The Year in Parts 2022

While 2021 was a year of resilience, reinvention and innovation, 2022 will be remembered as the year in which we finally saw light at the end of the COVID-19 and supply-chain disruption tunnel. Supply chains were slowly normalizing throughout the second half of 2022, with gradual improvements in operations expected to continue in the year ahead. 

Yet new global threats emerged in 2022 as well. According to the World Economic Forum, we’re potentially on the brink of a ‘polycrisis’ – a series of cascading and connected crises driven by a combination of inflation, climate change and global conflict.

None the less, optimism and growth persist, especially in the technology sector. Digitization continued to accelerate at a dazzling pace. Global internet traffic for 2022 was estimated at 4.8 zettabytes – that’s 4.8 trillion gigabytes – a huge increase of 50% since 2020. 

From our point of view, the electronics industry’s innovation and resilience shined in 2022. With more than 9 million unique visitors to the Octopart web site, and average search volume of more than 2.75 million sessions per month, last year’s site data provides a wealth of information that can help us see the direction the industry is headed. 

So, let’s take a look at the numbers from 2022 and see what trends come to light.

Octopart Search Stats & Trends 

First, let’s examine search metrics for the year. We define searches as the number of times a search resulted in a search results page loading, while “most common search term” refers to the term that showed up most often in queries.  

Total Searches Performed: 83,293,849

The total number of searches performed on the Octopart search engine in 2022 was greater than 83 million. This is 17.5 million more searches compared to 2021, which was a healthy increase of 27%. 

This increase in search volume was predominantly driven by continued supply chain disruptions. At the start of the year, many parts simply weren’t available. This translated into engineers having to search more diligently to find the parts they needed. And, with prices up, many would perform additional searches to make sure they were finding parts at the best pricing available.

Most Searched MPN: “STM32”

The manufacturer part number “STM32” was searched for 460,909 times, earning it the top searched MPN for 2022. This was driven by the fact that microcontrollers were one of the harder parts to find in stock last year. At the time, manufacturers were struggling to rebuild inventory after the shortages of the past couple years. The situation was exacerbated by increasing demand for microcontrollers and the popular STM32 family specifically. 

The STM32 family of 32-bit microcontrollers was specially designed for embedded applications, including a wide range of consumer, health, IoT and security products. Based on the Arm Cortex^®-M processor, the STM32 MCUs deliver high performance, real-time capabilities, digital signal processing, low-power / low-voltage operation and connectivity. 

A Deep Dive into the State of MCUs in 2022 

Let's dig deeper into what happened in 2022 with MCUs. According to data from the Electronic Design to Delivery Index (EDDI) from Spectra – a free monthly report covering electronics industry supply and demand trends – we can see there was a confluence of extremely high demand and very low supply for MCUs (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

In its category (integrated circuits), MCUs had the highest demand while also having the lowest supply. This profound imbalance between supply and demand explains the significant challenges that customers faced in sourcing these products throughout 2022.

Most Common Search Term: Capacitor

“Capacitor” continued to maintain its position as the most common search term since 2019. This was driven by a shortage of capacitors stemming from COVID-19 supply chain disruptions, as well as the passive component’s broad popularity and common use in many products. Again, in-depth data from our Electronic Design to Delivery Index (EDDI) clearly illustrates the supply-demand situation, as shown in Figure2.

Figure 2

Total Number of Parts Added: 6,504,849

More than 6.5 million new parts were added to the Octopart search engine in 2022, bringing the total to more than 74 million parts, which was an increase of 9%. While many competitors artificially inflate their calculations of such numbers, here at Octopart we make sure to only report on actual new parts. In order to provide a truly accurate and reliable account of new parts added, we diligently remove any and all duplicates and name variables. 

The 6.5 million new parts added to Octopart in 2022 is a slight reduction compared to the 7 million parts added in 2021. Yet it is impressive that the industry continued to release so many new parts in both years, despite the global shortage of raw materials, transportation constraints, and other obstacles.

Keep in mind that this metric represents parts introduced to the Octopart site by our manufacturer and distribution partners, not the total number of new electronic components introduced in the industry at large.

Total Number of BOMs: 205,892

Octopart users took advantage of our BOM Tool by uploading more than 200,000 bills of materials in 2022, an increase of more than 10% compared to 2021. The Octopart BOM Tool makes component procurement easier by matching your parts with the more than 74 million parts in our database. With the BOM tool, users can customize their BOMs according to their unique preferences and easily share them across teams and departments.

The Winners of 2022’s Popularity Contest Are…

We have several ways to determine a component’s popularity on our search engine. We look at which category of parts gathered the most searches via part detail page views, search result page views, and a complete total of page views across all page types. We also look at which categories experienced the most growth activity year over year. We define “activity” as any interaction with a part on the Octopart site rather than views. With that said, here are 2022’s most popular parts:

Top 5 Most Viewed Product Categories on Octopart in 2022

It’s fascinating to see how things have changed since the previous year. 

• The passive component categories of resistors and capacitors put in very a strong showing by taking, respectively, the #1 and #3 spots on our list of top viewed product categories for 2022.

• Integrated circuits, which was the #1 category in 2021, slipped to #4 in 2022.

• Connectors, which was the #3 category in 2021, moved up to #2 in 2022.

• Discrete semiconductors slipped from the #4 spot to #5, while electromechanical components, which was #5 on the list in 2021, disappeared from the top 5 list altogether in 2022.

Takeaways

Here at Octopart, we spend a lot of time thinking about trends in the components industry, but we avoid making any conclusions that are not supported by the data. As well, the information presented here is not meant to be a definitive statement about the state of the industry one way or another. We’ll leave those final conclusions to you.

However, many industry insiders are predicting a year of impactful technological advancements and a flurry of new product launches that are expected to drive increased demand in many categories, from IoT and 5G/6G to machine learning, virtual reality and more.

That’s a wrap for our look back at 2022. We’d love to know what you think. Drop us a line at contact@octopart.com or on Twitter and be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter while you’re at it.