Is the US shooting itself in the foot by banning Huawei?
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Just more proof on how corrupt US has become. Can China maintain a principled approach to negotiation?
Yes, if US really want, it could kill Huawei.
It is not going to stop there unless China (or more importantly, Xi) willing to retaliate. So far, US is giving China left jab, right jab. China responds by love tab.
At this minute, Wall Street is up by 230 points even after the Huawei news is out. It is expecting China to accept the "Unequal" treaty.
Time for Xi to stand up.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Here is SCMP article on Huawei dependence
Huawei is in better shape to withstand US pressure, thanks to industry’s largest research budget
Published: 9:01pm, 26 Apr, 2018
Huawei Technologies, China’s largest telecommunications equipment and smartphone maker, has tried for many years to break into the US market, to little avail.
With a trade spat escalating between the US and China, and fresh from American phone networks AT&T and Verizon withdrawing their support of the Chinese brand – most handsets sold in the US are subsidised by carriers – that dream appears further out of Huawei’s reach.
Just how important is the US for Huawei, which is already the world’s third-largest smartphone maker by sales?
“Realistically, Huawei doesn’t need the US, given its strong market in China, and its increasing market share in Asia, Europe and Africa,” said Paul Haswell, a partner at the global law firm Pinsent Masons.
The world’s largest economy may be important for Huawei for a different reason: hardware components and software.
One in four of Huawei’s 263 suppliers last year were American, making up the second-largest group of vendors to the Chinese company, according to Bloomberg’s data. Mainland Chinese companies were the biggest group of suppliers, making up 41 per cent of Huawei’s supply chain, followed by Taiwan companies in third place at 9 per cent and South Korean firms in fourth place at 6.8 per cent.
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Hon Hai Precision Industry, the world’s largest contract manufacturer for consumer electronics, also known as Foxconn, is Huawei’s largest supplier. Chinese battery and electric carmaker BYD, chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) as well as Foxconn’s unit FIH Mobile round up the next three largest vendors.
The Chinese brand, which had hired Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot as its US brand ambassador, count several US companies among its suppliers, including chip makers Qualcomm and Micron Technology.
Huawei has one of the largest research budgets in technology, spending US$14.2 billion last year on research and development, or 14.9 per cent of its revenue, second only to Amazon in dollar terms and more than what Google’s parent Alphabet spent.
As a result of that spending, Huawei’s HiSilicon unit, a Shenzhen-based fabless semiconductor company, was able to develop the Kirin chip, which has increasingly been used in its namesake handsets.
That is in stark contrast with ZTE, the Shenzhen-based telecommunications equipment maker that is both Huawei’s competitor and comrade in the global technology race.
ZTE was slapped with a seven-year export ban last week by the US Department of Commerce for breaching the settlement terms of violating US sanctions on selling telecoms equipment to Iran and North Korea.
The exports ban is choking ZTE, as US suppliers make up three in every 10 of the Chinese company’s supply chain. Intel Corp, the largest maker of semiconductor chips, is ZTE’s largest supplier, followed by Micron in third place and Broadcom in fifth place.
The US Justice Department is investigating whether Huawei violated Iran sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. Neither the Justice Department nor Huawei have confirmed that the investigations are taking place.
Huawei “complies with all applicable laws and regulations where it operates, including the applicable export control and sanction laws and regulations of UN, US and EU”, according to a statement by the company.
Similar penalties will be unlikely on Huawei even if the Chinese company were indeed being investigated, analysts said. An outright export ban is also improbable, and any punitive measure will have less of an impact on Huawei than on ZTE, said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group.
SCMP Graphics
“A ban on Huawei could hurt them, but it won’t kill the company, whereas ZTE is in survival mode [following the US ban],” he said.
Huawei was originally set to launch its Mate 10 Pro handset in the US through major US carrier AT&T earlier this year, although the latter later backed out of the agreement following cybersecurity concerns raised by members of the US Senate and House intelligence committees. Verizon later followed in AT&T’s footsteps and dropped plans to sell Huawei phones, according to a Bloomberg report.
While there is likely to be suspicion that any investigation is an attack on Huawei because it is a Chinese company, it should be noted that many companies, be they from the US or overseas, suffer serious penalties for breach of US Trade Sanctions, said Haswell of Pinsent Masons.
“Every business with an international ambition must ensure it gives sufficient resource and focus to being aware of trade sanctions globally and ensuring compliance with them,” he said.
Yes, just 2 hundreds years ago. One Unequal treaty beget another and another, ...
You can't sign the first one.
China has a lot of other options to retaliate. What is Xi so afraid of?
60B tiered tariff increase is a joke. Worse yet, it starts on 6/1. It is nothing proportional about it. To a guy like Trump, when he see weakness, he jumps and doubles down. This is going to get ugly really quick.
Right now, Wall Street is completely confident that China (or really Xi) will cave in. That is why it is up by 230 points now.
Just a few knowledge points in case you guys want to know.
Communications equipment are serial in nature. Unlike in most other equipment where you remove one piece, you may result in sub-optimal condition (but still works). Communications equipment won't work if you just taken out just one part. (of course, there are exceptions. But in general that is the case).
There are differences in terms of the type of devices located in smart phone and base stations. In smart phones, the semiconductor chips are ASIC. But in base stations, the central (the most important) chip is FPGA.
FPGA is pretty much dominated by 2 US companies (Altera and Xilinx). There are Chinese company that make FPGA. But it won't have the performance needed to be used in the mobile base stations.
For cellular network, there are smart phone (mobile handset), base stations, and central stations. The optical chips are mostly used for super high speed communications between base stations and central stations. A lot of these options chips are made by US companies. But I am not in this area, so I don't have much knowledge here.
Base stations are mostly stationary. But there are some base stations that are mobile to provide in-time traffic.
There is also the development software. To design chips, you need development software. They are called EDA software. The big players are Synopsis, Cadence, and Mentor Graphics. They are all American.
Communications equipment are serial in nature. Unlike in most other equipment where you remove one piece, you may result in sub-optimal condition (but still works). Communications equipment won't work if you just taken out just one part. (of course, there are exceptions. But in general that is the case).
There are differences in terms of the type of devices located in smart phone and base stations. In smart phones, the semiconductor chips are ASIC. But in base stations, the central (the most important) chip is FPGA.
FPGA is pretty much dominated by 2 US companies (Altera and Xilinx). There are Chinese company that make FPGA. But it won't have the performance needed to be used in the mobile base stations.
For cellular network, there are smart phone (mobile handset), base stations, and central stations. The optical chips are mostly used for super high speed communications between base stations and central stations. A lot of these options chips are made by US companies. But I am not in this area, so I don't have much knowledge here.
Base stations are mostly stationary. But there are some base stations that are mobile to provide in-time traffic.
There is also the development software. To design chips, you need development software. They are called EDA software. The big players are Synopsis, Cadence, and Mentor Graphics. They are all American.
solarz
Brigadier
How do you figure that?
Few more write-up if you are interested.
A typical communications system (in either mobile phone or base station) consists of 3 parts: RF, IF and baseband.
RF is the Radio Frequency part. It consists of antenna, diplexers, power amp, RF filters etc. Those parts operates at the highest frequencies (RF).
IF is the Intermediate Frequency part. It has many frequencies up/down converter, oscillators, IF filters.
Baseband operate in the baseband frequencies. The most important part is the MODEM (MOdulator/DEModulator). There are also CODEC, Front synchronizer, Bit Synchonizer, baseband filters, etc.
SOC (System On Chip) means different things to different system. But for communications, it usually means it puts all the MODEM, CODEC, synchronization, etc. into one chip.
But every chip is different. They are all called SOC, but one might have one function left out (in that case, you just have to add that functionality elsewhere).
The technology between RF, IF and baseband are very different. For baseband, there are only a few companies (Qualcomm, Mediatek, Huawei, Spreadtrum). But for RF and IF devices, there are a lot of smaller companies.
A typical communications system (in either mobile phone or base station) consists of 3 parts: RF, IF and baseband.
RF is the Radio Frequency part. It consists of antenna, diplexers, power amp, RF filters etc. Those parts operates at the highest frequencies (RF).
IF is the Intermediate Frequency part. It has many frequencies up/down converter, oscillators, IF filters.
Baseband operate in the baseband frequencies. The most important part is the MODEM (MOdulator/DEModulator). There are also CODEC, Front synchronizer, Bit Synchonizer, baseband filters, etc.
SOC (System On Chip) means different things to different system. But for communications, it usually means it puts all the MODEM, CODEC, synchronization, etc. into one chip.
But every chip is different. They are all called SOC, but one might have one function left out (in that case, you just have to add that functionality elsewhere).
The technology between RF, IF and baseband are very different. For baseband, there are only a few companies (Qualcomm, Mediatek, Huawei, Spreadtrum). But for RF and IF devices, there are a lot of smaller companies.
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