The battle is joined: Huawei eliminates U.S. parts from phone, 5G base stations
Huawei’s newest phone has no U.S. hardware, and a top cyber-security official says it can now produce its 5G base stations without U.S. components as well. The company says it bought $11 billion of U.S. technology last year.
The big losers: Qualcomm (San Diego), Intel (Santa Clara), Qorvo (North Carolina), Skyworks (Massachusetts), On Semiconductor (Phoenix), Broadcom (San Jose) and Cirrus Logic (Austin). Huawei’s work on a replacement for Google’s Android operating system continues as well.
The move comes as Huawei plans to fight the FCC’s recent blow to the company and the U.S. government announced its Commerce Secretary will now vet imports of “sensitive technology”.
(UPDATE 12.3.19) Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei now says the company will move a major research center from the U.S. to Canada, and will build more European manufacturing capacity for its 5G equipment. Separately, the company has reportedly opened a new AI lab in Singapore to train 1000 developers. The revelations come as Reuters reports the U.S. considered kicking Huawei out of the U.S. banking system.
The strain is showing on the Chinese electronics giant: Huawei is reportedly looking at a $1.5 billion offshore loan, less than a year after it raised $3.5 billion and just weeks after China announced $50 billion in aid to Huawei, ZTE and other domestic tech makers. (UPDATE 12.5.19) China is now making its own DRAMs - they essential memory-storage chip of all electronic systems.
TODAY IN…
Deep Tech
Experts once believed the low profile kept by smaller utilities afforded them some protection from hackers. No longer.
Media & Telecom
Madison Avenue is doing serious psychological analysis on children under 10 years old. Stop the insanity.
The New York Times published a withering and fact-filled take-down of Amazon’s effect on the city of Baltimore
“Frozen 2” set a new Thanksgiving-weekend record, grossing an estimated $124 million in the U.S. and Canada over a five-day period. That’s despite mixed reviews. The film could become Disney’s 6th movie to gross more than $1 billion globally this year.
Healthcare Tech
New survey: Data aggregation & analytics and precision medicine now top the technology to-do lists at U.S. health systems and academic institutions
Researchers: About one-third of healthcare databases are currently exposing sensitive patient data.
Finance
Corporate debt nears a record $10 trillion. The borrowing binge poses new risks.
US regulators are divided on new risk management controls for derivatives in investment products
A watershed moment as Moody’s downgrades Exxon Mobil on ESG risks… Also: Asset managers including UBS and CALPERs are actively voting against directors at companies with poor independent oversight
Public Policy
The Warren wealth tax is supported by majority of Americans
The EU has fined Google $9 billion so far. There’s more to come: A sweeping new investigation examines the company’s data collection practices within “local search services, online advertising, online ad targeting services, login services, web browsers and others”.
When even the Financial Times says you’re doing Capitalism wrong