Qualcomm is looking for U.S. government permission to sell mobile processors to Huawei

U.S. chipmaker, Qualcomm is looking for U.S. government’s permission to sell processors for Huawei smartphones. Qualcomm said it could be a big loss if Huawei chooses other chipmakers.

According to a report from WSJ, Qualcomm lobbying the U.S. government to lift restrictions on the chipmaker and permit it to sell chips to Huawei.

Qualcomm worries that the ban won’t prevent Huawei from obtaining necessary parts and could just drive “billions of dollars” of US sales to foreign chip makers including South Korea’s Samsung and Taiwan’s MediaTek.

The chipmaker also says that due to the restrictions, its foreign competitors now have access to a market worth as much as $8 billion per year.

Huawei is under the U.S Entity-list since last year, which prohibits the Chinese tech giant from doing business with U.S. companies. Moreover, the U.S. government restrained TSMC, the world’s biggest chipmaker from manufacturing Huawei’s chip designs.

Huawei consumer BG head, Richard Yu has recently confirmed that HiSilicon, Huawei’s chip-making division will stop printing new high-end chipset after September 15, 2020, due to the U.S. sanctions.

Therefore, the company will have to source its chipsets from third-party chip makers. Under the current situation, Huawei may visit MediaTek, which already started selling mid-range 5G chipset for Huawei phones or Qualcomm, which has to clear the U.S. license hurdle to ship its chipset.

Samsung is also in the list of potential chip suppliers and Huawei already purchases display panels and memory components from the South Korean company. So, it won’t be a big hassle for Huawei to negotiate with Samsung if required.