Bloomberg part on issue

Washington first barred Huawei from buying America technology, including chips, in 2019. It didn’t take long for suppliers to find a loophole though. A rule exempting goods that are 75% produced outside the U.S. allowed companies such as Micron Technology to continue selling to Huawei.

U.S. authorities, over the protest of American suppliers, ultimately closed that loophole in May of this year by expanding its ban to include chips made using American equipment. With gear from U.S. companies such as Applied Materials and Lam Research ubiquitous across the semiconductor industry, it significantly ratcheted up the pressure on Huawei.

But again, there appeared to be a loophole. Washington’s restrictions seemed to leave room for Huawei to buy chips made by non-American companies such as Mediatek. Indeed, shares of the Taiwanese chipmaker surged on speculation that a wave of Huawei orders were on the horizon. Until this week, that is.

Recently the U.S. expanded its restrictions to include chipmakers based anywhere in the world that use American software or equipment to produce semiconductors (all 100% of them except few domestic military ones that use very old processing norms).

Jefferies analysts including Edison Lee wrote in a note to clients that closing this loophole “puts Huawei’s survival at risk.”

What does CEO say?

I see all posts now must be approved before being posted. Seems like big change in direction.

Due to the U.S. government has tightened its sanctions against the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, more and more employees of the chip division HiSilicon are leaving the “sinking ship“.

Both middle and senior HiSilicon employees are about to leave the company.

One of the things constantly mentioned is the audio gaps made during file splitting.

Recent rumor is that E2 team just do not have code for this parts, so they use compiled library provided by HiSilicon (with usual almost full lack of documentation) and this is why they can't fix simplest issue.

Same is true for very strange thing with all E2 cameras being picky to various, even good SSDs.

Z-CAM team just don't work on the necessary level to make proper buffering also also use same compiled libraries and can't fix the issue.

Interesting is that Xiaomi Youpin also collects money for device they have issue delivering

Using Huawei HiSilicon H13559.

Also developers I talked told that it is true that HiSilicon chips documentation sis mostly lacking and horrible quality. Libraries are being written by very low level developers and are full of bugs, due to fear of other Chinese companies copy almost all of them are closed.

Prices of Huawei handsets at Shenzhen wholesale market Huaqiangbei have gone up 100 yuan to 300 yuan as dealers expect the firm’s access to chips to run dry.

Huawei CEO Guo Ping says that US sanctions affecting the firm’s high-end Kirin chips will ‘cause certain difficulties’ but he is optimistic about resolving them.

The Post spoke to four third-party dealers in Huaqiangbei, all of whom said the prices of Huawei models are rising day-by-day. “The reason is simple – Huawei cannot get chips for their smartphones. The supply is limited,” said one vendor, Lu Jinwei.

At a recent event for new employees, Huawei CEO Guo Ping painted a relatively optimistic picture of the company’s future. “The company is in normal condition,” Guo said, according to a transcript released on Xinsheng Shequ, Huawei’s official employee community platform, on Wednesday. “The issue is just how, when faced with restrictions to advanced components, we can overcome this obstacle and establish our own lasting technological capabilities as well as a stable and credible supply chain.”

“The restrictions on Kirin chips will cause certain difficulties, especially for our high-end smartphones, but I believe we can resolve them,” he added. To survive, Guo said that the company will continue investing in its chip design arm HiSilicon, while also helping front-end partners such as those supporting its IT services to build their capabilities.

“The US cannot defeat Huawei, only Huawei can defeat itself … if these problems are not handled well, we will fail and die.”

If Z-CAM CEO won't handle problems well - company will fail and die.

Btw I got private email from ex Z-CAM worker who kept contacts inside company and it fully agree with my initial post, situation is dire but top management talk with unfounded optimistic fairy tales manner.

Checked Chinese internal analytics

It is expected that Huawei mobile department and HiSilicone will cease to exist around August 2021. Only small team working on special military mobile solutions will be kept under different company name.

Some local Huawei dealers got warning messages

Huawei will be sharply dropping supply of smartphones and some other devices. Estimates are around 30% in Q4 2020, 60-70% in Q1 2021 and 84-99% since Q2 2021.

Drastic cuts come to Huawei and HiSilicon

Few messages tell that almost everyone in marketing and engineering departments is looking for new job. Most won't be able to stay in the smartphones niche and will agree to 40-50% of salary reduction.

HiSilicon will see biggest amount of cuts in October already, developers and support teams for Z-CAM chips can cease to exist as early as November.

Some of Z-CAM dealers are very worried

Got one message that their top management refused to provide any warranty of stock availability and of service availability since November 2020. The guy was scared as he had been told that if he will tell such information consequences for his firm will follow but he still decided to send message as it is little hard to scare someone if he is almost sure that will never do business with you anymore.

Samsung Display and LG Display also stopped shipping all displays to Huawei

As displays still have chips inside them companies decide not to risk huge fines from US.

Sanctions will spread to Xiaomi and BBK later in the year as rumors int he industry go.

Huawei issues with service

Due to problems with displays supply, some chips and main LSI availability most existing Huawei smartphones won't be serviced since November-December and issues with repair or replacements already begun in September.

In EU and certain other countries this can lead to big fees payments and attempts to replace any defective phone with new more expensive model, this is bad idea as Huawei also do not have much spare parts to assembly new smartphones.

This is big warning to all Z-CAM owners, as with fast developing situation they can be one on one with their camera that no one will be able to repair.

Today is the day

Now only thing that matters is that stock of main LSI Z-CAM still have (it also issue with few other chips used in camera).

I am sure we'll see in coming months attempt to play bad hand with stone face, explaining camera shortages and disappearing models with any reason rather than actual.

More Huawei troubles

All China-based chipmakers have quietly suspended their shipments to Huawei, as well as the joint development projects they had been working with the Chinese vendor, amid concerns about being targeted for breaching US trade restrictions.

This is how opportunism always end up.