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Huawei reassesses goal to be world’s bestselling smartphone vendor
- bhouston 7y agoI didn't realize the effect would be so immediate. I thought it may affect next year's model but this current gen was fine. If it affects current gen smartphones could it also affect current gen 5g equipment? This would mean hauwei is essentially dead in the water.
- badrabbit 7y agoThey don't want to sit on inventory, liquidity is important to them in this situation
- panpanna 7y agoI think they are doing this to not loose money. They will lose market share but I guess they can always get it back.
- d33 7y agoThis actually makes me wonder - what makes them unable to sell outside of Europe/USA? I heard of them being kicked out of SD/WiFi associations, but how does this affect them in China?
- the_economist 7y agoIt's now illegal for all the major players to sell them microprocessors. Can't build a smartphone without one. "The United States last week blocked Huawei from buying goods made from 25% or more of U.S.-originated technologies or materials"
- Mirioron 7y agoI wonder what the long-term implications will be on American businesses for this. Will non-US major companies be wary of relying on US suppliers?
- ulfw 7y agoThat's exactly it. The US is shooting itself in the foot. Because the message this sends to the bigger world is: don't get too successful or we will kill your business. The irony is that that is exactly what western companies blame China for.
- trophycase 7y agoLol how is that in any way the message being sent, give me a break. This has way more to do with the fact they are Chinese and more or less state sponsored than it has to do with them "being successful"... I genuinely don't understand why people are so quick to defend China.
- hahan_may 7y agobecause people has hated U.S., ever since it rescued the world from the tyranny of nazis. It's human psychology.
- mistermann 7y ago> The US is shooting itself in the foot. This is one possible outcome. Another is that China learns to be a bit less self-serving and more cooperative with the rest of the world. > Because the message this sends to the bigger world is: don't get too successful or we will kill your business. That seems like a bit of a biased interpretation. Do you believe the US is literally trying to kill Huawei, or might it be possible that this is a negotiating tactic to get them to realize and acknowledge the value they receive from the rest of the world generously trading with them, by demonstrating the consequences of what happens when someone treats them in the way they treat the rest of the world (I am referring to access to their markets)? > The irony is that that is exactly what western companies blame China for. In the Alanis Morissette sense maybe.
- scotty79 7y ago> Another is that China learns to be a bit less self-serving and more cooperative with the rest of the world. Because they have such a great example given by USA to follow.
- tyingq 7y agoWould be interesting if this ultimately results in a win for RISCV.
- panpanna 7y agoHuawei may support riscv just to piss off ARM. ARM is a british company owned by a Japanese group. Them getting involved must sting much harder than Qualcomm.
- Nokinside 7y agoBeing kicked out of Android infrastructure kills sales of new models. They will run out of components. They need licenses to manufacture and sell phones in China. Even with all the problems with their IP enforcement, China is not total IP outlaw. They follow the basic rules.
- ms4720 7y agoThey have basic rules, follow might be a bit strong
- ekianjo 7y agoYou need semiconductors to make smartphones. China is mainly doing assembly.
- panpanna 7y agoNope, China went from assembly lines to owning the entire chain 5-10 years ago (not always by fair play, but still)
- anonffghhuyv 7y ago> kicked out of SD/WiFi associations They are back in now.
- narnianal 7y agoread up on the Huawei CEO interview. They won't compete over tech where they don't feel to be a technical market leader. In 5G they claim to be 2-3 years ahead, so they will fight for it and think they have a good chance of winning even if competed against. But for smartphones apparently they don't feel strong enough, so they'll happily sacrifice it instead of competing. The problem with competition is, although it's good for the consumer, it hurts the business. So if you have to choose between battling for number one or getting reduced from number 2/3 to number 10, the latter might be the cheaper option. And then you can use the saved resources to compete in the fight that really matters. That's fighting spirit. I wish in the west we could see any of this. Instead we see bickering on all political fronts.
- Nokinside 7y agoI wonder if Huawei could sell their mobile business to BBK Electronics and avoid sanctions. BBK is already the second largest smartphone manufacturer after Samsung.
- d33 7y agoInteresting, I never heard of them. Could you back this up with some market data or more context?
- SingAlong 7y agoBBK Electronics owns OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo and Realme. These brands are super popular in China, India, Vietnam and rest of South East Asia.
- Nokinside 7y agoUsually smartphone sales are brand comparisons. BBK Electronics owns brands like Realme, OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus. https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/bbk-second-largest-smarphone-manufacturer-2017-05/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/bbk-second-l...
- rusticpotato 7y agoSo you mean the state loses control of their proxy company ? Lol
- datavirtue 7y agoPosturing by China.
- ETHisso2017 7y agoRemind me again how Huawei smartphones in Europe are a threat to US national security
- turtlegrids 7y ago20% of Five Eyes is in Europe. That's one good reason.
- robert_foss 7y agoI guess that is one upside of Brexit.
- freeflight 7y ago20% of Five Eyes, but the UK only represents 1 out of 28 countries in the EU which is 3.57%, yet they should dictate what everybody else does? edit: Why the downvotes? As an EU citizen, I'm directly affected by this, and I very much do not like the idea of the EU towing the Five Eyes line to further fascilitate US foreign policy interests. We very much would like to make our own decisions in our own interests and not have all our policies decided and forced upon us by the biggest brother on the planet.
- monocasa 7y agoThe EU is built around veto powers and allowing a single country to dictate things that are very important to them.
- freeflight 7y agoThat's a tad bit simplified, in reality, single countries can be overruled, it just doesn't happen that often [0], but it still happens. In that context, I doubt the EU is gonna let itself get dictated what to do by the UK, which is in the process of leaving said EU. It would be like eating your cake and still having it. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bvj3o7/eu_legislation_how_often_your_country_was/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bvj3o7/eu_legislati...
- jbverschoor 7y agoThe problem isn’t smartphones right? Bc then we should ban almost all phones. I thought the problem is that basically all the cell networks run on huawei
- _bxg1 7y agoThe Chinese government can order Huawei to do basically whatever it wants, and the former has so far shown no qualms about doing as much espionage, corporate or otherwise, as it can get away with. Infrastructure is one threat, smartphones are another.
- DocTomoe 7y agoIn all fairness, I have still to see any tangible evidence of this actually having happened. NSA-Backdoored Cisco Routers, on the other hand, are well-documented.
- _bxg1 7y agoThere's plenty of evidence of hacking and corporate espionage; that was what prompted the trade war in the first place. I don't know what public evidence there is about Huawei specifically, but I think it's naive to assume they're an exception.
- fabianhjr 7y agoThe trade war started as a mercantilist-spat[1] and the targeted attack on Huawei for perceived "economic loss" as the biggest global south smartphone manufacturer that was due to surpass Apple is clear as day. Additionally any critical US infrastructure was already barred from acquiring ZTE/Huawei cell towers/5G access points. [1]: https://reason.com/2019/05/15/trumps-malignant-mercantilism/ https://reason.com/2019/05/15/trumps-malignant-mercantilism/
- em500 7y agoIt appears now that the US government can order Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and even non-US companies like ARM to do basically whatever it wants, and has shown no qualms in the past about spying on their European allies. From the a non-American POV the US does not have a clear moral high ground.
- partingshots 7y agoRepost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20073611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20073611
- yorwba 7y agoBusiness Insider seems to have mangled the SCMP article they quote as the source: https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei-reassesses-goal-be-worlds-bestselling-smartphone-vendor-after https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei-re... Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer that assembles handsets products for many phone brands including Apple and Xiaomi, has stopped several production lines for Huawei phones in recent days as the Shenzhen company reduced orders for new phones, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named as the information is private. I assume each model is made on more than one production line in parallel, so the quote above seems to imply that production didn't stop completely, but capacity was reduced.
- dang 7y agoOk, we'll change to that from https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-smartphone-production-us-blacklist-2019-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-smartphone-production.... Thanks!
- vkou 7y agoIt's nice to see the government picking winners and losers in the market.
- fishtacos 7y agoPrecisely why it was important to make it illegal to do business which such an entity, Huawei. US business relies of trademark, patent, contract and license enforcement, which is where the government steps in. The Chinese gov't doesn't abide by any of these rules, nor do they enforce them, and subsequently Chinese companies are run the same way. That's not even getting in the espionage and the links between Huawei and the CPC.
- vkou 7y agoName me one major US company that does not have close links to the US government. Name one. As for the IP angle, what evidence do you have that Huawei in particular built their 5G, or phones off IP theft? I postulate that as soon as China passes the US in development of new IP, the US will find no shortage of excuses to politically interfere in the market... Just like it is doing now, actually.
- mistermann 7y agoWhat do you mean by "close links"?
- mycall 7y agoMaybe top government <--> Corporate executive revolving door.
- vkou 7y agoThe same thing that people talking about the Chinese boogieman mean. A nebulous, ill-defined hand-waved general accusation, with no clear goalposts, that infers that there's an intersection between the company's past or present employees, and past or present employees, executives, or advisers in government, that the company at some point received government seed funding, investments, or government contracts, that secret meetings take place between the company, and the government, that the company is a special contractor for the government, building custom solutions for it, or that the company may be compromised by government meddling. The beauty of accusing a company of having close ties with its government is that it can mean almost anything you want it to mean.
- liquidise 7y agoI believe the true loser in this is Google. If i am any non us, android-reliant phone manufacturer, i am planning my exit strategy. Sure it won't come today or this year, but it is vital for companies to start to distance themselves from google licensing for their own betterment.
- ulfw 7y agoWhich US, android-reliant phone manufacturers are there?
- dehrmann 7y agoIt used to be that Samsung would also be safe because South Korea is a major strategic ally of the US, but with the US using steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and a tariff on all Mexican exports, strategic allies aren't even safe.
- SmokeGS 7y agothat's pure propaganda
- inflatableDodo 7y agoI am currently wondering what the US reaction will be to the UK, should we refuse to fold to their current demands regarding not only Huawei, but also the demands to change our laws in order to create a more US friendly regulatory environment.
- johnnycab 7y agoThe state visit will be eventful. I am guessing we will have some inkling into this matter within the next few days.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
- DevX101 7y agoThe long term impact of this Huawei dispute will be China building out a complete vertical communications/computing stack from low level chips to operating system to phone design. They won't get any market share in the U.S. but they'll dominate China (obv), India, Africa, and have some decent minority share in Europe. The ban is great for U.S. companies in the short term that are behind on 5G, but this will harm U.S. tech industry interests in the long term once China has that vertical stack up and running. I wish the U.S. government had used their power to push for some form of a mandatory and transparent security audit to ensure data privacy.
- lugg 7y agoYea they should do that for apple and google too. Oh wait.
- agumonkey 7y agoI thought Europe was frowning hard on huawei too
- otaviokz 7y agoWhat news do you read? From here it seems quite divided.
- agumonkey 7y agosome titles passing in reddit and other websites
- Barrin92 7y agoNot really hard, there's no united position. Huawei is a significant supplier of 4G infrastructure in Europe so ditching Huawei completely would be very costly, and at the moment it's mostly a matter of the individual nation states. I don't think there's a country that has issued a complete ban comparable to the US, and most European countries will probably purchase 5G tech from Huawei for parts of their networks.
- torgian 7y agoShit, I seriously doubt the validity of this article. But it does go to show that, the majority of manufacturers who make their products in China need to tread lightly even more so now. If anything, this move by the US will make electronic manufacturers take a second thought about where the source their parts and (more importantly) which companies they deal with. This icludings big companies like Microsoft and Google. I have no doubt that this could potentially hurt Googgl especially.
- darkmarmot 7y agoMy company, roughly 400k employees and contractors, already sent security notices from the DOJ banning Hauwei, ZTE, etc. devices across the entire corporation. It effectively banned their phones from a not insignificant percentage of the population in one fell sweep.
- tomjen3 7y agoWhat do you expect people to do? Go out and buy new phones at a cost that exceed what most people can afford (400 usd, assuming you are in the US).
- bardworx 7y agoI believe most corps subsidize employee phones so the individual would not be responsible unless it’s BYOD, in which case, you would be.
- darkmarmot 7y agoI didn't make the policy, but it appears the corporation expects that you do not use any of these products in any way that might connect with our systems, per U.S. DOJ guidelines. I think it's interesting to see how quickly and strongly this was rolled out in the U.S.
- scotty79 7y agoI'll just hope this Huawei debacle will be the spark that burns the patent and copyright systems to the ground.
- CamperBob2 7y agoIt will certainly have that effect in China. They make cellphones, we make self-owns.
- bmer 7y agoI get the play on words, but what does "self-own" mean?
- CamperBob2 7y agoIt's probably best interpreted as an American idiom for what the rest of the world would call an "own goal." As in, you kick the football into your own team's goal, resulting in a score for the other team with no effort needed on their part.
- mercutio2 7y agoThis is not an idiom I’ve ever heard in the US. But I agree, seems likely parent meant own-goal.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoWe can dream.
- tolger 7y agoThis move by the US to sabotage Huawei will, in the long term, harm American competitiveness. I haven't yet seen or heard any concrete proof that Huawei poses a "threat" to national security. The fact that Trump mentioned their fate could be "negotiated" as part of a larger trade agreement with China points in the other direction. Either way, this is bad for free enterprise and free commerce.