Huawei took another step to guard its chip supply from US protectionism, with the Nikkei Asian Review reporting the company is collaborating with STMicroelectronic to jointly design semiconductors for mobile devices and autonomous-driving applications.
The joint chip partnership with the French-Italian company started last year and would a give Huawei a supply of advanced components as well as access to the latest software to develop chips, sources told the news agency.
The arrangement would protect the Chinese vendor from any new trade restriction on the chips it designs in-house and contracts out to chipmakers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
The move comes as Huawei is preparing to reduce its reliance [1] on chips made using US-designed components, following the threat of new trade sanctions from the US due to security concerns.
New barriers
In late March, the US administration advanced a proposal [2] to limit Huawei’s access to certain components, adding to previous moves to prohibit domestic chip makers supplying the vendor as part of a trade ban imposed in May 2019, which has been stayed several times [3] since.
The new restrictions on the use of US-made components in chips produced for Huawei would directly affect TSMC.
HiSilicon success
Meanwhile, Huawei’s fast-growing HiSilicon chip unit shipped more smartphone processors in China than rival Qualcomm for the first time, as Covid-19 (coronavirus)-related restrictions led to declines for most vendors, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
Q1 figures from CINNO Research showed HiSilicon’s market share rose to 43.9 per cent, up by 3.5 percentage points year-on-year, as its shipments of the processors edged up marginally to 22.2 million units, making it the only major player not to book declines in the quarter, the newspaper wrote.
Smartphone processor shipments in the mainland plunged 44.5 per cent in Q1, with Qualcomm’s share falling by 5 percentage points to 32.8 per cent, SCMP said, citing data from the CINNO report.
The sector was hit by a 34.7 per cent decline in smartphone shipments [4] in China in Q1 to 47.7 million units, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed.
[1] http://www.mobileworldlive.com/asia/asia-news/huawei-readies-china-chip-production-shift
[2] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/top-three/us-advances-move-to-limit-huawei-chip-access/
[3] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/top-three/us-seeks-solution-to-huawei-trade-extensions/
[4] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/devices/news-devices/china-smartphone-market-slammed-by-virus/
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