News on China's scientific and technological development.

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tamsen_ikard

Junior Member
Registered Member
Orthan said:
ABC news article about recent huawei events:

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I have two questions for people here:
What will happen to the rest of huawei products, will they also stop production and soon the company will fail?
Can they still remain competitive without TSMC and other US tech dependent chip manufacturers, knowing that SMIC doesnt have the tech level of those other manufacturers and wont have for the foreseeable future, if ever?
Click to expand...


I think Huawei's 5G business will be fine since those product do not need to use 7NM chipset. They will just use SMIC 14nm process and optimize the hell out of their designs.
It is possible to get a lot of performance benefits just by designing more efficient microproessors. Intel has suffered for many years to develop 10NM process but they still remained the top dog while using 14NM process just by designing ever more efficient chips.

Another important factor is that performance gains due to hardware improvements have slowed down drastically. The silicon based technology is pretty much stagnant. Even a computer bought 5 years ago has a chip that is good enough and fast enough. The only difference these days is having more cores. Huawei can make bigger chips by slapping more cores. The only problem there is higher power consumption.

So overall I expect Huawei to give up on flagship phone business and focus on cheaper phones where they will use 14NM chips from SMIC and probably optimize that design every year. They have more power available on laptops and desktops, so there they can build computers with more cores.

As for 5G, they have unlimited power there plus don't need highest level processor speed. So, they can just use 14NM chips.

Huawei's biggest problem is not hardware in my opinion. Its software. The whole world is dependent on Google products including gmail, chrome, google maps and so on. Plus there is playstore with millions of apps. Unless Huawei can create an eco-system with equal popularity, they are doomed outside China.

I think Chinese companies have to be forced to co-operate to produce a single OS/appstore/mail/maps things like this. But even then there is no guarantee people outside China will give up on google products just to use a Chinese phone. So. most likely this is the end of Chinese branded phones outside China. They have to give up and focus on developing the whole software/service eco-system from the ground up. They already do have all of this from Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and so on. But they will have to fight and win against Google first before Chinese branded phones can rise again.

It will probably 30-40 years to become a viable competitor of Google services outside China. And even after investing billions it may not happen at all. Yeah, the situation is very grim for China.
 
O

Orthan

Senior Member
tamsen_ikard said:
So. most likely this is the end of Chinese branded phones outside China.
Click to expand...

So, Huawei´s 5G business may survive but its phone business is screwed because they cant produce high-end phones and cant really sell outside china. But i dont think that this is the end for chinese branded phones outside of china. AFAIK its only huawei that is barred from american tech, unless if ZTE is also barred. is it?
 
daifo

daifo

Major
Registered Member
Huawei will use Mediatek for it's chips as long as possible. My guess is that Huawei may shrink for the next few years as it focus more on investing in research for the manufacturing of high tech/chips rather than consumer facing devices like high-end smartphones. Govt subsidy, mass mid-tier consumer electronics, and communication equipment sales to non-5-eyes will help sustain it.

Orthan said:
ABC news article about recent huawei events:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


I have two questions for people here:
What will happen to the rest of huawei products, will they also stop production and soon the company will fail?
Can they still remain competitive without TSMC and other US tech dependent chip manufacturers, knowing that SMIC doesnt have the tech level of those other manufacturers and wont have for the foreseeable future, if ever?
Click to expand...
 
M

montyp165

Senior Member
tamsen_ikard said:
I think Huawei's 5G business will be fine since those product do not need to use 7NM chipset. They will just use SMIC 14nm process and optimize the hell out of their designs.
It is possible to get a lot of performance benefits just by designing more efficient microproessors. Intel has suffered for many years to develop 10NM process but they still remained the top dog while using 14NM process just by designing ever more efficient chips.

Another important factor is that performance gains due to hardware improvements have slowed down drastically. The silicon based technology is pretty much stagnant. Even a computer bought 5 years ago has a chip that is good enough and fast enough. The only difference these days is having more cores. Huawei can make bigger chips by slapping more cores. The only problem there is higher power consumption.

So overall I expect Huawei to give up on flagship phone business and focus on cheaper phones where they will use 14NM chips from SMIC and probably optimize that design every year. They have more power available on laptops and desktops, so there they can build computers with more cores.

As for 5G, they have unlimited power there plus don't need highest level processor speed. So, they can just use 14NM chips.

Huawei's biggest problem is not hardware in my opinion. Its software. The whole world is dependent on Google products including gmail, chrome, google maps and so on. Plus there is playstore with millions of apps. Unless Huawei can create an eco-system with equal popularity, they are doomed outside China.

I think Chinese companies have to be forced to co-operate to produce a single OS/appstore/mail/maps things like this. But even then there is no guarantee people outside China will give up on google products just to use a Chinese phone. So. most likely this is the end of Chinese branded phones outside China. They have to give up and focus on developing the whole software/service eco-system from the ground up. They already do have all of this from Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and so on. But they will have to fight and win against Google first before Chinese branded phones can rise again.

It will probably 30-40 years to become a viable competitor of Google services outside China. And even after investing billions it may not happen at all. Yeah, the situation is very grim for China.
Click to expand...

Pushing for Open source OS would make for the best sustained counter to Google, especially if leveraging existing Open architectures such as LineageOS and F-droid for OS and app usage for instance, since it would be accessible to any enduser and not have the same constraints as being under Google's corporate thumb by comparison, and make it easier to adopt by other countries too.
 
T

tamsen_ikard

Junior Member
Registered Member
Orthan said:
So, Huawei´s 5G business may survive but its phone business is screwed because they cant produce high-end phones and cant really sell outside china. But i dont think that this is the end for chinese branded phones outside of china. AFAIK its only huawei that is barred from american tech, unless if ZTE is also barred. is it?
Click to expand...


Do you think they will not bar Xiaomi or Oneplus? Ofcourse they will. Its just a matter of time. They are not considered big enough just yet to be threatening. All Chinese phone companies will be put into the entity list if Trump is in power.

The main issue for Chinese phone companies is not having access to the high-end phones. It is having access to Google, Facebook, Instagram, Uber pretty much all the services that people use in a smartphone. If Chinese companies are put into the entity list that means Facebook will not make an app for Chinese eco-system. It means Uber cannot make an App. Google services like Gmail/Maps are also not available.

So, not even low-end phones will be viable without those apps. So, Chinese software companies like Alibaba, Meituan and so on will have to step up and beat American service companies first. They need to replace Google Maps, Gmail, Uber with Chinese equivalents. Only then an appstore without those American companies will be viable and popular.

So, as you can see it is an extremely difficult task. For Chinese phones to be viable, they will need to replace entire American Internet service stack top to bottom. Without having that eco-system in place chinese phones are extremely vulnerable to US bans. Right now Chinese companies only make the hardware but use the American eco-system outside China.


So, that is why my original point is that they probably cannot become a viable choice as a phone brand for another 30-40 years.They remain at the mercy of American made internet eco-system.
 
T

tamsen_ikard

Junior Member
Registered Member
montyp165 said:
Pushing for Open source OS would make for the best sustained counter to Google, especially if leveraging existing Open architectures such as LineageOS and F-droid for OS and app usage for instance, since it would be accessible to any enduser and not have the same constraints as being under Google's corporate thumb by comparison, and make it easier to adopt by other countries too.
Click to expand...

Many people will not buy a phone if they cannot use Google Maps or Gmail or Facebook. So, OpenSource OS is not the problem. Its the services that American companies provide.
 
daifo

daifo

Major
Registered Member
Huawei can still milk their high/mid tier phones for a couple more years overseas as they still have GMS license for them pre-mid 2019. Today's super phone can still be consider a mid-tier in 3-4 years as long as the OS revision is allow to update.

KYli said:
Huawei used to sell a lot of smartphones in Europe. Although Android is no longer available, it seems Europeans are still buying Huawei phones by side loading apps. Frankly, other countries would still make up a portion of Huawei sales. I think Huawei still has 17% market share in Europe in the most recent quarter.
Click to expand...
 
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