Huawei is considering licensing its smartphone designs to other companies.- The Chinese smartphone maker is under US sanctions that prevent it from doing business with US companies.
- Huawei had sold its sub-brand Honor to a consortium of buyers in December 2020.
According to a Bloomberg $4, Huawei is considering licensing its smartphone designs to third parties to gain access to critical components that it is unable to access directly due to the US sanctions.
This comes at a time when the Biden administration has tightened the restrictions on Huawei. As part of new $4 included in the Secure Equipment Act of 2021, special exceptions granted to network operators using Huawei’s equipment have been removed.
The US action was done amid claims that the company posed a security risk and Trump signed an executive order declaring a $4 and designated Huawei as a “national security risk”.
This resulted in Huawei being deprived of access to companies like Google, Qualcomm, chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Intel among others whom it depended on for its smartphones.
Huawei is currently in talks to sell its $4 as US sanctions have stopped it from procuring processors from Intel.
According to the report, Huawei is considering licensing its smartphone designs to a unit of state-owned China Postal and Telecommunications Appliances Co. (TPAC). The unit, Xnova, is reportedly already selling Huawei’s Nova branded smartphones on its e-commerce portal.
As part of the new partnership, TPAC will purchase components that Huawei is barred from acquiring and selling the smartphones under its own brand using Huawei’s designs.
Apart from TPAC, equipment major TD Tech may use Huawei’s designs to produce and sell smartphones under its own brand.
Huawei’s sub-brand Honor was sold to a consortium of buyers led by smartphone distributor Digital China and the Shenzhen government. The company recently announced its first smartphone, the $4.
The Honor 50 was launched in over 40 markets across the world and uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G chipset. It runs on Android and comes with Google’s apps, something that Huawei cannot offer.
According to the report, engineers at Huawei have already started redesigning circuits of some of its flagship smartphones that were powered by the company’s HiSilicon chipsets, enabling them to be used with Qualcomm or MediaTek chipsets.
Huawei expects partnerships with other companies to boost its smartphone shipments to above 30 million in 2021.
It will be interesting to see if Huawei is able to revive its business by licensing its smartphone designs.
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