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Demand for chips needed to make smartphones and PCs has dropped “like a rock” – but mostly in China, according to Zhao Haijun, the CEO of China’s largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).

Speaking on the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call last Friday, Zhao said smartphone makers currently have five months inventory to hand, so are working through that stockpile before ordering new product. Sales of PCs, consumer electronics and appliances are also in trouble, the CEO said, leaving some markets oversupplied with product for now. But unmet demand remains for silicon used for Wi-Fi 6, power conversion, green energy products, and analog-to-digital conversion.

Zhao partly attributed sales slumps to the Ukraine war which has made the Russian market off limits to many vendors and effectively taken Ukraine’s 44 million citizens out of the global market for non-essential purchases.