India, Jan. 11 -- After a calamitous 2020, the handset industry is looking to bounce back in 2021.

The good news is that demand is surging; the downside is the supply chain will struggle to keep pace.

Thanks to the pandemic, global smartphone sales fell by a record-breaking 11% to 1.25 billion units last year, according to TrendForce.

This year TrendForce predicts a recovery driven by replacement demand and emerging markets and 5G growth.

It cautions that while the pandemic will remain the biggest variable, it expects production to increase by 9% to 1.36 billion units this year.

But due to a series of factors, the handset recovery faces a bottleneck in the stretched semiconductor supply chain.

One of the main reasons is that the rob...