WSJ: Qualcomm Asks US Government to Let it Sell Chips to Huawei (engadget.com) 38
"The Wall Street Journal said it had obtained a Qualcomm presentation lobbying the U.S. government to remove restrictions and let it sell Snapdragon processors to Huawei," reports Engadget:
The ban won't prevent Huawei from obtaining necessary parts and could just drive "billions of dollars" of U.S. sales to foreign chip makers like MediaTek and Samsung, Qualcomm reportedly said — lifting the chip ban would theoretically help American companies stay competitive.
There could be a "rapid shift in 5G chipset market share" if Qualcomm is restricted while its foreign rivals aren't, Qualcomm said.
There could be a "rapid shift in 5G chipset market share" if Qualcomm is restricted while its foreign rivals aren't, Qualcomm said.
Why ban exports? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand. This is just hurting American businesses. Over time they'll develop competing technologies and then we would be in an even deeper hole in terms of the trade imbalance.
I can see restricting exports in times of war, since that can delay their military efforts, but doing it during peace time seems pointless.
Re: Why ban exports? (Score:1)
Re: Why ban exports? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, the last time USA restricted technology transfers, it was rocket technology transfer to China.
Guess what; China developed its own [some say with Russia's help], and is now 100% independent.
Huawei or other entities in China will be Qualcomm's competitor not very long from now. I think Trump has made a big mistake. Just wait.
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Well, let's keep the export ban, and let Qualcomm go build a plant in China. Then we'll see how that works for Qualcomm.
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Smells more like a scam, I would not trust those chip sets in the least. You know, you can't have them and then grudgingly they let you have them because they wanted you to have them all the time because they are backdoored and they did not want you to check so they made it 'seem' really hard to get.
Interesting thing about patent law, you deny access to the patent, do not even try to sell, just use it to prevent access, then by patent law, you can be forced to sell of be forced to abandon the patent. So any
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Interesting thing about patent law, you deny access to the patent, do not even try to sell, just use it to prevent access, then by patent law, you can be forced to sell of be forced to abandon the patent.
Citation needed.
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I think he's confusing patents with trademarks.
Re:Why ban exports? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Develop competing technologies." That is funny. They steal their technology.
What is worse, having your property stolen, or having it banned?
Let them develop their own competing technologies. They will have to pay for the R&D themselves.
That's so over-simplified that it's just plain wrong.
Are you not aware of the huge number of Chinese scientists and students in this country? Are you not aware of the huge number of contributions they have made to any number of fields? Are you not aware of all the collaborations between American scientists and international scientists from all nations?
Yes, China does a lot of industrial espionage. But stealing the "blueprints" (and again that's wildly over-simplified) is not at all the same as developing the manufacturing and R&D necessary to produce these products.
And American companies are not exactly Boy Scouts when it comes to respecting intellectual property either. And guess what, if a Chinese product comes out that seems to break new ground, do you think Americans are not hard at work reverse engineering it or cyber-sleuthing to find out the details?
The thing is, science and knowledge are the very definition of "not a zero-sum game." You can't steal what I know, because even if you learn it, I still know it. At worst, both of us know it now.
And then there's that much more chance that knowledge in general will be advanced.
Of course, if all you focus on is "who makes the most profit" you won't understand what I'm saying at all.
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China wields coronavirus to nationalize American-owned carmaker [foxbusiness.com]
A Chinese town helped him build an automobile manufacturing plant using his expertise, then voted him off the ownership board and took the company by (more or less) force. They even filed his patents in their own name... Perhaps the moral is just don't collaborate with them in their country because your work becomes their property.
Saleen [Re:Why ban exports?] (Score:2)
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The thrust of your argument seems to be that stealing is hard work, and therefore we should respect the thieves?
Anyway, the issue with Huawei chips is not really that they copy someone else's work. The issue is that they can build backdoors into the chips that you cannot discover till its too late. They know other countries have done it (USA for sure), and since the USA knows how it can be done, some of its government who are still patriots would prefer not to make it easy on an adversary and literally inst
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They steal their technology.
1996 wants its meme back.
Do you really believe that 1/4 of the planet's population, well educated and working in well funded labs, are actually unable to innovate and develop new technology? Why is it that Huawei is setting the standards for 5G technology, then?
It's not the chips, but tax fee licening revenues (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
China is already well on its way to replacing American technologies because it saw this coming and saw what the NSA was up to thanks to Snowden. China has competitive ARM designs and is progressing fast with x86 too (licenced from AMD). Software too.
All Trump has done is accelerate the process. I wonder if he really thought they would just come begging for some American chips.
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AFAIKT, Snowden told the US what others already knew. That's a bit oversimplified, but the US govt. has been whitewashing itself to its own citizens a lot more successfully than to other countries. Our international image has been going downhill since around 1950. US citizens didn't really even start to notice this until around 1960...and even now it's a minority view.
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Well I understand. The US dominance in production is disappearing but it still has overwhelming military dominance and it is the only one to really project power. Therefore there is a significant front in favor of shifting the competition to what the US excels in , and that is war. If China can be damaged enough then there is a change US can maintain its supremacy for longer.
There is another track, that of moving production capacity to the US. By itself that is an interesting agenda. It is valuable for a co
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what the US excels in , and that is war.
After 17 years we don't even control the suburbs of Kabul. We're good at buying war toys, but not apparently all that good at using them.
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The US is very good at destroying things and at making money with war toys.Conquering countries is another , harder task. The US is not in Afghanistan to win.It's there because people are making 100 billion dollars per year with it and it's there because people don't want to be seen as losing.
The whole idea of bountygate is to avoid withdrawal from Afghanistan. And if you can paint the Russians as enemies on top of it this reinforces another source of gains.
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Indeed. I actually think your hundred billion a year is a low estimate, the money laundries like CitiCorp and the NYSE charge 10-15% for their services. They took a major hit when the Taliban shut down 95% of the opium production, they have no intention of letting that happen again.
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I suspect the opium money is only a fraction of the cost of the military and it doesn't drive the overall policies. Also most of the gains on opium are downstream.
My estimate of the yearly cost is a bit high compared to this list : https://fas.org/man/eprint/cow... [fas.org]
The NYTimes last year put 2 trillion on it over 20 years but not all of it can be argued to go to people who have an interest in keeping the war going. I don't think the war vets are trying to lengthen the war
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Hurting American business is part of the WSJ's mission though. WSJ is owned by Murdoch, right? So, not sure I trust anything it publishes. Wait, I *am* sure I can't trust anything they publish. If there's a story in the WSJ, there's an agenda behind it that involves organized crime & political subterfuge. The old WSJ is long dead.
my brain hurts (Score:5, Insightful)
It's almost like international trade is actually quite a lot more complicated than some people like to think it is.
HiSilicon (Score:2)
The main competitor the ban helps is Huawei owned HiSilicon. Why switch to other competitors chips, when you can switch to your own? Currently Huawei only uses HiSilicon in their high end phones, and ships standard Qualcomm designs identical to most of their competitors in the low and mid range. The blockade is a strong incentive for them to grow HiSilicon's range to compete head to head with Qualcomm across the range.
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Except that the US has also banned Huawei and HiSillicon from getting access to the design tools and fabs and things it needs to have to produce all those chips.
Although I am sure HiSillicon is already looking at how it can get its chips made by the Chinese-run SMIC instead of needing TSMC (who are beholden to the US)
We should learn from what happened to ZTE. (Score:4, Insightful)
I saw a talk by an industry CEO. This guy is very data-driven and always gives very informative and insightful talks. He discussed the impact of the USA's ban on American companies selling semiconductors to ZTE.
The ban was a huge wake-up call to the government of China, which has responded with a huge investment in semiconductor technology: design and manufacturing. In the long term, this will have a huge negative impact on the semiconductor industry outside of China.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I saw a talk by an industry CEO. This guy is very data-driven and always gives very informative and insightful talks. He discussed the impact of the USA's ban on American companies selling semiconductors to ZTE.
The ban was a huge wake-up call to the government of China, which has responded with a huge investment in semiconductor technology: design and manufacturing. In the long term, this will have a huge negative impact on the semiconductor industry outside of China.
Why will the impact be negative?
I think it may have a hugely beneficial impact resulting in greater competition, more market choice and better prices.
What Qualcomm is really asking for is... (Score:2)
for US govt to ease up on some Hwawei equipment sales in the US since that would be part of the PRC govt concession to let HW do buy these.