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Reportedly, the U.S. Commerce Department has revoked Intel and Qualcomm's export licenses to sell some chips to Huawei
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This move follows numerous North American and European bans since 2012
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Already, Huawei has launched in-house 5G chips to circumvent bans
The U.S. has further ratcheted up its actions against Huawei. This time, the Commerce Department has revoked Intel’s and Qualcomm’s export licenses to sell cellphone and laptop chips to the massive Chinese vendor. The ban is effective immediately.
Qualcomm’s license had allowed it to sell older 4G LTE chipsets to Huawei — it was already prevented from selling 5G silicon to the vendor. Huawei purchased over 40 million chipsets from Qualcomm in 2023. Possibly indicating knowledge of the coming ban, Qualcomm said on its recent second quarter earnings call that it expected the Huawei business to dry up this year anyway.
Intel had been allowed to ship some laptop and Xeon server chips to Huawei. The chipmaker said in an Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday that it is issuing a revenue warning after the export ban dropped, however it didn’t name the Chinese customer involved.
Both Intel and Qualcomm’s stock dropped on news of the export license ban. A Huawei spokesman had no comment on the ban.
A Commerce spokesperson told Fierce that the departnent sometimes revokes export licenses. "We are not commenting on any specific licenses, but we can confirm that we have revoked certain licenses for exports to Huawei," the spokesperson said.
The Huawei bans started in the U.S. in 2012, when operators were banned from using the Chinese vendor’s networking gear. This was followed in 2019 with a national security ban from then-President Trump. The Biden administration followed that up in 2022 with a ban on imports of Huawei and ZTE communications equipment.
Huawei has hit back at North American and European bans by developing its own in-house 5G chips, which were revealed in the Mate 60 Pro smartphone this year. The company is also developing its own HarmonyOS smartphone operating system to rival Google’s Android.
Huawei also noted that it is starting to deliver 5G-Advanced mobile service, which it calls 5.5G, in China. On the Chinese mainland, the three major carriers have started 5.5G network deployment in key cities.