Intel Survived Huawei’s Efforts To Halt Sales To It

(CTN News) – Despite an attempt to stop Intel from selling chips to Huawei, two people familiar with the matter said the company has been given more time to do so.

A license granted by the Trump administration allowing Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for laptop use has been revoked by President Biden. Advance Micro Devices, Intel’s rival, and China hawks, seeking to shut down all Huawei sales, argued that Huawei’s license was unfair.

Companies face uneven and uncertain terrain as the U.S. attempts to limit Beijing’s access to sophisticated American technology, especially Huawei, despite a rival not being granted the same permission.

Furthermore, AMD was denied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of sales to Chinese sanctioned firm Huawei, data shows. According to Reuters, Republican Senator Marco Rubio wants Intel’s license to sell to Huawei revoked “immediately.”

According to him, no American company, especially those receiving taxpayer funding, should be fueling innovation. Neither Intel nor Huawei responded to requests for comment. No response from AMD.

Chinese Embassy in Washington describes Huawei’s restrictions as economic bullying, and urges the United States to “stop overstretching the concept of national security” to “suppress Chinese firms.” Trump administration added Huawei to its trade restriction list in 2019 over alleged sanctions violations. It has previously denied wrongdoing.

Adding your company to that list usually bars you from selling to the company. In late 2020, before Trump left office, the Commerce Department granted Huawei suppliers — including Intel — special permission to sell certain items.

After President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, AMD applied for a license but never heard back. Intel’s license was granted but AMD’s was not.

An AMD presentation based on data sourced from NPD and GfK showed that share of Huawei laptop sales containing AMD chips plummeted from 47.1% in 2020 to 9.3% in the first half of 2023.

During the period, Intel sold 90.7% of Huawei laptops containing its chips, up from 52.9%.

This left the two companies with a $512 million “estimated revenue discrepancy” by 2023.

Neither Circana, created last year from the merger of NPD and IRI, nor GfK, now owned by NIQ, responded. Last year, a government official publicly said Huawei’s licensing policy was under review, and privately told companies the Commerce Department would fix the licensing discrepancy.

An agency official and a person familiar with the matter said the plan to revoke licenses had been shelved by late last year without explanation.

A Chinese spy balloon’s discovery in U.S. airspace last winter soured relations between the two superpowers, so Washington took steps to reset relations with Beijing. Sources say Intel’s license will expire later this year. According to Huawei’s website, its laptops still use Intel chips.

According to Canalys, Huawei will be China’s third largest laptop manufacturer by 2023, replacing Dell. A further limitation on Intel’s CPUs would severely limit Huawei’s laptop offerings, said Emma Xu, an analyst with technology market research firm Canalys.

Inequality in licensing benefits more than Intel.

Huawei’s sales also plummeted after Taiwanese rival Mediatek’s application for similar chips was denied, sending its sales plummeting, another source said.

Due to Huawei’s announcement of new 5G phones using its own chips, Qualcomm does not expect to receive “material product revenues” from Huawei in future.

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