The recent news of the U.S. putting a halt on new licenses for Huawei has caused some concern in the tech industry. However, Qualcomm, a major chip supplier for Huawei, has come forward to clarify their stance on the matter.

Huawei

During the Q1 2023 earnings call, Alex Rogers, the President of Qualcomm Technology Licensing and Global Affairs, stated that the recent changes made by the U.S. commerce department are still unknown to Qualcomm and that they do not foresee any significant impact on their shipments to Huawei. He explained that Qualcomm already holds licenses, which allow them to ship 4G and other chipset technologies, including Wi-Fi, to Huawei. These licenses were issued after the commerce department confirmed that they posed no threat to national security and will remain in effect for a number of years.

This clarification from Qualcomm comes as a relief for the tech community, as previous reports had indicated that the U.S. had barred the export of 4G, Wi-Fi 6, 7, and AI chipsets to Huawei. Although there are still some uncertainties, this news is positive for Huawei, who has planned several flagship releases this year, all of which will solely use Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ chipsets. Huawei has since been unable to launch any 5G devices because U.S. restrictions cut it off from the most advanced chips needed to power such devices.

Intel and Qualcomm have established a strong presence in the Chinese market. Unfortunately, the news took a toll on their stocks as Qualcomm saw a drop of 0.9% in premarket trading earlier this week in the U.S., with Intel shares following suit and declining by 0.9% as well. This outpaces the general trend in the tech industry, as evidenced by the 0.4% dip in the tech-focused Nasdaq index. It’s possible that Huawei may have stockpiled a large quantity of Qualcomm chips that could last them a year, but for now, this news is positive, and the company will probably release another statement in due time.

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