Foreign media sources said, Sony (Sony) and OmniVision (OmniVision) has received US permission, can continue to supply the image sensor to Huawei.
According to "Nikkei Asia" citing chip industry executives, some display and image sensor-related suppliers are obtaining US licenses because these components are considered not to be related to network security issues. However, the report also pointed out that the license granted to Sony may be limited to some of its products. In response, Sony declined to comment, and Howe Technology has not responded yet.
It is worth mentioning that Sony recently revealed that due to the US ban on Sony’s supply of chips to Huawei, its sensor business’s fiscal year 20 profit forecast has been lowered by 38% to 81 billion yen. And said that it is expected that its sensor business will not recover from the impact of sanctions on Huawei until FY22.
Since being included in the list of entities last year, Huawei has been subject to various restrictions from the United States. On September 15, the US government's new ban on Huawei came into effect, reducing Huawei's access to several necessary components including the chipset.
At present, in addition to Sony and Howe Technologies, several companies such as Intel and AMD have obtained US approval to continue business with Huawei. On September 19 (the fifth day after the new ban began), Forrest Norrod, senior vice president of AMD and general manager of the data center and embedded division business, said to the outside that AMD had obtained a supply license to Huawei.
Immediately after September 21, Intel officially confirmed that it had obtained a supply license to Huawei. At that time, Huawei responded that the license obtained by Intel at the end of 2019 will not be affected by the two sanctions this year. As of now, AMD and Intel are the only chip giants that publicly declare that they can continue to supply Huawei. There is also news that Samsung Display (Samsung Display) has also been approved to provide Huawei with OLED displays.
In addition, foreign media sources said that chip foundry TSMC has also obtained a license to continue to manufacture related chips for Huawei. However, the report pointed out that TSMC is licensed for mature processes such as 28 nm, excluding these advanced processes such as 16 nm, 10 nm, 7 nm, and 5 nm. This also means that TSMC still cannot manufacture the latest Kirin 9000 processor (using 5 nm process) for Huawei.
In addition to the aforementioned companies, more than 300 countries/regions have applied for special licenses from the US government to continue cooperating with Huawei. Among them are Qualcomm, MediaTek, SK Hynix and other companies. Recently, news has revealed that as long as the components provided by the company have nothing to do with Huawei's 5G business, the United States will issue licenses to it.
On the other hand, there are reports that Huawei is planning to build a chip factory in Shanghai that does not use American technology . Its goal is to start producing 28 nm chips for smart TVs and other IoT devices by the end of 2021; by the second half of 2022, it can produce 20 nm for 5G telecommunications equipment. Huawei will not operate the factory itself. It will be operated by the company's partner, Shanghai Integrated Circuit R&D Center Co., Ltd. supported by the Shanghai Municipal Government.