Monday, May 20th 2019
U.S. Tech Industry, Including Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm, Ban Huawei
The United States tech industry has overnight dealt a potentially fatal blow to Chinese electronics giant Huawei, by boycotting the company. The companies are establishing compliance with a recent Executive Order passed by President Donald Trump designed to "stop the import, sale, and use of equipment and services by foreign companies based in countries that are potential adversaries to U.S. interests," particularly information technology security. Google has announced that it will no longer allow Huawei to license Android, and will stop updates and Google Play access to Huawei smartphones. Huawei can still equip its phones with open-source Android, but it cannot use Google's proprietary software, including Google Play Store, Chrome, and all the other Google apps. Intel decided to no longer supply processors and other hardware to Huawei, for use in its laptops and server products. Sales of AMD processors will stop, too. Qualcomm-Broadcom have decided to stop supply of mobile SoCs and network PHYs, respectively. Microsoft decided to stop licensing Huawei to use Windows and Office products.
The ban is a consequence of the U.S. Government placing Huawei on a list of banned entities, forcing all U.S. companies to abandon all trade with it, without prior approval from the Department of Commerce. Trade cuts both ways, and not only are U.S. firms banned from buying from Huawei, they're also banned from selling to it. Huawei "buys from" over 30 U.S. companies, (for example, Windows licenses from Microsoft). CNN reports that U.S. firms could lose up to $11 billion in revenues.
Huawei's origins trace back to its founder Ren Zhengfei, who started out his tech career as part of the People's Liberation Army Information Technology R&D department, and is accused by his detractors of remaining loyal to the Chinese state in a manner that compromises security of its Western customers. Huawei was poised to become the world's #1 smartphone vendor in terms of sales.
President Trump as part of the Executive Order, writes "I further find that the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of information and communications technology or services designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries augments the ability of foreign adversaries to create and exploit vulnerabilities in information and communications technology or services, with potentially catastrophic effects, and thereby constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."
The definition of an adversarial entity is open to interpretation, and Huawei may not be the only foreign company that qualifies as one. Since trading opened Monday morning in Asian markets, stock prices of listed Chinese tech firm ZTE fell 10 percent. Huawei is a private company. Across the pond, European governments remain neutral to Huawei. The UK and European Commission have separately conducted investigations into allegations of Huawei posing a data-security risk, and have both concluded to have seen no merit to the accusations. The EU is Huawei's largest market for smartphones outside China, and an abrupt stoppage of Google services impacting functionality of Huawei smartphones in the EU exposes Google to EU anti-trust regulators who have already penalized the company hundreds of millions of Euros in the past for abusing its market dominance.
To date, the Trump administration has not put out specific evidence against Huawei in a U.S. court of law, or the public domain. Washington Post in a May 19 editorial highlights this lack of transparency. "Neither the United States nor any of its allies has produced a 'smoking gun' proving that Chinese intelligence uses Huawei technology to penetrate other countries' networks. Under the circumstances, it is legitimate for the United States to seek greater transparency from Huawei, both about its ownership and its strategic objectives in the global market," it reads. WaPo further goes on to comment that the exclusion of Huawei will impact the deployment of 5G telecommunication technology around the world, enabling driverless cars, telemedicine, next-generation unmanned mechanized warfare, and the Internet of Things.
Huawei declined to comment on the development, but has mitigations for this ban. Android has been significantly forked by Chinese smartphone vendors with open-source software, and Huawei could do something similar. The company already uses its own apps, games, and content marketplace rivaling Google Play; and almost all Google apps have alternatives in China. The company makes its own SoCs and doesn't rely on Qualcomm. The Chinese government already does not use Windows, and this development could help in the proliferation of Linux distributions. A decline in the sales and use of Microsoft Windows could be China's retaliatory move. The country has already taken tectonic market access-denial actions against U.S. firms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and nothing stops it from censoring Microsoft. Intel processors continue to form the backbone of client-computing, but it's only a matter of time before Chinese firms mass-produce x86 processors of their own.
Update May 20th: Facing regulatory backlash from Huawei devices abruptly losing functionality from loss of Google Play services, Google has in a statement to Reuters confirmed that Google Play app updates and validation services will continue to be offered to existing users of Huawei devices. "For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices," the spokesperson said, without giving further details.
Update May 21st: Goldman Sachs has done some math, looking into how revenue of U.S. companies will be affected by the loss of their customer Huawei. Quite interesting numbers, and surprising how much it affects AMD.
Update May 21st: The US Department of Commerce has granted Huwei an extension of 90 days to get their affairs in order, to minimize the impact on Huawei's customers.
Update May 23rd: ARM, the company behind the IP required to build ARM-architecture-based microprocessors (which are used in most of Huawei's products), has now stopped working with Huawei, too.
Sources:
BBC, The Verge, Android Authority
The ban is a consequence of the U.S. Government placing Huawei on a list of banned entities, forcing all U.S. companies to abandon all trade with it, without prior approval from the Department of Commerce. Trade cuts both ways, and not only are U.S. firms banned from buying from Huawei, they're also banned from selling to it. Huawei "buys from" over 30 U.S. companies, (for example, Windows licenses from Microsoft). CNN reports that U.S. firms could lose up to $11 billion in revenues.
President Trump as part of the Executive Order, writes "I further find that the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of information and communications technology or services designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries augments the ability of foreign adversaries to create and exploit vulnerabilities in information and communications technology or services, with potentially catastrophic effects, and thereby constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."
The definition of an adversarial entity is open to interpretation, and Huawei may not be the only foreign company that qualifies as one. Since trading opened Monday morning in Asian markets, stock prices of listed Chinese tech firm ZTE fell 10 percent. Huawei is a private company. Across the pond, European governments remain neutral to Huawei. The UK and European Commission have separately conducted investigations into allegations of Huawei posing a data-security risk, and have both concluded to have seen no merit to the accusations. The EU is Huawei's largest market for smartphones outside China, and an abrupt stoppage of Google services impacting functionality of Huawei smartphones in the EU exposes Google to EU anti-trust regulators who have already penalized the company hundreds of millions of Euros in the past for abusing its market dominance.
To date, the Trump administration has not put out specific evidence against Huawei in a U.S. court of law, or the public domain. Washington Post in a May 19 editorial highlights this lack of transparency. "Neither the United States nor any of its allies has produced a 'smoking gun' proving that Chinese intelligence uses Huawei technology to penetrate other countries' networks. Under the circumstances, it is legitimate for the United States to seek greater transparency from Huawei, both about its ownership and its strategic objectives in the global market," it reads. WaPo further goes on to comment that the exclusion of Huawei will impact the deployment of 5G telecommunication technology around the world, enabling driverless cars, telemedicine, next-generation unmanned mechanized warfare, and the Internet of Things.
Huawei declined to comment on the development, but has mitigations for this ban. Android has been significantly forked by Chinese smartphone vendors with open-source software, and Huawei could do something similar. The company already uses its own apps, games, and content marketplace rivaling Google Play; and almost all Google apps have alternatives in China. The company makes its own SoCs and doesn't rely on Qualcomm. The Chinese government already does not use Windows, and this development could help in the proliferation of Linux distributions. A decline in the sales and use of Microsoft Windows could be China's retaliatory move. The country has already taken tectonic market access-denial actions against U.S. firms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and nothing stops it from censoring Microsoft. Intel processors continue to form the backbone of client-computing, but it's only a matter of time before Chinese firms mass-produce x86 processors of their own.
Update May 20th: Facing regulatory backlash from Huawei devices abruptly losing functionality from loss of Google Play services, Google has in a statement to Reuters confirmed that Google Play app updates and validation services will continue to be offered to existing users of Huawei devices. "For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices," the spokesperson said, without giving further details.
Update May 21st: Goldman Sachs has done some math, looking into how revenue of U.S. companies will be affected by the loss of their customer Huawei. Quite interesting numbers, and surprising how much it affects AMD.
Update May 21st: The US Department of Commerce has granted Huwei an extension of 90 days to get their affairs in order, to minimize the impact on Huawei's customers.
Update May 23rd: ARM, the company behind the IP required to build ARM-architecture-based microprocessors (which are used in most of Huawei's products), has now stopped working with Huawei, too.
146 Comments on U.S. Tech Industry, Including Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm, Ban Huawei
I would rather the US walk on the side of caution and be proactive about its, and my, security rather than ask my forgiveness for being completely stupid later.
USA's securityApple's shareholders.I look forward to seeing what happens :)
yea the camera is something else....that zoom though!!!!!:eek:
was initially worried last night when reading about it...not so much now.
I'm a little under that at £50 a month, but its a huge amount to spend out each month I feel..
The zoom is awesome, 50x, try holding that thing steady lol
As long as my phone works for the length of the contract, I'm not so worried about it at all... I do wonder if the UK will follow the USA with the ban on it but what will be will be :)
A 2 year contract is long.miss the yearly contracts.
im currently paying 120£ a month!!!
still paying for my step sons contract,but thankfully that ends soon.
Huawei so say have a plan 'b' as they have prepared for this to happen.
wether its there own O/S remains to be seen.
ios and android are getting a bit boring now. something fresh would be welcome.imo
I'm guessing the longer contracts are to try and cover the pricey phone costs.. I mean these P30 Pro's are what, £1200 I was told?? £100 a month?? I'm not sure people will want to spend that...
I was just talking to a mate at work about the OS this morning and such.. I agree, we do need a bit more choice I think as there's so much bloatware in some of the Android releases I'd spend 30 minutes uninstalling programs that I don't want or need.. great fun :(
The problem with Islam is that its behind the curve and its followers are also behind the curve. For Christianity, at least here in Europe, most countries decided to separate church and state. In many Muslim countries, they haven't got that strict separation, in fact, Islam is still actively used to this day to exercise power and influence, win elections and maintain power and influence. Its a vehicle for that, first and foremost.
n the US, the separation of church and state is sort of 'halfway' through; every POTUS speech is still 'God willing' and there is a serious bit of Christian fundamentalism in power positions in the US. But its not integral to its foreign or domestic policy or democracy itself. However, this does explain why there is such a strong opposition to Islam, see my first two lines up there. An outsider can easily identify US foreign policy as Christian oppression.
Regardless. We don't live in medieval times anymore, so yes, Islam stands out in this day and age for the way it tries to spread its ideology or the way it fights opposing ones, and the ideas of many sub ideologies within Islam - hell they even didn't get to the point where they stop shooting each other in the face, yet. The fundamental problem with Islam is a lack of reflection and I think that also clearly rings through in the example given by @64K . In Europe, we had big events that changed our perception of the place of religion in society. Islam has yet to experience that, and its followers so far seem largely unwilling to, the actual exception to the rule is the Muslim population of 2nd and 3rd generation in Western countries. Those are the ones that will bring change. And I hate to say this, but yes, that is a minority. What's missing is the uproar among all those other Muslims wrt terrorism. We never see or hear it - and the reason for that is that same lack of reflection.
As for right wing terrorism (or left wing, also not innocent) compared to religious terrorism... its equally threatening really... I don't think this should be a contest.
Wait. This is offtopic :) I'm dropping this one now. I will say its not entirely fair to swing the report hammer around when you're entering dangerous territory yourself... You can expect a response.
American agression and Chinese dependancy in open view, I have no dog in this fight
Exporting their homegrown, Gapps-replacement services is probably the safest bet. Go the Amazon way, so to speak.
really? then why articles like this: techcrunch.com/2019/03/28/uk-report-blasts-huawei-for-network-security-incompetence/ "The latest report by a UK oversight body set up to evaluation Chinese networking giant Huawei’s approach to security has dialed up pressure on the company, giving a damning assessment of what it describes as “serious and systematic defects” in its software engineering and cyber security competence. "
As for places like India, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia with a large base of Muslims ~ they are indeed progressing down the right path. Of course hiccups are there like Mr. lunatic Erdogan or some major policy reversals in places like Malaysia & Indonesia, vote bank politics in India. The thing is when you see wars like Iraq, Syria it's hard for the Muslim moderates here to steer the narrative away against Jihad ~ which to me is a huge problem in the way US has handled post Cold war era & Muslim nations. Muslims generally see themselves as part of a single unified body called Ummah & an attack on any of them is like an attack on all, except in case of Uighurs I guess.
The biggest problem is the Wahhabi kingdom, sub Saharan Africa, Pakistan & to a lesser extent Afghanistan. Here there's no (functional) democracy, economic growth, rule of law or liberal middle class. All of which leads to a negative feedback loop making more of the people extremists rather than moderates or centrists. Again this is a multi pronged war, with religion/poverty/nationalism on one side & progress on the other.