Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has stopped new orders from Huawei Technologies Co (華為) in response to Washington’s move aimed at further limiting chip supplies to the Chinese company, the Nikkei reported yesterday, citing multiple sources.
The orders that TSMC took before the new ban and those that were already in production are not affected, and could continue to proceed if those chips could be shipped before the middle of September, the report said.
TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker and a key Huawei supplier, on Thursday last week announced plans to build a US-based plant and on Friday added that it was “following the US export rule change closely.”
Photo: David Chang / EPA-EFE
A new rule, unveiled on Friday by the US Department of Commerce, expands US authority to require licenses for sales to Huawei of semiconductors made abroad with US technology, vastly expanding its reach to halt exports to the world’s No. 2 smartphone maker.
TSMC said it does not disclose order details and added that the report was “purely market rumor.”
Huawei yesterday assailed the latest US move to cut it off from semiconductor suppliers as a “pernicious” attack that would sow chaos in the global technology sector and other industries.
“The decision was arbitrary and pernicious, and threatens to undermine the entire [technology] industry worldwide,” a Huawei spokesman said.
Huawei, which has largely weathered an escalating 18-month campaign by US President Donald Trump’s administration to isolate it internationally, said its business “will inevitably be affected” by the new American salvo.
It would “impact the expansion, maintenance and continuous operations of networks worth hundreds of billions of dollars that we have rolled out in more than 170 countries,” it said.
The statement was issued during an annual summit of technology analysts that it organizes at its headquarters in Shenzhen, China.
“This decision by the US government does not just affect Huawei,” it said. “It will have a serious impact on a wide number of global industries” by creating uncertainty in the chip sector and technology supply chains.
UNWANTED ATTENTION: In the past two months, the automaker has made headlines, with a Chinese military ban of its vehicles and a protest at an expo Electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc, facing scrutiny in China over safety and customer service complaints, is boosting its engagement with regulators and beefing up its government relations team, industry sources said. Tesla’s change of strategy leading to more behind-the-scenes interaction with policymakers in Beijing compared with relatively little previously shows the seriousness with which the US automaker views the setbacks in its second-biggest market. TALKING SHOP It also comes at a time when China is trying to regulate large and powerful private companies, especially in the technology sector, on concerns about their market dominance. As they do elsewhere, regulators in China, the world’s biggest
Dell Technologies Inc has agreed to sell its Boomi cloud business to private equity firms Francisco Partners and TPG in a cash deal valued at US$4 billion, as part of efforts by chief executive officer Michael Dell to trim down the PC maker. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year, the companies said in a statement on Sunday without providing additional details of the terms. Dow Jones had earlier reported that the companies were near a deal. Boomi specializes in integrating different cloud platforms for companies and has more than 15,000 customers. Dell agreed to acquire the company for
Intel Corp wants 8 billion euros (US$9.7 billion) in public subsidies toward building a semiconductor factory in Europe, chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger was cited as saying on Friday, as the region seeks to reduce its reliance on imports amid a shortage of supplies. The pitch is the first time that Gelsinger has publicly put a figure on how much state aid he would want, as Intel campaigns to take on Asian rivals in contract manufacturing. “What we’re asking from both the US and the European governments is to make it competitive for us to do it here, compared to in Asia,”
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that it is considering further capacity expansion as customers are requesting more capacity due to rising end-market demand and persistent supply constraints. The Hsinchu-based company said that emerging technologies and applications from 5G, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles are driving semiconductor demand. The semiconductor industry has a positive outlook for this year and beyond, with shipments of all diameters of wafers to increase through 2023, GlobalWafers said. “We have received requests for expansion from many strategic partners. We are now in discussions with customers,” company chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) told a
RSS