Huawei Technologies Co (華為), the telecom giant at the center of US-China tensions, yesterday said that it has “sufficient” inventory for its communications equipment business while it seeks out supplies of smartphone chips that have been cut off by a ban by US President Donald Trump’s administration.
The company has enough supplies to keep its enterprise and carrier units afloat, and it is developing new consumer devices to offset the hit to its smartphone business, Huawei chairman Guo Ping (郭平) told reporters in Shanghai.
It is still evaluating the impact of the US blacklist, which has greatly limited US suppliers’ businesses, Guo said, adding that Huawei is still willing to buy from those firms.
Photo: Reuters
A White House ban on companies providing US technology to Huawei came into effect last week, cutting off the foreign-made semiconductors, software and other materials that are key to powering its mobile phones and 5G base stations.
While suppliers including Qualcomm Inc have applied for licenses to continue shipping to the Chinese company, it is unclear whether the US Department of Commerce would issue them.
“The US ban brings tremendous trouble in operation and production,” Guo said.
Huawei would provide full support to its supply chain, including in areas like talent, technology and standards, to help navigate the current restrictions, he said.
Huawei is also under siege elsewhere. Japan and Australia have joined the US-led boycott, while the UK is to prohibit its telecom operators from buying the company’s equipment starting next year.
Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) remains under house arrest in Canada and is fighting a US extradition request on alleged trade-sanctions breaches.
Huawei’s first-half revenue grew 13 percent to 454 billion yuan (US$67 billion), the company said in July.
Profit for the six months to June jumped nearly 20 percent to about 41.8 billion yuan, Bloomberg calculations show.
Its enterprise business — including cloud, routers and other IT services — accounted for less than 10 percent of revenue during the period, while its carriers unit made up slightly over one-third.
Huawei consumer group chief Richard Yu (余承東) said at an event this month that curbs on chip supplies have affected smartphone shipments, which were 105 million units in the first half of this year after reaching 240 million last year.
Guo’s comments suggest that the firm might be holding out hope that the situation could improve after US elections in November.
“As Alexandre Dumas said, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words: wait and hope,” he said, quoting from The Count of Monte Cristo, a 19th-century novel about the eponymous count who gets revenge against those who conspired against him.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day