Huawei: once again, the dark clouds are gathering

By dint of pugnacity (and a good helping hand from the government and Chinese investment banks), Huawei managed to get its head above water in 2022, at least in China. Las, the former number 2 in the mobile market, which was promised unchallenged domination of the tech market, sees its future darken again at the start of 2023. Under American pressure, Japan and the -Bas join the American ban and now prohibit the export of semiconductor manufacturing tools to China. These measures should strongly penalize the entire Chinese tech sector, and even more a Huawei still weakened by American sanctions.

But there is even worse: the administration of Joe Biden, in phase on this subject with his predecessor Donald Trump, puts an end to the last export and trade licenses with Huawei, a measure which this time extends to all the categories of components, therefore including Qualcomm’s 4G modem chips, but also technologies relating to Wi-Fi 6/7, AI or the cloud. Knowing that Huawei already no longer had the right to use Qualcomm’s 5G modem chips – which is why no recent Huawei smartphone is 5G compatible – the American decision seems like a new and huge blow.