Nintendo Switch is in high demand, and there aren’t enough of them

A customer purchases Nintendo Switch game console at a shop in Tokyo on March 3, 2017. Nintendo is now purportedly aiming to boost its production to 22 million units this fiscal year, a remarkable uptick considering the Switch is already three years old. That’s more than Nintendo sold in the US, its biggest market, from the console’s debut in 2017 to last year. — AFP

I was late to the whole Animal Crossing thing, but a few days ago I, too, decamped for a virtual island utopia, where I can breathe fresh digital air, chase butterflies, plant bright tulips and fish for sea bass (so many sea bass). Thanks to best-selling (and surprisingly therapeutic) games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the Nintendo Switch has become a massive hit during the pandemic. There’s just one problem for Nintendo Co: It can’t make them fast enough.

The inventory crunch serves as a reminder of how crucial supply chain management is in the Covid-19 era. The disease has decimated many industries, cost millions of jobs and taken thousands of lives, but the companies that sell equipment to enable people to work from or pass idle hours at home have benefited. From PCs and smartphones to tablets and wearables, the current batch of winners and losers of the hardware market will likely be decided by which companies can build enough products to meet demand from sheltered populations.