It is important to remember that just a handful of companies have the lion’s share of the automobile, computer, and cell phone industries.  So when these large companies place huge orders with manufacturers, it behooves the manufacturers to keep their best customers happy, and those customers get priority over everyone else. Unfortunately, that leaves the rest of us wondering when we will get a sense resistor or a microcontroller for our next design, and at this point, the tea leaves are too disintegrated to read.