Economy Huawei News & Discussion: BT Will Build UK’s Emergency Network with "High-Risk Vendor" Huawei

[Strychnine]

RIP Huawei.

I think they'll be fine, they still have a Billion people to market to in China.

 

[Arkain2K]

Huawei is among the most valued Chinese companies and also one which has an empire fanning out in all directions. Besides claiming the number two spot in terms of smartphone sales worldwide, Huawei is among the leading suppliers for telecommunication equipment and a driving force in the adoption of 5G. But for certain reasons, the company has been under the gunsight of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly alleged that Huawei’s smartphones and telecom equipment are potentially being used for espionage. Citing founder Ren Zhengfei’s previous association with the Chinese army, the U.S. government has barred government agencies as well as their private contractors from using any Huawei product, and also pursued allies to do the same.

With escalating diplomatic tension between the two countries, President Trump declared a national emergency and passed an executive order to restrict companies in the U.S. from supplying products to Huawei last week. While the Chinese giant claimed to have a decent stockpile of hardware goods and seemingly felt at ease even with these restrictions in place, a recent disclosure from Google puts Huawei’s prominence in the market at stake. As part of the blacklisting by the government, Google has removed Huawei from the Android partner program, suggesting that the latter will no longer have “access to proprietary apps and services from Google,” Reuters reported.

Google is currently “reviewing the implications” of the executive order from the White House, but for now, Huawei will reportedly be unable to install Google Play Service on the smartphones henceforth. The crackdown bars Huawei from applying for evaluation of devices under the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), which any OEM must pass to be able to use the Android branding on its devices and provide services like the Google Play Store, YouTube, Google Search, Chrome, etc. out-of-the-box.

Users will not be able to just side-load APKs for these services because Google prohibits CTS-unverified devices from running its apps. Besides Google apps, all the others that use Google’s APIs, to facilitate log-in, for instance, will also be blocked on smartphones by Huawei and sub-brand Honor.

For the existing Huawei devices, Google has confirmed users will continue to be able to update apps through the Google Play Store. However, the blacklisting also prohibits Huawei and Honor from sending out newer updates to their smartphones, and if it does, it will be forced to remove Google Play Services and Google apps from the existing devices too.

As a result of this ban, Huawei will not have access to the code for monthly Google security patches before the public release. Furthermore, Huawei and Honor can no longer be a member of the Android beta programs starting with the next commercial release of Android i.e. Android R. If Huawei intends to move ahead with updates and brings users onboard the Android R bandwagon, it will have to wait until the public release which happens around August every year.

Fundamentally, the only way Huawei can now continue using Android onto its smartphones is building its own custom version of Android using AOSP (Android Open Source Project) code, exactly how developers of custom ROMs do. Unlike custom ROMs, however, Huawei might not be able to strap GApps along with the package without going unnoticed by Google.

All in all, the situation is really bad for Huawei. The only plausible options it has for now is to either finally start rolling out its own operating system that it has reportedly been working on, in the anticipation of the day when the U.S. finally obstructs its usage of Android. That might be a challenging shift since most Huawei users are habitual of Android and the Google ecosystem. But, so long as the operating system resembles Android in terms of experience and allows the installation of Google apps, it should be useful. However, we haven’t seen any previews yet, which means that it might not be ready for use just yet.

Alternatively, Huawei could continue to tinker with Android and use AOSP builds to continue providing EMUI updates. However, in that case, it will not be able to support Google Play Services and other Google apps. This will limit the users to rely on Huawei’s AppGallery, which has a relatively smaller number of apps, even though that wouldn’t resolve the issue with Google apps.

Overall, the condition is really limiting for Huawei, essentially confining it to China, where Google’s services are already banned by law. This executive order crushes Huawei and Honor’s presence, not just in the U.S., but basically every market where devices are shipped with Google services pre-installed. Given that the U.S. government already has a strict view of the company, we do not expect any relief in the coming months. Earlier, Huawei had also shared its plans to sue the U.S. government but a favorable decision may take several months or even years.

For now, this step reeks of the upcoming death of another smartphone giant.

After the report of Google limiting its software exchange with Huawei, American chipmakers Qualcomm, Broadcom, Xilinx, and Intel have announced that they will cede to the executive order by the U.S. government and limit supplies to Huawei. Huawei “is heavily dependent on U.S. semiconductor products and would be seriously crippled without supply of key U.S. components,” analyst Ryan Koontz told Bloomberg. As mentioned above, Huawei does seem to have stockpiled enough chips to keep production going for the next three months. However, the ban may take longer to be lifted.

Among the four chipmakers, Intel Huawei’s the primary supplier for chips used in its data centers. Additionally, Intel also provides processors for Huawei’s Matebook series of laptops. Qualcomm sells it Snapdragon SoCs for various entry-level devices like the Honor 8C as well as some network chips. Qualcom also licenses aptX codec for Bluetooth audio to Huawei. Meanwhile, Xilinx provides programmable chips for networking while Broadcom supplies packet switching chips for telecom equipment.

In all, there are more than 30 companies in the U.S. considered as “core suppliers” by the company, and all of them are likely to follow the same route.

 

[VivaRevolution]

I think they'll be fine, they still have a Billion people to market to in China.

I believe they have a need for certain US components.

 

[JonesBones]

As pointed out the founder of the company announced he was a member of the communist party of China. Not looking good if your interested in your privacy that being said so far only a company who made server motherboards have been identified as actually installing equipment that could be used to spy on people. US as dominance in chip making and only a few companies that are actually independent of larger suppliers but the ramification of this is huge do to the size of the market. We could very well be seeing the end of US dominance in technology with this on going war.

Don't buy the talking points that the US has a 5 to 10 year lead and we can wait this out till they brake. Most of our major companies rely on Taiwanese or Korean suppliers to produce the vast number of chips we need as our companies design the stuff we leave it to 3rd parties to produce and it takes 2 to 3 years or more to build a high volume chip making factory. Android is made up of parts open source and closed source parts that make it virtually impossible to port independent of these parts and function. The way the open source drivers work they go hand to hand with the OS and how it interfaces with the screen.

"Yes of course.

The most basic and important part of Android is open source in AOSP project, everyone can get and modify it.

However, to make a real Android device, you also need many other parts like your device hardware drivers, your custom sources code for customized ui, customized function, application, … These parts can be open source if you open it or closed source if you not. And as you know, there are many manufacturers are providing their products for android like samsung, sony, htc, qualcomn, mediatek, …, and almost of their customized source code is not open.

So now you can think that although android is open source operation system, it is not totally opened at all."

https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-closed-source-parts-in-Android

Nice video. It reminded me of North Korea. When you walk into the country you are walking onto a movie set and everyone has their part. I don't know if they think we are stupid or what. It's insulting.

 

[DC23]

They're already a joke in the HPC world so it's no big loss.

 

[Strychnine]

I believe they have a need for certain US components.

You've got a point but since all of our phones are made in China, they more than likely have a workaround set up/in the making. Don't forget that if you manufacture in China, you lose your intellectual property rights as standard operating procedure.

 

[Anung Un Rama]

No one makes better oinment tha chinese.

Dr.Wu's good for burns and alergies trusted since 1911!

Their Javan rhino horn face mask cream is simply to die for

 

[VivaRevolution]

You've got a point but since all of our phones are made in China, they more than likely have a workaround set up/in the making. Don't forget that if you manufacture in China, you lose your intellectual property rights as standard operating procedure.

Sounds like trading 5$ more in cost for a phone in exchange for factories that employ 10's of thousands of people.

Seems like a good trade.

 

[PEB]

I believe they have a need for certain US components.

We will have to get to work building factories in other Countries or the US then because our technology companies have enjoyed nice profit margins thank to the use of foreign factories in Taiwanese or Korea. No doubt this could end up forcing these companies to have to come up with new supplier solutions because these companies in Taiwanese or Korean have deals with Chinese based companies.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Sooo when does China kick Apple out or fuck with them.

 

[VivaRevolution]

We will have to get to work building factories in other Countries or the US then because our technology companies have enjoyed nice profit margins thank to the use of foreign factories in Taiwanese or Korea. No doubt this could end up forcing these companies to have to come up with new supplier solutions because these companies in Taiwanese or Korean have deals with Chinese based companies.

It will be interesting if this gets to the point Iran is, where they go after countries doing business with China. That might just start a war.

Of course I have this sneaking suspicion, that from the China trade war, to Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Ukraine, and Russian tensions, have all been tied together.

I think that is why we have seen the escalations in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and the China Trade war. That this has become a big US verse China/Russia chess board.

 

[PEB]

They're already a joke in the HPC world so it's no big loss.

Last I checked they where more interested in telecommunications because HPC is such a relatively small market where the real money is in 4g and 5g wireless telecommunications and it looks like they are doing pretty well making these devices and low cost network gear.

 

[PEB]

Sooo when does China kick Apple out or fuck with them.

That's the big fish in the room as well as US car manufacturers like GM and Ford the economic impact could be huge.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

It won’t get that far. US has this under control.

 

[PEB]

Sometimes I wounder this was to shift the narrative off of the trade war as that's not going well to talk about something else to get people waving their finger at the Chinese while the Chinese seemed right now to hold the upper hand with regards to the trade talks and tariffs.

 

[PEB]

I'm getting a cramp posting on a hundred different threads about this topic could we merge these threads to make it a little easier to follow.

 

[Strychnine]

Sounds like trading 5$ more in cost for a phone in exchange for factories that employ 10's of thousands of people.

Seems like a good trade.

Until you realize that China can just take whatever you made and make it their own. Because that's how the Chinese government rolls.

 

[VivaRevolution]

Until you realize that China can just take whatever you made and make it their own. Because that's how the Chinese government rolls.

Who cares?

International trade makes up like 8% of the American economy.

We are literally the only nation in the world that could completely close it's doors, and do just fine.

 

[Armbars]

Shame. After owning several Samsung devices a iPhone and huawei phone. The huawei phone is better than both of the others.

 

[method115]

Until you realize that China can just take whatever you made and make it their own. Because that's how the Chinese government rolls.

Apparently it's not that simple and China is having trouble making some of this stuff which is why they rely on American tech companies. We like to think it's as simple as just buy a copy and reproduce it but we're talking about very advanced technology it's a lot harder than most people realize.