Smartphones, tablets, and laptops have a huge impact on people's daily life as the most common Information and Communication Technology (ICT) devices. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the usage of digital technology for working, learning, entertaining, socialising, making purchases, and gaining access to everything from health care to culture.
Smartphones, tablets and laptops are complex technologies that use a large number of raw materials in various parts. Figure 1 shows the most important raw materials used in those devices.
Smartphones, tablets and laptops are composed of more than 300 parts with a complex global supply chain network. In these complex technologies, although the raw materials stage is found to be critical for the EU, it is only a part of the potential challenge facing the supply chain, as the manufacturing of components, assemblies and final product take place mostly in Asia. Figure 2 summarises Supply Risks of the elements appearing in the raw and processed materials stage.
Smartphones can be assembled in China, use semiconductors designed in the United States but made in Taiwan, using raw materials and chemicals from Japan and machines made in Europe. Any disruption at any stage in the supply chain could impact the whole supply chain, not only to the EU but also globally. Figure 3 shows the overview of supply risk at all stages.
During the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the demand for digital infrastructure increased significantly. As a result of the need for telework during this time period, the demand for tablets and laptops increased. The the material demand forecast for some raw materials, namely silicon metal, gallium, germanium (used in semiconductors), neodymium and praseodymium (REEs), and palladium (used in electronic components) for the EU is presented in Figure 4.
Given the short cycle of smartphones, tablets and laptops and the variability of products from each OEM, the material consumption figures may not represent accurately the material consumption used in the technologies in this assessment.
