Huawei Technologies Inc. is running out of smartphone chips. This was announced by the company at the 2020 Summit of the China Information Technology Association during a speech by Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer business.
Engadget reported that after September 15, 2020, Huawei won’t have access to the manufacturing it needs to continue making the Mate 40’s Kirin 9000 processor. According to Engadget’s summary of Richard Yu’s speech, Chinese chip manufacturers such as SMIC do not currently have the capabilities to make up for the shortfall. As a result, supplies of the Mate 40 would be limited.
In May of 2020, The U.S. Department of Commerce unveiled a rule that expanded U.S. authority to require licenses for sales to Huawei Technologies of semiconductors made abroad with U.S. technology. This new rule enabled the United States to expand its ability to halt exports to Huawei Technologies.
At the time, Reuters reported that the rule also affected Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd., which supplied Huawei with chips. According to Engadget, SMIC is two chip generations behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd., and just started producing a 14nm Kirin chip for Huawei.
The Associated Press reported that Richard Yu said that production of Kirin chips designed by Huawei’s own engineers will stop on September 15, 2020, because the chips are made by contractors that need U.S. manufacturing technology. Huawei lacks the ability to make its own chips.
The date September 15 keeps coming up. It is the same date that the executive order President Trump signed that would ban U.S. transactions with TikTok and WeChat. It is also five days before the endpoint of Microsoft’s discussions with ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, about Microsoft potentially acquiring TikTok. All of these things happening on the same date cannot possibly be a coincidence.