By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 18th, 2024
The United States in its spate of economic tensions with China has placed Huawei alongside other technology companies on its blacklist.
Chinese mobile phone manufacturer and tech company Huawei has stated that it will continue to patronize U.S. chip giant Qualcomm Inc (NASDAQ: QCOM) following reports that Qualcomm applied to the United States government for a license to export its products to Huawei. As reported by CNBC, the intention of business continuity between Huawei and Qualcomm was confirmed by Huawei’s rotating Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Guo Ping who noted that unprecedented U.S. sanctions have hurt Huawei’s business operations.
“The U.S. has been continuously attacking us … and that has posed great challenges to our production and our operation,” Guo Ping, rotating chairman at Huawei, mentioned on Wednesday. “We got the last batch of chipsets in middle of September, we are still evaluating more details.”
The United States in its spate of economic tensions with China has placed Huawei alongside other technology companies on its blacklist and mandates any U.S. company intending to do business with firms in the list to get a license from the government. The U.S. government further tightened these measures when it extended the license requirements to foreign firms with business ties to the U.S., servicing Huawei amongst others.
These sanctions have limited Huawei’s potentials to source for chips and semi-conductors it requires in making its cell phones. While Chairman Guo noted that the company has “sufficient stock” of chips for its business to business divisions, a prompt approval of Qualcomm’s license will help the company scale up more to maintain its spot as the world’s largest phone producer.
“Qualcomm has always been a very important partner of Huawei. Over the past decade and more, Huawei has been procuring chipsets from Qualcomm. I’ve noticed Qualcomm has applied for a license to export products to Huawei from the U.S. government and if they get the license we are willing to continue to procure from them and use their chipsets in our smartphones,” Guo said.
Intel Edges Qualcomm in Getting Approval to Service Huawei
In a bid to keep the business bond with Huawei alive, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) has gotten its license to supply some products to Huawei, edging out QCOM in the race. Per the Reuters report, the license approval was confirmed by an Intel spokesman. Other firms including China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix amongst others are also lobbying to get similar approvals.
Following the renewed business partnership with Intel (INTC), Huawei has announced the joint launch of the next-generation FusionServer Pro V6 Intelligent Server. The new FusionServer innovation is vital in “Improving server performance at the system level,” Kenneth Zhang, President of FusionServer Business, Huawei, said, adding that “along with high-density data center deployment and intelligent O&M, is essential for the development of the computing industry”. This innovation the firm noted was made possible with Intel as a partner, an innovation drive it hopes to maintain with other U.S. firms, including Qualcomm.