IN Brief:
- Anglia says component prices are rising by 5% to 15%, with some standard MCU lead-times already reaching 23 weeks.
- Tightening availability follows a market turn first flagged in February, as memory allocation, AI-driven demand shifts, and leaner distributor inventories begin to bite.
- With ECSN already warning of 16-week average lead-times and WSTS forecasting a stronger 2026 semiconductor market, forward ordering is moving back to the centre of procurement planning.
Anglia Components has warned customers that the electronic components market is moving out of its softer phase, with price declines giving way to increases and lead-times starting to extend at speed. The distributor said prices are now rising by 5% to 15%, while manufacturer lead-times for standard microcontrollers have already reached 23 weeks in some cases. It also cautioned that the position had tightened before the latest disruption in the Middle East, which now risks adding another layer of pressure to already fragile supply routes.
This is a more pointed signal than the usual distributor call for better planning. Anglia said some memory manufacturers have already closed their books for new orders this year, while suppliers more broadly are quoting progressively longer schedules. That shifts the market back toward a pattern many electronics manufacturers would rather not revisit, where weak backlog cover and delayed commitments leave production exposed to spot buying, sharp premiums, and an unwelcome return to the grey market.
John Bowman, marketing director at Anglia Components, said: “We are hoping that it won’t return to the disruption experienced in 2020-2022 when customers without forward orders found themselves paying extreme premiums on the grey market simply to keep production running. But already, some memory manufacturers have closed their books for new orders this year, and across the board, our manufacturing partners are quoting progressively longer lead-times.”
The latest warning also builds on signs Anglia was already highlighting in February. At that point, the distributor said enquiries and sales were picking up across the UK and EU, while suppliers were extending lead-times in selected categories and memory supply was tightening as capacity shifted toward higher-margin products such as HBM. The wider market, though, still looks uneven: ECSN expects the UK and Ireland components market to remain soft through the first half of 2026, but says inventory overhang is being consumed and average lead-times were already sitting at 16 weeks heading into the year.
Globally, the recovery story is stronger. WSTS is forecasting the semiconductor market to grow by more than 25% in 2026 to roughly $975bn, with memory and logic leading again. That does not mean every category will tighten at the same rate, but it does underline the same point now surfacing at distributor level: once inventories normalise, standard devices do not stay freely available for long, particularly when capacity and pricing are being pulled toward the most profitable lines.
Bowman is urging customers to put at least 12 months of demand on the table now rather than wait for formal allocation. The case is straightforward: a six-month lead-time is awkward; no availability is worse. For design and manufacturing teams that have spent much of the past year operating in a looser market, the next squeeze may arrive gradually at first — a few more weeks on an MCU, a supplier declining new business, a memory quote moving up again — before it becomes difficult to ignore.
