Huawei has a bigger headache than Google — ARM’s suspension of business with it
Huawei had remedies and contingency plans in place already for Google’s move that suspended Huawei’s access to its Android OS updates as well as proprietary apps and services. But nothing has probably prepared it for ARM’s decision to cut its ties with the company in compliance with a recent US trade ban.
ARM, a British-based chip designer that happens to be one of the world’s largest, issued a memo to its staff to halt “all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements” with Huawei and its subsidiaries, as reported by BBC.
While ARM is owned by Japanese investor Softbank, its designs contained “US origin technology” which makes it likely to be part of President Trump’s ban.
What does this mean for Huawei?
One of Huawei’s contingency actions was developing its own chipset design called Kirin (Huawei already has Kirin 980 and is reportedly working on the next version, Kirin 985). Aside from this, Huawei was also reportedly stockpiling chips but it is estimated that the company had only about 3 months’ worth of chips inventory. The bigger problem is that ARM technology is part of Kirin’s design. And ARM has a lot of patented technologies.
The BBC article goes on to say “…manufacturers license ARM’s processor core designs – which describes how the chips’ transistors should be arranged. These blueprints still need to be combined with other elements – such as memory and radios – to create what is referred to as a system-on-chip. As a result, when you hear talk of a device being powered by a Samsung Exynos, Qualcomm Snapdragon or Apple A11 chip – or one in a Huawei smartphone – it is still ARM’s technology that is involved.”
In short, Huawei cannot produce its own chips for use on its mobile phones without ARM’s license since the latter’s designs are proprietary.
This is a bigger blow to Huawei. The loss of Google, while major, still allows Huawei to make its own mobile phones. In China, Huawei phones do not even have Google apps installed. Huawei could also use the open source version of Android. But the loss of ARM’s technology is something Huawei does not have the technical know-how to replicate. And even if it tries to create its own chip, it will need to be very careful not to infringe on the many patents held by ARM.
I am afraid that if the ban continues for an extended period of time, we may literally see the end of Huawei’s mobile phone line.
There might be some hope for Huawei though. Next year (2020) is an election year in the U.S. and the way things are going now with Trump, there could be very little chance of him being reelected for a second term. If the next President has a different policy direction, the ban on Huawei’s access to U.S. technology could be lifted.
