation. We’re living in an era of scarcity driven by a global chip shortage, widespread unemployment and the effects of government-imposed lockdowns that were meant to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. That has disrupted global supply chains, made manufacturing difficult and snarled the shipping of items around the world.
That’s now affecting the types of tech products we can obtain for our loved ones this holiday season. Gaming devices like the PlayStation and Xbox consoles, which have been in a perpetual shortage for the last year, will continue to be a challenge to find. And the list of hard-to-get items has grown even longer, encompassing Wi-Fi routers, cheap laptops and audio gear.