Hello there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, the worldwide crisis in semiconductors that really could affect us all.

The new chips in your Apple iPhone or in your new MacBook, everybody relies on Taiwan to produce the chips.

But what do you do when the chips are down?

And what does it mean for Taiwan?

The island territory claimed by China.

Taiwan is perceived as a neutral player friendly to the West,

but they don't want to take sides.

You know, they don't want to lose access to customers in mainland China.

That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC.

Disruption is an overused term in technology.

Normally it refers to new innovations challenging business as usual.

But COVID-19 has seen one old-style disruption, like no other, frankly,

semiconductors, computer chips to you and me, there simply aren't enough of them around the world

at the moment. Not enough, at least, for the electronics and all kinds of other products that

demand them. It turns out they really are quite important

to us all. When we hear chips or semiconductors, we think of your computer, your laptop, your smartphone,

but it goes far beyond that. I would say by today it's hard to imagine an industry or a part of your

life that doesn't rely on semiconductors at some point.

So in your car are dozens to 100 of semiconductors, our traffic management system, our energy

system, our banking sector hospitals, they all rely on semiconductors for their most mundane

and basic tasks.

That's Jan Peter Kleinhans.

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