said by JPL:I'm sorry but this makes no sense. DirecTV uses RCA, Philips, and Humax as its main suppliers for their boxes. Say one of these suppliers - say RCA - has production issues. You mean to tell me that DirecTV would be all fine and dandy on the supply of STBs? No, I don't think so. They're going to order so many from each supplier. Granted, going to multiple suppliers does give them some more flexibility longer term, but if one of their suppliers hits a snag, they have a shortage too. For short term issues (like what's happening with Motorola) having multiple suppliers really doesn't help. It would still take time for the other suppliers to ramp up production to meet the short-fall caused by the one supplier, and chances are they would still fall short.
Manufacturers don't run with gobs of spare capacity for production - that's wasteful. So they may be able to ramp up a little for a short period of time, but if one of their suppliers fell down on the job, they too would run into the same shortages that Verizon and other cable suppliers are hitting.
It doesn't cure the problem totally, but it can certainly help. If you have multiple suppliers and one runs into problems that affect supply, the chances are that you can ramp up production from the other vendors quicker than you can fix the broken one. Not to mention the fact that having multiple suppliers tends to keep them on their toes.
