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More Chinese tech manufacturers are under the gun from President Trump's Commerce Department. Semiconductors firm Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation and DJI, known best for its drones, have been added to the Entity List which prohibits them from U.S. imports. But while the White House rattles SMIC's closely-knit integrations to the military, the case for DJI is less clear.
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For the third time this year, the US Commerce Department has granted another 90-day reprieve to Huawei that lets American companies continue to do business with China's biggest telecom. The new rule takes effect on November 18th, and it follows the first extension granted in May and the second in August.
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- According to Nikkei Asian Review, Huawei's folding Mate X may also skip out on Google apps and services when it goes on sale, expected to happen later this month. The phone has already suffered delays pushing the release from June until September. If it had launched on time, it may have been able to sneak in the release before the Google's ability to license software to the company expired.
According to a report published today by Reuters, Huawei's upcoming Mate 30 series of phones may have to eschew Google's apps as a result of the trade ban imposed by the U.S. government. While the phone should still be able to run Android, given the free and open availability of the software, deeper integration with Google's apps and services like the Play Store and YouTube will be missing if an exemption can't be secured.
Huawei is being given another 90-day reprieve by the U.S. government, following the Temporary General License (TGL) issued back in May. That provides the company with three more months to continue purchasing goods from U.S. companies. While this extension might sound like a step towards dropping the Entity List import/export ban for good, the government is clear that the extra few months are merely meant to "afford consumers across America the necessary time to transition away from Huawei equipment."
The Department of Commerce has announced a 90-day reprieve to an import ban against Chinese manufacturer Huawei. The company now has a Temporary General License to engage with U.S. vendors on a limited basis — in this case, Google will be allowed to provide software updates to Huawei for its Android phones while Huawei's component suppliers will be able to finish deliveries for previously-made orders. It will also give telcos dependent on Huawei products time to potentially find alternative solutions.
Huawei and its U.S.-based suppliers remain on eggshells as the Trump administration has yet to issue special permits allowing domestic companies to ship product to the Chinese tech manufacturer — this is going on as Huawei's temporary reprieve from an Commerce Department import ban is headed into its last week. Now, there's word from Bloomberg's sources that the White House is stalling on approving the permits.
If you've kept track of the political football in Washington that is Huawei, you'll know that the Trump administration, which supports the Chinese tech manufacturer, is at odds with Congress, which wants it disassociated with U.S. trade partners. The company has publicly been preparing contingency measures for a variety of situations, including replacement software for its smartphones should Android become unusable as a result of the ban. However, one of its board members has revealed that it has no intentions to leave Android, contradicting what executives have previously said about their plans.
When the US added Huawei to the Entity List last month, it sparked a series of troubles for the Chinese manufacturer that are beginning to have significant consequences on its shipments and revenue. Indeed, the company has been banned from doing business with US organizations, which means it had to stop its working relationships with chip manufacturers and even Google.
It's no secret Huawei has been going through some serious issues after it's been added to the US Entity List, preventing it from doing business with US companies. Indeed, most of the manufacturer's American partners were fast in cutting their ties with it, ranging from Google to chip manufacturers. ARM's decision to do the same also prevented the Chinese firm from continuing to build its Kirin chips, which were featured in most of its devices. Although Huawei is trying to overcome these woes with in-house software and working with Aptoide to put in place a Play Store replacement, it's struggling to convince the world about its viability. For instance, UK carriers have halted the commercialization of the conglomerate's devices due to the current situation. New information reports Foxconn stopped manufacturing Huawei's devices, further confirming the company is in trouble.
After banning U.S. exporters from supplying product to Huawei, the Department of Commerce has put a hold to that ban for 90 days. But in some cases, the damage done to that company's supply chain relationships remains — most of the chip and software vendors that pulled away have stayed away. That said, the Chinese tech manufacturer remains a partner with Google in delivering the Android Q Beta program to its constituent developers. While Google decided to pull acknowledgement of Huawei's participation on its webpage last week, it has since reversed that decision.
Just a few days after the US added Huawei to its "Entity List," things are continuing to go south for the Chinese manufacturer. The demise began with Google announcing it would put an end to its partnership with the company, and continued with major chip manufacturers blacklisting it. Although Huawei is trying to mitigate the first issue by working on an in-house operating system, hardware related bans are much more complex to overcome. To make things worse, ARM has just asked its employees to stop working with the Chinese tech giant, which puts the company's Kirin chips at risk.
In March, amid a tightening trade war between the U.S. and China, Huawei consumer group CEO Richard Yu told Die Welt that it had a backup OS ready to deploy if it could not use Android for any reason. That reason came last week when the Department of Commerce effectively enacted an import ban against the world's second-largest smartphone brand by volume, blocking millions of phones from receiving software updates. Though the ban has been placed on hold until mid-August, Yu has now laid out a deployment plan for that backup OS.
After the U.S. Department of Commerce banned ZTE from importing US-made components, due to the company violating an agreement it made in 2017, ZTE shut down most operations while it fought to lift the ban. The Commerce Department told ZTE it had to pay over a billion dollars in fines and replace its entire senior leadership for the ban to be lifted, which ZTE agreed to last month.