Qualcomm is requesting permission to sell 5g socs to Huawei

The American chip designer Qualcomm has applied for a license from the US government to trade with Huawei. Qualcomm wants to sell Huawei 5g-socs, now that Huawei can no longer have its own Kirin-socs produced at TSMC.

According to Qualcomm, it is bad for US trade if it is not allowed to trade with Huawei and foreign competitors are, writes The Wall Street Journal. Huawei was able to purchase socs from MediaTek and Samsung, the American chip designer claims. Huawei said last weekend that it would discontinue production of its own Kirin-socs now that TSMC no longer wants to manufacture them.

Huawei was a Qualcomm customer for many years, until the trade ban in May last year. Huawei occasionally equipped phones with chips from the American company for a long time. For example, in 2016 it released the Nova smartphone with a Qualcomm soc, but individual chips in phones also came from Qualcomm.

Qualcomm is not allowed to trade with Huawei due to the ban on US companies from dealing with this company. There are licenses for various companies to do that anyway. Microsoft and Intel have such licenses, allowing Huawei laptops to come out with Intel processors and Windows.