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Cellphones China

Huawei Is Now Making Smartphones Without American Chips (marketwatch.com) 185

Posted by EditorDavid from the not-made-in-America dept.
"American tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late," reports the Wall Street Journal.

Huawei is just building its smartphones without U.S. chips. Huawei's latest phone, which it unveiled in September -- the Mate 30 with a curved display, telephone 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...

While Huawei hasn't stopped using American chips entirely, it has reduced its reliance on U.S. suppliers or eliminated U.S. chips in phones launched since May, including the company's Y9 Prime and Mate smartphones, according to Fomalhaut's teardown analysis. Similar inspections by iFixit and Tech Insights Inc., two other firms that take apart phones to inspect components, have come to similar conclusions.
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Huawei Is Now Making Smartphones Without American Chips More

Huawei Is Now Making Smartphones Without American Chips

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  • A lesson (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Way Smarter Than You ( 6157664 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @06:44AM (#59475962)
    Let this be a lesson to American companies in the future who knuckle under to forced technology transfer in order to get temporary access to the Chinese market. The BoD should immediately fire any CEO who suggests such a thing in the future. This was easily predictable and foreseen by many and has already happened in other industries. Dumbasses.

    • Re:A lesson (Score:5, Funny)

      by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday December 02, 2019 @06:48AM (#59475972)

      "by Way Smarter Than You ( 6157664 )
        This was easily predictable and foreseen by many ..."

      They were not as smart as you, I guess.

    • Re: A lesson (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrNaz ( 730548 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @07:02AM (#59475984) Homepage

      This was not the result of technology transfer. It was the result of idiotic trade policy.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by aurispector ( 530273 )

        What trade policy is that? The one where we do business with communist dictators who are using the book "1984" as an instruction manual?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by geekmux ( 1040042 )

          What trade policy is that? The one where we do business with communist dictators who are using the book "1984" as an instruction manual?

          I'm sorry, but what the fuck does this have to do with profits? When did the average citizen start giving a shit about privacy?

          I would tell you to speak up, but delivering your message effectively is not a problem of volume. Greed N. Corruption simply doesn't give a shit, and neither does the average citizen if any country. Your 1984 argument might actually matter if anyone actually cared about privacy. Who the hell do you think created this Orwellian future? (Hint: the answer isn't "government")

          • The government created the "idiotic trade policy". I was just trying to find out what policy the poster above mine was referencing, because it smelled like he was trying to blame the current administration when the problem predates it and goes so much deeper. And the private sector only does what's legal. Hence the .gov allowed this orwellian shit to occur. And I don't think people are indifferent to privacy issues but they aren't ever being given a choice.

            Every time google or facebook rolls out a n

        • Re: A lesson (Score:5, Funny)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @08:05AM (#59476114) Homepage Journal

          Maybe Europe should stop doing business with a country that has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, where many innocent people are locked up and systematically abused and raped. Or how about a country that fails to sign up to the Paris climate accords, polluting the pool we are all swimming in. Where abortions are not available to many women, and where you can be fired for being gay.

          Or maybe it's better to keep trading and allowing our cultural influence to flow over there. I mean cutting off North Korea and Iran hasn't really worked, has it?

          • > highest incarceration rates in the world,

            Yes, the drug war. Will you be arrested for drugs in China or do you just have to pay off a few officials?

            > people are locked up and systematically abused and raped

            You mean like forced indoctrination and organ harvesting?

            > fails to sign up to the Paris climate accords

            A non-binding "agreement" that would do nothing even if followed by all the signatories. An agreement that designates China as "developing" and able to keep increasing their pollution becaus

          • I don't know if I'd go as far as sanctions, but maybe some kind of pushback from our friends in Europe would force our corrupt Congress to get their heads out of their asses and correct course on some of those things you mentioned. I'd like to see my own country doing the right thing as much as you would, probably more if you're not from the US.

            Either way, while the US is far from clean even at the moment, the kind of behavior China is engaged in is at least a few orders of magnitude worse. We've been tr

        • What trade policy is that? The one where we do business with communist dictators who are using the book "1984" as an instruction manual?

          Looks like not doing business with them is making them stronger. Thanks to your trade policy they're now busy making their own citizen-spying chips, they're busy making their own citizen-spying OS.

          • I think it's a great example of where neoliberal globalism breaks down. The only people who benefit from oligopolies are oligarchs. This includes our dear beloved Intel, AMD and other chip manufacturers. The US has allowed the merger and takeover game, and corporate socialism for only the largest corporations to go on way too long. A little fragmentation in global markets creates much needed breathing room for innovation and emerging competition. Perhaps not Trump's goal, but neither is the rising tide of s
        • From the fine article"

          In May, the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with Beijing escalated.

          That trade policy... Or the first sentence from the summary if you were smart enough to understand it...

          "American tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late," reports the Wall Street Journal.

        • The one where we do business with communist dictators who are using the book "1984" as an instruction manual?

          The sanctions against Huawei have nothing to do with how China treats its own people. They are because Huawei sold components to Iran.

      • This was not the result of technology transfer. It was the result of idiotic trade policy.

        Trump 2020!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        It's the result of both.

        First the technology transfer meant that China had technology available to make itself it might otherwise have not had. However they did not exercise that capability as much because they didn't have to and also because they undoubtedly were aware that once they did, technology transfer might have gone more reluctant.

        When the trade policies came along, that seemed like a way to mark that the time had come to switch over and fully use that capability.

        In part the trade policies were in

    • Re:A lesson (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @07:08AM (#59476002) Journal
      These CEOs are likely fully aware of that. But these days, short term gains trump long range planning. Maybe it's the CEO who does not knuckle under and stays out of the Chinese market who gets fired.

      • These CEOs are likely fully aware of that. But these days, short term gains trump long range planning. Maybe it's the CEO who does not knuckle under and stays out of the Chinese market who gets fired.

        That is by no means a recent development. It was being noticed and discussed back in the 1970s or even earlier. And it is implicit in the accepted Western definition of the corporation.

        Could it possibly be that a system which leads inevitably to such self-destructive behaviour is not quite as perfect as we are told?

        • Well what they say is that, "it's not perfect, but it's the best we've got." What they fail to mention, is the reason it's the best we have is that the oligarchs like it this way. It's optimized to funnel money into the coffers of a few hundred billionaires, so they can maintain their stranglehold on our governments. But, clearly there are better possible economic systems that are less wasteful, less harmful to the environment, individual health and freedom, and share the benefits of our labor more equitabl

          • "The best we've got", but by no means the best we could have. It looks very probable that China has already evolved a system that is substantially better than American-style "free market capitalism".

            Better for everyone except a tiny handful of plutocrats, that is.

      • These CEOs are likely fully aware of that. But these days, short term gains trump long range planning. Maybe it's the CEO who does not knuckle under and stays out of the Chinese market who gets fired.

        The Chinese are going to catch up no matter what. If they don't do it with your tech, they will do it with your competitor's tech, or they will develop their own. So the smart thing to do is to cut a deal and make whatever profit you can.

        I am disappointed that these are still ARM-based phones. The RISC-V phones are still in the pipeline.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          The Chinese are going to catch up no matter what. If they don't do it with your tech, they will do it with your competitor's tech, or they will develop their own. So the smart thing to do is to cut a deal and make whatever profit you can.

          Reminds me of an engineering company I worked for before. They were asked by an architectural firm that was a client of theirs to help set up an engineering department for them. So why help start a competitor? Well a multi-year deal got the engineering firm a lot of cas

      • The people making these decisions aren't tied to any one country, they're global. They share in the largess. You and I, however, do not. We compete for lower and lower wages as supply and demand drives down the value of our labor.
    • They were quite happy to buy American chips and send that money to America to try and help with the balance of trade. But Trump said no, you go ahead and buy someone elses or just make your own. We don't want your money. Stable genius indeed.

      • "American tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late," reports the Wall Street Journal.

        Offtopic? It's the first sentence from the summary.
        Trump personally banned America companies from doing business with Huawei.

        In May, the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with Beijing escalated.

    • The massive technology transfer from the western companies to China was driven by chief executives and activist investors whose attention span is about three years, meaning if the company doesn't turn super-profits within such sort time frame, then the top execs not only do not get their fat bonuses, but they also likely get fired. Hence, the race for the Chinese market for the early 21st century resulting in massive technology transfer. Those CEOs who did it won't care much about it, because they're now mo

    • Re:A lesson (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @08:10AM (#59476122) Homepage Journal

      Huawei and Xiaomi are currently tied for the number 1 spot on the DSOMark mobile camera test ranking: https://www.dxomark.com/catego... [dxomark.com]

      Apple is 3rd and then Samsung. The next American company is Google at 11.

      This isn't stolen technology for forced transfer, it's Chinese and Korean companies making better smartphone cameras than American ones.

      Lenovo makes the best laptops. Best keyboards, modular and easy to work on. They didn't steal that from US companies.

      You are making the same mistake you did with Japan. Write them off as merely copying American technology, and then one day you realize they have surpassed it and people are buying their cars instead.

      • p>Lenovo makes the best laptops. Best keyboards, modular and easy to work on. They didn't steal that from US companies.

        No, they bought it. In 2005, Lenovo bought IBMs personal computer business including the Thinkpad line of laptops.
        Much of the (early?) design of the Thinkpads comes from Japan.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Indeed, we lost quite a few big consumer goods companies. The British motor industry too, arguably.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        US people are frankly just dumb, and would rather blame others for their own faults. It's their snowflake culture. As Newt Gingrich stated... “It is not China’s fault that in 2017, 89% of Baltimore eighth graders couldn’t pass their math exam “It is not China’s fault that too few Americans in K-12 and in college study math and science to fill the graduate schools with future American scientists “It is not China’s fault that, faced with a dramatic increase in Ch

    • Re:A lesson (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @08:46AM (#59476204)

      I thought this was a lesson to not start trade wars with your largest trading partner? You are under the impression that only America can make and design chips. While I expect some of the technology may be from the technology transfer, a lot of it is actually from other countries' own ingenuity.

      Countries buy from the United States because we are usually easy/predictable to deal with. It is like buying a brand name item, it may not be the best, but they are normally predictable and you know what you are getting.

      The Trade Wars and Tough Negotiation with unpredictable results will only hurt the US Brand Name, and prolonged over years, which means companies may reevaluate their risks and try someone else.

      • The theoretical framework for CDMA was published by Dimitri Ageev [wikipedia.org] in 1935.

        CDMA underpins both Qualcomm's CDMA2000, and GSM/UMTS/WCDMA (developed by Japan's NTT DoCoMo). I'm assuming that the Chinese CDMA2000 operators can't use the new Huawei phones.

        In any case, 3g mobile was an extensive exchange between Soviet theory, Qualcomm and Japanese engineering, and Chinese manufacturing spanning many decades. It's surprising that the exchange has worked so well.

        I understand that QAM has replaced CDMA for the later

    • Dumbasses.

      Red Forman, is that you?

    • Power chip design: well-known, and often diagrammed in the data sheet. Those TI boost converters aren't just common circuits, but described in full in the documentation (i.e. you could fab your own if you had the machinery).

      CPU design: there are plenty of public RISC-V CPUs. Some Chinese companies are leaving ARM to get away from UK licensing costs.

      SOC design: all common, trivial, well-known. There's even public documentation of memory controllers and HDMI in VHDL and Verilog, which you can use to b

    • oh... maybe a lesson from one's own past [eh.net] is more educational.

    • Re:A lesson (Score:4, Informative)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:07AM (#59476838) Homepage Journal

      This mischaracterizes the decisions that led to this. It wasn't that CEOs and investors didn't understand the long term consequences of technology transfer, it was that they didn't care. The net present value of the future costs was, for them, less than the immediate profit to be made.

      It's like gold mining -- a notoriously dirty occupation that leaves behind giant cyanide contaminated tailing ponds. Everybody involved knows it's going to happen, but expects to be long gone with their money by the time the issue of cleaning up arises.

    • Let this be a lesson to American companies in the future who knuckle under to forced technology transfer in order to get temporary access to the Chinese market. The BoD should immediately fire any CEO who suggests such a thing in the future. This was easily predictable and foreseen by many and has already happened in other industries. Dumbasses.

      How does this punish the CEOs? They make out like bandits by pumping up their stock short-term. Then then make out like bandits with their golden parachutes when they are "fired", since a CEO firing is nothing like a firing for you and me.

      The keys are forcing corporate boards to only grant long-term stock options for CEOs and to eliminate golden parachutes.

    • Or maybe the lesson is not to start idiotic trade wars. If you ban your domestic companies from doing business with foreign ones, guess what happens? They stop doing business with them! And that turns out to be really bad for your domestic companies, because the foreign ones just shift to other suppliers in other countries. Who could possibly have predicted that?

      Of course, if the trade war were actually about technology transfer and theft of trade secrets, there might be some merit to it. But all the r

  • And so ? (Score:3)

    by ctrl-alt-canc ( 977108 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @07:10AM (#59476008)
    In UK we make fish and chips without american chips as well.

  • Predictable (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ClueHammer ( 6261830 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @07:33AM (#59476050)
    But I wonder who they stole the tech from....

    • There is more and more free and open source technology, such as open source chips and operating systems. It's now entirely possible to build working computer, router, etc without any US owned tech in it. The western patent system is also broken and completely dysfunctional since so many patents cover too many obvious things, every company is infringing on each other's patents, but when Huawei does this, somehow people call it "stealing".

      • We are talking about mostly hardware here not software which for the most part are not open source. For example, the latest Huawei CPUs are ARM based. ARM being multinational and HQ in the UK but owned by a Japanese SoftBank so technically not American. ARM designs are not open source.
    • They don't need to steal: since decades ago, most the chips are made on China. And every foreign company producing in there is forced by the law to be a partner of a local (Chinese) company. So, basically, it's not a production transfer only: it's a transfer of technology/know-how. The current state (not depend on a American chip) was too predictable. Now, we need to guess what will happen next now that America is suppressing freedom in order to have access to China market (i.e., suppress freedom in order t

    • Re:Predictable (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gtall ( 79522 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @08:30AM (#59476172)

      Most phones use ARM technology. They used to be British but then sold their ass to SoftBank of Japan. Anyone can license their designs. The U.S. tried to put a crimp in that but eventually, ARM worked around it. The rest of the ARM ecosystem is probably strong enough to supply the rest of the chips. Samsung and Huawei supply their own model chips and have for awhile.

      Pretty soon the U.S. will be a U.S. only zone, no new ideas or technology will get in or out. Brought to you by the geniuses in the U.S. political system.

      • And don't forget the open source computer architectures like RISC-V. If ARM owners are strong armed (no pun intended) by the USA to stop licensing the ARM architecture to China for political reasons, in a relatively short time, the Chinese tech giants will come up with chips using a computer architecture that's not owned by anyone which is not in the interest of Arm owners.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Huawei invented and hold patents on most of the 5G tech. They share the best mobile camera top spot (according to DXOMark) with Xiaomi, another Chinese company.

      CPU architecture was licenced from ARM, formerly a British company and now Japanese owned (Softbank).

      Huawei are on the various standards bodies for things like USB, flash memory, WiFi... They hold a lot of patents on those things too.

      So likely nothing was stolen.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Most of the things they've developed has come from 'free for all' standards bodies where the items developed from it were never meant to be patented, rather it was meant to be 100% royalty and patent free including any derivative technologies. It would be akin to the Vulkan API development, and then Nvidia turning around and simply stealing everything to make their own version and patenting it. It's what China does, and has done for decades.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Huawei literally wrote a lot of the telecoms and networking standards we use, especially in 4G and 5G but also parts of WiFi and on the infrastructure side. They didn't steal it, they developed it in-house. It's why they are so far ahead on 5G tech, the standards are based on technology they already have, which they proved works which is why it was adopted.

          If it was stolen then European and American companies wouldn't be behind, would they? They would have the same technology themselves and have released th

          • Re: Predictable (Score:4, Interesting)

            by chill ( 34294 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:38AM (#59476982) Journal

            They got their start by stealing everything. Their early network switches were cloned Nortel -- right down to the exact same typos in the manuals and help text.

            But they didn't just sit on their asses, they studied, learned, and innovated.

            Steal as much as you can, ignoring IP law until you catch up as how America did it 200 years ago. The only people this is a surprise to us is the ones that don't pay any attention to history. This is how the game had always been played.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              "One of the primary things we learn from history is that our leaders rarely learn anything from history." - Historian Barbara Tuchmann

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The time where they needed to steal is pretty much over. US components were cheaper and more convenient, that is all. Samsung has excellent engineers. The Donald just refocused their efforts for a while and now they will never again buy US chips. An entirely predictable result to anybody with a basic understanding how that business works.

      • Problem is we're not all economists, not all business supply logistics folks, not all educated in everything. Most people don't understand.

        Being an economist is a huge defense because you look at the world and recognize it's that way for a reason and, besides, long-term aggregate supply theory tells you the organization isn't a problem. Notice none of that actually involves having any clue what's going on, just how all the goings-on fit together: still can't know everything.

        Without that, you get indus

  • One has to wonder how much illegal tech their parts have stolen from American (and other Western) countries.

    • No tech is illegal.

    • Pot calling kettle black. Look at Apple for your own examples.

    • Who cares? I don't (Score:3, Insightful)

      by guacamole ( 24270 )

      The patent system is broken and patents are meaningless. All major US tech companies infringe on dozens, or hundreds of each others patents, but they don't sue each other because they all have built a chest of hundreds of thousands of patents (often patenting things that are pretty much obvious), so any suitor knows that he will be counter sued immediately. The Asian companies are operating pretty much the same way. The patent system is completely broken, and it would be best if we just did away with it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rikkards ( 98006 )

      Doesn't really matter does it?

  • - Sulky kid: "Well damn you all! You can't play with my marbles anymore. So there!"
    - All the other kids: "Meh.. Okay, suit yourself. We'll just buy our own and play without you."

  • Huawei Is Now Making Smartphones Without American Chips

    ‘Trade wars are good, and easy to win’

    -- Donald 'Jesus' Trump

  • Is there anyone, anywhere, in the world, who's surprised at this outcome?

  • Chinese officials justify the choice of not using U.S made parts because they "pose a serious risk to national security". Another official added "Who knows what kind of backdoors or spyware they coded into those parts. We just can't be sure"

  • ... and you're getting shoved off the world stage because you are not as relevant as you arrogantly assume.

    • While I don't agree with it, America is getting sick of the world stage. Many might be surprised that most Americans really don't care how relevant the US is to other countries. The United States is one of the few countries that could be absolutely self sufficient if it so chooses.
      • Self sufficient? What are you smoking? Let’s take a few examples where the US is wholly dependent on other nations and could not be remotely self sufficient . 1) fossil fuels, 2) electronics manufacturing, 3) produce.
        • We are a net exporter of fossil fuels. We sometimes import because its cheaper. We should curtail fossil fuel use anyway.
          Electronics manufacturing: I'm suggesting its possible for us to repatriate our technology. We can do it, it has been cheaper to do it elsewhere. If IP cannot be protected, I think you'll see companies moving it back to the US.
          Produce: we would simply have to do without some things out of season.

          I'm not advocating it or suggesting that we are fully isolated. I'm suggesting that it is
  • Does Huawei make phones without US intellectual property? Of course not.

    Are they paying royalties for the many patents held by companies like Qualcom, etc. or are they just copying technology and thereby eliminating R&D cost? I guess I need to be clear that this is a rhetorical question - of course they are not paying royalties on all the technology they have copied. They are just taking most of it because they get can away with it. To make matters worse, they make incremental changes, relabel as a ne

  • This was obviously going to happen (Score:3)

    by NerdENerd ( 660369 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @05:35PM (#59478274)
    Banning China from using US tech was going to force Chinese companies to come up with US tech free stacks. I wrote this comment back in August https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] "If Trump cuts Chinese companies off from US tech then it most certainly will create a US free tech stack from silicon all the way to the UI. China has a third of the world's population so somebody will use it. Once there is a cheaper alternative than paying the US tech tax you think that Taiwan, Korea, Japan and South East Asian countries are not going to jump on board? Trump is an idiot and this is the beginning of the US dominance of tech starting to decline."

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