China No Longer Needs US Parts in Its Phones

US tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Huawei, but it's already too late

The Wall Street Journal reports Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips.

American tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late: It is now building smartphones without U.S. chips.

Huawei’s latest phone, which it unveiled in September—the Mate 30 with a curved display and wide-angle cameras that competes with Apple Inc.’s iPhone 11—contained no U.S. parts, according to an analysis by UBS and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a Japanese technology lab that took the device apart to inspect its insides.

In May, the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with Beijing escalated. That move stopped companies like Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. from exporting chips to the company, though some shipments of parts resumed over the summer after companies determined they weren’t affected by the ban.

Meanwhile, Huawei has made significant strides in shedding its dependence on parts from U.S. companies. (At issue are chips from U.S.-based companies, not those necessarily made in America; many U.S. chip companies make their semiconductors abroad.)

Huawei long relied on suppliers like Qorvo Inc., the North Carolina maker of chips that are used to connect smartphones with cell towers, and Skyworks Solutions Inc., a Woburn, Mass.-based company that makes similar chips. It also used parts from Broadcom Inc., the San Jose-based maker of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips, and Cirrus Logic Inc., an Austin, Texas-based company that makes chips for producing sound.

Yet Another Trump Trade Win

  • Trump cut off supplies so China looked elsewhere.
  • Trump changed his mind.
  • This is what constitutes a win.

When Huawei came out with this high-end phone—and this is its flagship—with no U.S. content, that made a pretty big statement,” said Christopher Rolland, a semiconductor analyst at Susquehanna International Group.

Huawei executives told Rolland that the company was moving away from American parts, but it was still surprising how quickly it happened.

This was likely going to happen anyway, but Trump escalated the speed at which it happened.

Trade Deal?

Assuming there is a deal, the standard assumption for 17 months, Trump will announce two key elements.

Greatest Deal in History

  • China will resume buying the same amount of soybeans as before.
  • China will resume buying the same amount of chips as before.

​The longer this takes the more wins there will be.

With that in mind, please recall Another Trump Tariff Success Story: Vietnam.

And despite the fact that Trump’s China Tariffs Made Matters Made the Global Manufacturing Recession Worse and has killed US farmers, It’s important to remember, Trump is collecting “huge tariffs”.

So please brush aside this recession warning: Freight Volumes Negative YoY for 11th Straight Month.

Source: Mish Talk

5 Comments
  1. China News says

    There is still 1 last US part that needs to be replaced – Android.

  2. Mychal Arnold says

    The ussa thought their tech is needed, well, China just proved them wrong and the ussa Tech loses out on billions. Whoever thought of this trade war is an idiot more with honey then vinegar.

  3. kuasimi says

    It is call “Cutting off the nose to spite the face”! Arrogant people and especially bully never lear. They never will because they believe they are superior. Whereas everyone else are stupid, hence the garbage that people have to steal and copy from America.

    It is no the first time the US has embarked on her standard silly, childish hysterics. America once ban computers from being exported to China. They blocked Tractors and earth moving machines, high-tech transportation technology, CNC machines, machining tools and even cutting tools and drill bits from China. And one can go on.

    All these ignorant tantrums only gave rise to Tinahe-2, currently the word’s fastest supercomputer. Tunnel boring machine (TBM) “Caiyun”, China made 5-axis CNC machines plus three-D printing.

  4. CHUCKMAN says

    “Huawei executives told Rolland that the company was moving away from American parts, but it was still surprising how quickly it happened.

    “This was likely going to happen anyway, but Trump escalated the speed at which it happened.”

    Exactly, and a characterization to be applied to virtually every initiative of Donald Trump.

    Having a chaotic-minded man run your country is definitely a bad idea, and it seems likely America’s political system will give him another term.

    Another term to speed the decay.

    But you see, people in power, both money-drenched and blinded by empty ideology like patriotism, simply do not see reality.

    Ideologues see only their shining ideology, much like the fantasies of religious zealots.

  5. JustPassingThrough says

    stupid is as stupid does.
    the US tried it on RU and lost big.
    then they tried it on CN and lost big.
    not much left is there.
    it’s called kharzian economics comics.

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