Huawei is the most recent victim of the US trade war, which is fronted by Trumps apparent security concerns with China, despite his more recent statement suggesting the ban could be lifted if a trade agreement could be agreed, spoiler alert – security concerns do not disappear with trade agreements.
The ban could prevent Huawei from reaching its target number one spot in smartphone marketshare by 2021, globally Huawei currently sits at the number two spot between Samsung and Apple. Where Huawei had been banned fro the US trade, this doesn’t just negatively inpact Huawei, where they were moving ahead other manufactuerers with 5G technologies Huawei was going to be a key player with the US 5G roll out, offering their patents and technology which as things currently stand will need to be sourcced from other companies, meaning higher costs for the US carriers. Furthermore China has been looking to find a suitable retaliation to the Huawei ban, restructing rare earth minerals, such as neodymium which is found in magnets, seem to be part of their plan.
The trade isn’t just limited to smartphones, 5G and siilar technologies. Huawei has lost it’s connection to all US companies including Intel, Microsoft, ARM & support from Google whom have all revoked their connections with the company. The most notable companies here that will likely affect Huawei the most are Google who licence Android which most phones are based on, Android is open source, however being under Googles umbrella does help with security updates and having access to the Google apps, notably Google Maps & Play for downloading apps. Effectively Android without Google is like bread without butter, it’s good but it could be better. ARM is the other issue for Huawei, the former British company now own by Japanese Softbank has also cut its ties with the company, thus Huawei who design and manufactuer their own chips will struggle with further developments, their chipsets would use the ARM designs as a starting point for their system on chips (SOCs) including their high end Kirin processors which are often ahead of their time when competing with other manufacturerers.
In effect Huawei has been precautionate about this possible ban, having a three month stock of parts, built their own app store with many developers on board and should be able to put their funds into R&D and come up with something. The alternative future is that Huawei will slowly disappear from the market and with less competition and innovation the industry could slow down with the advances and this is a neggative that all of us will miss out on. Huawei hs been pushing forward with advances in SOCs, mobile camera technologies, design and 5G.