Huawei’s US ban: A look at the hardware (and software) supply problems

#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Hardware seems doable, an OS seems less doable, but wow, the app problem…

The System on a Chip is the heart of any smartphone, supplying most of your basic three-letter computer components like the CPU, GPU, LTE modem, GPS, and more. Huawei is better off than most companies in this area—it’s one of the few companies (along with Samsung) that has its own chip-design division. Huawei’s “HiSilicon” group designs SoCs for its smartphones, and the Huawei P30 Pro uses the HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC. HiSilicon has its own LTE modem solution and is a leader in 5G modems.

Huawei’s Kirin 980 is based on the ARM architecture, which Huawei licenses from ARM Holdings PLC. ARM’s headquarters is in England, but it now has a Japanese parent company, Softbank. Huawei is a fabless chip designer, meaning the company doesn’t own a semiconductor foundry, so it must get its chip designs manufactured somewhere. Kirin chips are usually made at TSMC, (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited), which, wouldn’t you know it, is headquartered in Taiwan. The running theme of this article is “Samsung would also be an option”—and for chip fabrication, Samsung would also be an option. Samsung (which is based in South Korea) produces Qualcomm’s flagship chips and is actually one of the leading silicon manufacturers on Earth. We’re doing good so far!
Huawei sources its displays from just about everybody, with Anandtech reporting various P30 variants using displays from the usual suspects: Samsung Display (South Korea) and LG Display (also South Korea), along with BOE Technology Group Co, a Chinese company. BOE is a real up-and-comer in the display market, and according to Bloomberg, it will blow past LG to become the number two supplier of OLED displays by the end of the year. If you haven’t been paying attention to BOE, you should start.
Under the P30 Pro’s display is an in-screen fingerprint reader, an optical reader made by Goodix, a Chinese company. Goodix also supplies OnePlus with its optical fingerprint readers. Before the US ban, Qualcomm would have been another option, with its ultrasonic fingerprint reader that debuted in the Galaxy S10. If you’re keeping score, we still haven’t run into a US supplier.
The problem for Huawei is that most of your favorite apps probably come from the US. Of course there is Google, which would mean no Gmail, Calendar, Google Maps, Waze, YouTube, or Photos. Facebook is a US company, too, so then Huawei would get no regular Facebook app, Messenger, Whatsapp, or Instagram. Microsoft is out, too, which means no Office, Skype, or OneDrive. We could probably build a top-20 app store list with the other US companies, like Snapchat, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Twitter, Roku, Soundcloud, Pandora, Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Tinder, eBay, Shazam, and Venmo.

Huawei’s parts audit is looking surprisingly good in the hardware department. The company has a diverse set of suppliers, and it seems to have plenty of non-US hardware options. Really the difference is HiSilicon, because without its own SoC division, the company would probably be reliant on the US’ Qualcomm Snapdragon products.
Remember: we just focused on the P30 Pro, both because it is Huawei’s big flagship and because there is a plethora of information available about it. We probably couldn’t do the same thing for a cheaper, less well-known device. This is also just focusing on Huawei’s smartphone business; it’s network equipment and laptop businesses are an entirely different matter.
For the software, it’s possible Huawei could survive on forked Android. It would definitely put the company at a disadvantage, but it would be better than trying to start from scratch with zero apps, zero developers, and an unfamiliar development environment. The biggest problem would be the distribution of apps if the executive order is interpreted to cover apps. Blocking US app developers from submitting to a Huawei app store would be an absolutely devastating blow for the company. The lack of an app ecosystem would give a Huawei OS (Android-based or otherwise) basically zero chance of succeeding in the market.

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