US telecommunications chip giant Qualcomm Inc. is the newest technology company some products may be sold to Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.Analysts said this could pave the way for the embattled Chinese giant to return to the global smartphone market as early as the end of next year.
Huawei has lost much of the key components required to manufacture its leading smartphones and telecommunications network devices over the past two years as part of a highly coordinated Washington-led campaign. But since Washington first banned all US companies from selling to Huawei without a special license last year, it has slowly allowed such sales to be made for non-5G technologies.
Qualcomm confirmed on Saturday that it will be the final license to sell some products to Huawei, including some with 4G technology, which is now used on cellular networks in most of the major countries. The move follows similar limited approval to US chipmakers Xilinx Inc., which were licensed last year, and Intel Corp. and AMD Inc., which were licensed in September.
After the first U.S. sanctions last year, specifically aimed at American companies selling to Huawei, Washington also cut off non-American alternatives by threatening to block access to U.S. technology. Two targets of this later part of the campaign were Taiwan’s TSMC, which made 5G chips designed by Huawei. and MediaTek Inc., also from Taiwan, which sold its own 5G chips to Huawei.
Expecting to be cut off, Huawei has been aggressively stocking up that pair’s chips and has now begun rationing them to weather the US attack. As a result, both the company’s revenue growth and profit margins fell sharply in the third quarter The latest report from Huawei Released at the end of October. The company’s smartphone sales also fell 22% in the third quarter as it earned its title as the world’s largest smartphone maker to South Korean company Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. lost.
Most recently, sources told Caixin that Huawei is aiming to do this sell their low-end smartphone brand Honor, which currently account for around a quarter of all the company’s smartphone sales. At this point, the company has largely withdrawn from the global smartphone market and focuses on its home market in China.
Huawei traditionally bought most of its high-end smartphone chips from Qualcomm, but later developed its own chips and used TSMC to make them. At the same time, Huawei and Qualcomm were embroiled in a series of patent lawsuits that they eventually settled in July. Two months later, Huawei rotating chairman Guo Ping said the company could resume buying Qualcomm chips if Washington gives the necessary permission.
When Qualcomm released its latest results earlier this month, it began to include part of the $ 1.8 billion payment from Huawei that was part of the deal between the two companies in those results. It also included royalties that were part of the settlement, leading some speculation that the couple believed Qualcomm could soon obtain a license to resume sales to Huawei.