Qualcomm has officially been granted a license from the US government to supply chips for some of Huawei’s products. The report was pretty much a rumor until recently, when the chip maker confirmed it to be true.
However, there’s a caveat to this. Qualcomm can only supply older chips to Huawei. That means only 4G chips (and below) are approved with the newer 5G chips out of the picture. Its assumed that the reason for this is to limit what Huawei can do and slow down its progress in the 5G space.
Aside from Qualcomm, there are now numerous companies with licenses to supply products to Huawei. Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Skyworks and many others were confirmed to have obtained licenses.
Recently, Samsung, Sony and Omnivision were also given the green light. The former for displays while the other two for image sensors.
Last September, Huawei was cut off from major suppliers that use US technologies in their products due to concerns of national security. The US government required the said companies to apply for a license to continue working with the Chinese company.
Earlier this month, Huawei announced that it had plans of building a factory for 20nm chips for 5G telecoms equipment.
