China plans to expand a ban on the use of iPhones in sensitive departments to government-backed agencies and state companies, a sign of growing challenges for Apple Inc in its biggest foreign market and global production base.
Several agencies have begun instructing staff not to bring their iPhones to work, people familiar with the matter said, affirming a previous report from the Wall Street Journal.
Beijing intends to extend that restriction far more broadly to a plethora of state-owned enterprises and other government-controlled organizations, insiders said.
Photo: EPA
If Beijing’s plan goes ahead, it might later erode Apple’s position in a market that yields about one-fifth of its revenue, and from where it makes the majority of the world’s iPhones through factories that employ millions of Chinese.
China’s potential restrictions on Apple caused the company’s shares to slide 3.6 percent in New York on Wednesday, their biggest single-day drop since Aug. 4. Apple had gained 46 percent this year before the decline.
The blockade on iPhones coincides with stepped-up efforts to develop domestic technology that can match or even surpass US innovation. The release of a Huawei Technologies Co (華為) smartphone that contained an advanced made-in-China processor gained media attention on both sides of the Pacific last week. State media celebrated an early triumph against US sanctions, while one US lawmaker called for an investigation into possible violations of those curbs.
Huawei uses an advanced 7-nanometer processor built by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), China’s top chipmaker, to power its latest smartphone, a teardown commissioned by Bloomberg showed.
Existing rules require any company that intends to supply Huawei with US technology, which is present throughout SMIC’s operations, to get approval from Washington. It is unclear whether SMIC has a US license to supply Huawei.
“It sure looks like it did [violate sanctions],” US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul said on Wednesday at a briefing at the US embassy in the Hague, adding that SMIC continues “to try to get our intellectual property.”
Meanwhile, South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc has opened an investigation into the use of its chips in the latest phone from Huawei, after a teardown of the device revealed its memory and flash storage inside.
Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro uses Hynix’s LPDDR5 and NAND flash memory, said TechInsights, which conducted the teardown of the device for Bloomberg.
The handset’s components are almost entirely provided by Chinese suppliers, and Hynix’s hardware is an isolated example of materials sourced from overseas, TechInsights said.
Icheon-based Hynix “no longer does business with Huawei since the US introduced restrictions against the company and, with regard to the issue, we started an investigation to find out more details,” a company spokeswoman said to Bloomberg on Thursday last week.
It is unclear how Huawei might have procured the memory chips from Hynix. which makes most of its semiconductors at plants in China. One possibility is that Huawei might be tapping a stockpile of components it accumulated as far back as 2020 before the full set of US trade curbs had been imposed on it.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
RSS