Huawei’s woes seem to be never-ending at the moment, and this probably won’t ease up while President Trump remains in power.
It was recently confirmed that the current trade ban against Huawei would be extended for at least one more year. However, things have escalated a bit further than that with the US blocking Huawei’s ability to trade with the Taiwanese based TSMC.
While a Taiwanese company may not seem like it should get embroiled with this dispute, the technology they use US technology or equipment, which is then not allowed to be used with Huawei.
TSMC also has plants in the US with a new plant being built in Arizona which will be used for 5nm chips, so it is likely TSMC do not want to anger President Trump with his unpredictable and explosive temper.
It had been reported that TSMC has moved to stop new orders from Huawei following the US governments. TSMC didn’t deny the reports but called them purely market rumour.
The long term relationship between Huawei and TSMC remains in doubt, but it is being reported that Huawei was recently able to push through their 5nm and 12nm orders allowing them to produce the up and coming flagship 5nm Kirin 1020 SoC. It is currently believed this is on schedule for its launch on the Huawei Mate 40.
However, it is reported that the 7nm order was not possible because TSMC was already at 100% capacity so couldn’t push through the order on time. It is possible if not likely, this could affect the production of Kirin 980 and the 5G Kirin 990 chipset which is featured in the Huawei P40 Pro.
Long term plans look like Huawei are going to ween themselves off US technology. A relatively small fab company, SMIC, has recently started mass production of HiSilicon’s Kirin 710A processor on its 14nm node. It is also possible Huawei could start using Samsung for its chip manufacturing and Honor have recently started using MediaTek chips for some of their up and coming phones.
Huawei continues to be successful even with all these political issues, and they seem big enough to weather the storm. Many US-based businesses are suffering due to these issues too, so the whole dispute is causing far more harm than good.
If President Trump gets reflected, it is very likely this dispute will continue, but if he does not, it remains unknown how the US will proceed.
