
Huawei reassesses goal to be world’s bestselling smartphone vendor - anandaverma18
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei-reassesses-goal-be-worlds-bestselling-smartphone-vendor-after
======
yorwba
Business Insider seems to have mangled the SCMP article they quote as the
source: [https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei-
re...](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3012702/huawei-reassesses-
goal-be-worlds-bestselling-smartphone-vendor-after)

 _Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer that assembles handsets
products for many phone brands including Apple and Xiaomi, has stopped several
production lines for Huawei phones in recent days as the Shenzhen company
reduced orders for new phones, according to people familiar with the matter,
who asked not to be named as the information is private._

I assume each model is made on more than one production line in parallel, so
the quote above seems to imply that production didn't stop completely, but
capacity was reduced.

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll change to that from [https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-
smartphone-production...](https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-smartphone-
production-us-blacklist-2019-5). Thanks!

------
DevX101
The long term impact of this Huawei dispute will be China building out a
complete vertical communications/computing stack from low level chips to
operating system to phone design. They won't get any market share in the U.S.
but they'll dominate China (obv), India, Africa, and have some decent minority
share in Europe.

The ban is great for U.S. companies in the short term that are behind on 5G,
but this will harm U.S. tech industry interests in the long term once China
has that vertical stack up and running.

I wish the U.S. government had used their power to push for some form of a
mandatory and transparent security audit to ensure data privacy.

~~~
agumonkey
I thought Europe was frowning hard on huawei too

~~~
Barrin92
Not really hard, there's no united position. Huawei is a significant supplier
of 4G infrastructure in Europe so ditching Huawei completely would be very
costly, and at the moment it's mostly a matter of the individual nation
states.

I don't think there's a country that has issued a complete ban comparable to
the US, and most European countries will probably purchase 5G tech from Huawei
for parts of their networks.

~~~
metildaa
Huawei hasn't updated OpenSSL in their cellular basestation firmware, despite
promises to do so in 2012 & 2018: [https://hmgstrategy.com/resource-
center/articles/2019/04/04/...](https://hmgstrategy.com/resource-
center/articles/2019/04/04/uk-flunks-huawei)

These really basic maintenance tasks aren't happening, leaving cell networks
vulnerable to anyone who can be bothered to look up a CVE and run the provided
demo exploit code. Hard to maintain a network you can't secure :c

~~~
8note
I think there's a misplaced assumption here, that you should trust a network
to keep your traffic safe.

it's reasonable to think that regardless of their SSL implementation, you
should assume that the network owner is going to try and spy on your traffic
and sell it to the highest bidder

~~~
watwatinthewat
I don't see what part of that means the network operator shouldn't do their
best to try to keep it safe.

------
liquidise
I believe the true loser in this is Google. If i am any non us, android-
reliant phone manufacturer, i am planning my exit strategy. Sure it won't come
today or this year, but it is vital for companies to start to distance
themselves from google licensing for their own betterment.

~~~
raverbashing
The reason Google won is that manufacturers were completely incompetent in
coming up with their own phone OSs either because of technical lack of
capability or internal politics

MS could have had a chance, but they didn't have the vision and Android was
the better choice (until now) to most manufacturers

~~~
bad_user
The current issue is that Huawei is blacklisted due to US’s economic war.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone would have been no better, quite the contrary, at
least you can fork Android, at least it supports alternative app stores.

~~~
hellofunk
>Huawei is blacklisted due to US’s economic war

The trade war is not why this company, in particular, is blacklisted.

~~~
klez
At this point I have to start doubting anything I read so far, then. What is
the reason?

~~~
zwaps
Ip theft and cirumventing sanctions.

To see no relation to the trade war is, however, a tad naive.

~~~
yourbandsucks
Like you say, it's allegedly entirely about the iran sanctions.

In practice, it's clearly a trade war thing and I'd be willing to bet quite a
bit that there was a personal thing between Huawei's loudmouth CEO and our
vindictive president.

~~~
artificial
I think the trade war is interesting. If this were a street fight where
someone hit you (for decades) and you hit back and the perception trumpeted is
suddenly you’re escalating things. Compare it to the previous administration
which had excellent relations and plenty of IP theft and those companies could
demand whatever with little recourse. Definitely politics but not as usual.

~~~
yourbandsucks
The Chinese were playing by exactly the rules we set and asked them to play
by, for decades. American companies were ecstatic to outsource manufacturing
someplace cheap.

Only in the last couple years have people gotten upset and started calling
them cheaters or whatever, retroactively.

It raises some questions. Are we blaming them for our inability to socialize
our gains from trade? Were we expecting them to never learn and move up the
value chain?

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
The irony is that all these complaints about IP theft started to flare up once
China started to invest heavily in R&D and started pulling ahead in certain
high-tech sectors. The real fear isn't that China is stealing IP, but that it
might surpass the US economically. Huawei is a perfect example of this. Their
heavy investments in the development of 5G and resulting dominance are
precisely what caused them to become a target of the US government.

~~~
effingwewt
I love how you act like Huawei did nothing wrong. We don't just think they
stole IPs, we don't just think Huawei are run by and for their government. The
American economy is far from perfect but I seriously doubt that anyone at this
point sees China's economy or level of self-built technology a threat.

Sure, most people have a bias or a slant, and it often comes out in what we
write, but do you honestly think anyone who sees you are a brand new account
and sees your comments here will think anything other than
'insert_country_here apologist'? And that it happens on every story critical
of china? Seriously it gets old.

~~~
yourbandsucks
What IP did Huawei steal, specifically? Can you name it without googling?
Scouts honor.

It's not cool to accuse people of being Chinese shills, especially people with
semi-obscure Greek names that they're very much in character of.

~~~
zwaps
Afaik, without googling, they stole Cisco Ip which is even relevant here.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
And this is precisely my point. Huawei was accused in the early 2000s of
stealing Cisco IP. They settled the issue quietly back then.

Now, almost two decades later, after Huawei has spent billions in R&D and
appears to be the market leader in 5G, all these old claims resurface, and the
US government is quite openly trying to drive them out of business. Of course,
by sheer coincidence, this happens while Trump is waging a trade war against
China.

And for the record, Diogenes couldn't be a shill for anyone. Diogenes is happy
living in his barrel in the market, do he clearly isn't motivated by money.

~~~
yourbandsucks
It's like people don't even know what cosmopolitanism means anymore ;)

I googled that Cisco case as well. One of their big claims was a copypasted
impl of... strcmp.

------
darkmarmot
My company, roughly 400k employees and contractors, already sent security
notices from the DOJ banning Hauwei, ZTE, etc. devices across the entire
corporation. It effectively banned their phones from a not insignificant
percentage of the population in one fell sweep.

~~~
tomjen3
What do you expect people to do? Go out and buy new phones at a cost that
exceed what most people can afford (400 usd, assuming you are in the US).

~~~
bardworx
I believe most corps subsidize employee phones so the individual would not be
responsible unless it’s BYOD, in which case, you would be.

------
scotty79
I'll just hope this Huawei debacle will be the spark that burns the patent and
copyright systems to the ground.

~~~
CamperBob2
It will certainly have that effect in China.

They make cellphones, we make self-owns.

~~~
bmer
I get the play on words, but what does "self-own" mean?

~~~
CamperBob2
It's probably best interpreted as an American idiom for what the rest of the
world would call an "own goal." As in, you kick the football into your own
team's goal, resulting in a score for the other team with no effort needed on
their part.

~~~
mercutio2
This is not an idiom I’ve ever heard in the US.

But I agree, seems likely parent meant own-goal.

------
ETHisso2017
Remind me again how Huawei smartphones in Europe are a threat to US national
security

~~~
ci5er
Even if Huawei handsets in Europe are not a threat to national security, most
consumers would expect them to be able to run Android, which Google can no
longer sell them...

~~~
Waterluvian
It's a great opportunity for the rest of the world to stop leaning on American
companies and American technology. It would be wonderful for a European and/or
an Asian alternative to Android to emerge.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Sailfish OS claims to be mature and available for "corporate customers." I
haven't seen any evidence past their own website, though.

~~~
mpol
The Russian government is using Sailfish in a big way. I heard the Russian
post-office as well. There were negotiations with the Chinese government, but
I assume that might have fallen through.

Jolla is not much B2C anymore, mostly B2B now.

------
Nokinside
I wonder if Huawei could sell their mobile business to BBK Electronics and
avoid sanctions. BBK is already the second largest smartphone manufacturer
after Samsung.

~~~
d33
Interesting, I never heard of them. Could you back this up with some market
data or more context?

~~~
Nokinside
Usually smartphone sales are brand comparisons. BBK Electronics owns brands
like Realme, OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus.

[https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/bbk-
second-l...](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/bbk-second-
largest-smarphone-manufacturer-2017-05/)

------
jbverschoor
The problem isn’t smartphones right? Bc then we should ban almost all phones.

I thought the problem is that basically all the cell networks run on huawei

~~~
_bxg1
The Chinese government can order Huawei to do basically whatever it wants, and
the former has so far shown no qualms about doing as much espionage, corporate
or otherwise, as it can get away with. Infrastructure is one threat,
smartphones are another.

~~~
em500
It appears now that the US government can order Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and
even non-US companies like ARM to do basically whatever it wants, and has
shown no qualms in the past about spying on their European allies. From the a
non-American POV the US does not have a clear moral high ground.

~~~
freehunter
You're assuming the US government cares if a non-American thinks it has the
moral high ground. I would be shocked if any decision maker ever considered
that before making a decision.

~~~
jessaustin
_...non-American..._

You don't need this qualifier. Our leaders don't care about the opinions of
us, their subjects, either.

------
torgian
Shit, I seriously doubt the validity of this article.

But it does go to show that, the majority of manufacturers who make their
products in China need to tread lightly even more so now. If anything, this
move by the US will make electronic manufacturers take a second thought about
where the source their parts and (more importantly) which companies they deal
with.

This icludings big companies like Microsoft and Google. I have no doubt that
this could potentially hurt Googgl especially.

------
bhouston
I didn't realize the effect would be so immediate. I thought it may affect
next year's model but this current gen was fine.

If it affects current gen smartphones could it also affect current gen 5g
equipment?

This would mean hauwei is essentially dead in the water.

~~~
d33
This actually makes me wonder - what makes them unable to sell outside of
Europe/USA? I heard of them being kicked out of SD/WiFi associations, but how
does this affect them in China?

~~~
the_economist
It's now illegal for all the major players to sell them microprocessors. Can't
build a smartphone without one.

"The United States last week blocked Huawei from buying goods made from 25% or
more of U.S.-originated technologies or materials"

~~~
Mirioron
I wonder what the long-term implications will be on American businesses for
this. Will non-US major companies be wary of relying on US suppliers?

~~~
ulfw
That's exactly it. The US is shooting itself in the foot. Because the message
this sends to the bigger world is: don't get too successful or we will kill
your business.

The irony is that that is exactly what western companies blame China for.

~~~
mistermann
> The US is shooting itself in the foot.

This is one possible outcome. Another is that China learns to be a bit less
self-serving and more cooperative with the rest of the world.

> Because the message this sends to the bigger world is: don't get too
> successful or we will kill your business.

That seems like a bit of a biased interpretation. Do you believe the US is
literally trying to _kill_ Huawei, or might it be possible that this is a
negotiating tactic to get them to realize _and acknowledge_ the value they
receive from the rest of the world generously trading with them, by
demonstrating the consequences of what happens when someone treats them in the
way they treat the rest of the world (I am referring to access to their
markets)?

> The irony is that that is exactly what western companies blame China for.

In the Alanis Morissette sense maybe.

~~~
scotty79
> Another is that China learns to be a bit less self-serving and more
> cooperative with the rest of the world.

Because they have such a great example given by USA to follow.

~~~
mistermann
Anything I've read suggests Chinese companies have much less restrictions on
setting up operations in the US than vice versa, just one example being the
mandatory Chinese partner situation, which is less strict than it used to be
so they say. This somewhat common notion that they're "both the same" seems
about as accurate as the also somewhat common notion that Chinese and American
culture is the same.

------
partingshots
Repost:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20073611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20073611)

------
tolger
This move by the US to sabotage Huawei will, in the long term, harm American
competitiveness. I haven't yet seen or heard any concrete proof that Huawei
poses a "threat" to national security. The fact that Trump mentioned their
fate could be "negotiated" as part of a larger trade agreement with China
points in the other direction. Either way, this is bad for free enterprise and
free commerce.

------
vkou
It's nice to see the government picking winners and losers in the market.

~~~
fishtacos
Precisely why it was important to make it illegal to do business which such an
entity, Huawei. US business relies of trademark, patent, contract and license
enforcement, which is where the government steps in.

The Chinese gov't doesn't abide by any of these rules, nor do they enforce
them, and subsequently Chinese companies are run the same way. That's not even
getting in the espionage and the links between Huawei and the CPC.

~~~
vkou
Name me one major US company that does not have close links to the US
government.

Name one.

As for the IP angle, what evidence do you have that Huawei in particular built
their 5G, or phones off IP theft? I postulate that as soon as China passes the
US in development of new IP, the US will find no shortage of excuses to
politically interfere in the market... Just like it is doing now, actually.

~~~
mistermann
What do you mean by "close links"?

~~~
vkou
The same thing that people talking about the Chinese boogieman mean.

A nebulous, ill-defined hand-waved general accusation, with no clear
goalposts, that infers that there's an intersection between the company's past
or present employees, and past or present employees, executives, or advisers
in government, that the company at some point received government seed
funding, investments, or government contracts, that secret meetings take place
between the company, and the government, that the company is a special
contractor for the government, building custom solutions for it, or that the
company may be compromised by government meddling.

The beauty of accusing a company of having close ties with its government is
that it can mean almost anything you want it to mean.

~~~
mistermann
Is this to say that there is _literally no noteworthy difference_ in the
relationships Chinese and American companies have with their respective
governments?

I'm open to the idea, what evidence would you propose supports this?

