Intel’s and Qualcomm’s Huawei export licenses get revoked

Enlarge / Huawei’s Intel-powered Matebook X Pro has drawn criticism from US China hawks. (credit: Huawei)

The US’s crackdown on exports to Huawei now includes even stronger restrictions than it has already faced. The Financial Times reports that Intel and Qualcomm have had their Huawei export licenses revoked, so Huawei will no longer be able to buy chips from either company.

The export ban has been around since 2020 and means that any company wishing to ship parts to Huawei must get approval from the government on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes these come with restrictions, like Qualcomm’s license, which allowed it to ship smartphone chips to Huawei, but not “5G” chips. That led to Qualcomm creating special 4G-only versions of its 5G chips for Huawei, and the company ended up with 4G-only Snapdragon 888 phones in 2021.

Since then, Huawei has been working on its own Arm chips from its chip design division, HiSilicon. Just in April, the Huawei Pura 70 smartphone launched with an in-house HiSilicon Kirin 9010 SoC made at SMIC, a Chinese chip fab that is also facing export restrictions. With what is probably still a 7 nm manufacturing process, it’s more of a 2020 chip than a 2024 chip, but that’s still fast enough for many use cases.