Huawei loses its export license: USA has barred Huawei from accessing the chip supply
February 02, 2023 By Jozeph P
(Image Credit Google)
Huawei has struggled to compete with US chips and technology for a few years. The Trump and Biden administrations restricted general exports of US chips and technology to the company. Huawei hasn't been denied any US chips, but every sale has had to be approved by the government, with restrictions being tightened several times since the initial ban in 2019.
Reuters, The Financial Times, and several other outlets reported that the Biden administration is pushing Huawei to face tighter restrictions. The Financial Times says the US is aiming for a "total ban" on sales to the Chinese tech company.
Like all tech companies, Huawei sources components from a variety of suppliers to make its network equipment and smartphones. While a ton of manufacturing is conducted in China, CPUs still need to be made available.
With limited government-issued export licenses, US companies Qualcomm and Intel have kept Huawei afloat. The company can still build servers, and while 5G technology was banned from export, Qualcomm went to great lengths to develop only 4G versions of its latest SoCs.
In order to avoid hurting Huawei's customers without harming the suppliers that have Huawei on board, the US decided to allow sales of old technology but not the latest. The cutoff for this was the ever-ambiguous name "5G," but now even that is being banned.
"U.S. officials are implementing a new formal policy of denial for shipping items to Huawei below the 5G standards, such as 4G, WiFi 6 and 7, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and cloud products," according to Reuters.
In a press release, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, DC, think tank that counts Qualcomm, Intel, and most other big tech companies as its supporters, said, "The Administration's ongoing efforts to increase U.S. technology competitiveness have been commendable, but completely disengaging Huawei from U.S. suppliers would likely have the opposite effect."
By Jozeph P
Journalism explorer, tech Enthusiast. Love to read and write.