Huawei’s American chip suppliers, including Qualcomm, Intel, and Xilinx are quietly pressing the US government to ease its ban on the Chinese tech giant.
Executives from the top US chipmakers Intel and Xilinx attended a meeting in late May with the Commerce Department to discuss a response to Huawei’s placement on the blacklist. Qualcomm argued in favor of Huawei too.
These companies claim that Huawei’s smartphones and computer hardware do not carry the same security risk as their 5G networking equipment, so they should be spared from the ban.
“This isn’t about helping Huawei. It’s about preventing harm to American companies,” one of the people said. Out of $70 billion Huawei spent on buying components in 2018, almost $11 billion went to US firms including Qualcomm, Intel, and Micron. In addition to that, Huawei was reluctant to pay the patent fees but later agreed to pay Qualcomm $150 million a quarter.
Google Follows Suit
Google, which sells hardware, software and technical services to Huawei, has also advocated keeping selling to the company, Huawei Chairman Liang Hua told reporters in China earlier this month.
Google said that the Trump administration preventing Huawei from using Android threatens US security. It claims that since Huawei’s phones will be outside the shield of Google Play Protect, their users may be vulnerable to malware, and some of the users may be in the US.
Huawei, however, has done very little traditional lobbying in Washington on the matter. Even after a month of being blacklisted, Huawei has not spoken to the US government.
