Fri January, 2021, Age: 3 years
In an indication of just how damaging recent U.S. targeting of Chinese telecom company Huawei has been, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei recently released a letter both extolling U.S. telecom capabilities and revealing the responses Huawei will have to make in response to U.S. sanctions. The U.S. recently revoked the licenses of major U.S. telecom companies to sell technologies, including advanced chips, to Huawei. The letter is an address Mr. Ren delivered to the company in June of last year, before the most recent rounds of U.S. sanctions to effect. But in the address Mr. Ren admits that then U.S. sanctions had left Huawei “with a great mismatch between our strategy and our abilities, and that the company will have to revaluate some product lines, and consider cutting some products and staff that are unproductive.” There are, however, recent developments that reveal how Chinese telecom companies are beginning to skirt U.S. sanctions. Huawei spun off a sub-brand named Honor, which recently announced that it had formed new supply partnerships with major chip manufacturing companies Intel and Qualcomm.