Qualcomm has been granted an exemption, allowing it to sell 4G chips to Huawei despite the sanctions currently in effect agains the company.
Huawei has increasingly been under pressure from the US government, which has sought to cripple the company’s ability to conduct business. US officials have pressured allies to ban Huawei’s equipment from their 5G networks, with many doing so.
The Trump administration even modified the Entity List and Foreign Direct Product Rule to cut Huawei off from US technology, even if that tech is being used by foreign companies. This helped the US cut Huawei off from TSMC, one of its largest suppliers. Since Huawei outsourced its chip manufacturing to TSMC, this severely impacted its ability to produce chips for its devices.
According to Reuters, Qualcomm has been granted an exemption that will allow it to sell 4G chips to Huawei. Although no specifics were given, Huawei did confirm the chips in question were for mobile devices.
It was reported in August that Huawei was running out of the chips it used in its smartphones, with production slated to stop in mid-September. As Reuters points out, Huawei was never a large Qualcomm customer in the past. Given its current situation, that seems likely to change, possibly resulting in a big boost to Qualcomm’s business.