Huawei, the Chinese manufacturer targeted by a Trump administration trade ban, is expected to dismiss a substantial number of people in the US in the coming weeks.
The number of individuals affected remains unclear but the layoffs, at the telecoms kit maker's US R&D subsidiary, Futurewei Technologies, could affect hundreds of workers in California, Texas, and Washington, according to The Wall Street Journal. Futurewei currently employs more than 800 people in the US.
On May 16, the beleaguered manufacturer, along with 68 of its affiliates, was placed on the US Commerce Department's Entity List, which forbids companies subject to US law from doing business with the firm without special permission from the US government.
Four days later, Huawei was given a 90-day General License so that its customers have time to make deals with new suppliers. When the General License expires on August 19, the ban will go into effect unless circumstances change.
US officials believe Huawei cannot be trusted because the company cannot resist demands by the Chinese government to compromise its equipment to assist with state-sponsored spying. No public evidence of this has been presented.
[...] Layoffs would be consistent with the broader financial impact of the pending Huawei trade ban. In June, at an event at Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen, China, company founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, predicted the telecom firm's revenue will reach only about $100bn in 2019 and 2020, about $30bn less than previously anticipated in the next two years. But he said the company will emerge stronger by 2021.
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Huawei's HongMeng OS was supposed to be the company's answer to counter the Android license ban if it ended up meddling in the company consumer business. There were near-endless waves of rumors talking about software optimization and how it was faster than Google's mobile platform, but it looks like Huawei's Senior Vice President has finally cleared the air on the company's efforts towards HongMeng OS. Apparently, it is not going to be presented as an Android alternative for smartphones, but it will still have a variety of benefits.
Huawei board member and Senior Vice President Catherine Chen at a meeting in Brussels stated that HongMeng OS isn't designed for smartphones. That is rather strange to hear, especially when the Huawei co-founder repeatedly stated that the company's custom operating system is likely faster than Android or iOS, but lacks a competitive app ecosystem. Catherine also says that smartphone operating systems feature millions of lines of code, while HongMeng OS doesn't.
Even though she claims that HongMeng OS features an extremely low latency compared to a smartphone OS, it will be used in IoT-related applications, with the platform apparently being in development way before the Android license ban came into effect.
Previously: Google Pulls Huawei's Android License
The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google's Iron Grip On Android
Google Doesn't Want Huawei Ban Because It Would Result in an Android Competitor
Trump Administration Will Loosen Restrictions Against Huawei
What Huawei To Go: Hundreds Of Chinese Tech Giant's US Workers To Get Pink Slip
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/huawei-sues-fcc-to-stop-ban-on-huawei-gear-in-us-funded-
Huawei has sued the Federal Communications Commission over the agency's order that bans Huawei equipment in certain government-funded telecom projects.
[...] The FCC voted unanimously on November 22 to ban Huawei and ZTE equipment in projects paid for by the commission's Universal Service Fund (USF). The order will affect many small telecom providers that rely on the companies' network gear.
[...] "The US government has never presented real evidence to show that Huawei is a national security threat," Song said. "That's because this evidence does not exist. When pushed for facts, they respond that 'disclosing evidence might also undermine US national security.' This is complete nonsense."
[...] "We've built networks in places where other vendors would not go. They were too remote, or the terrain was difficult, or there just wasn't a big enough population," he said. "In the US, we sell equipment to 40 small wireless and wireline operators. They connect schools, hospitals, farms, homes, community colleges, and emergency services."
Hoftstra University law professor Julian Ku said that "even a small [Huawei] victory in the case, one that makes the FCC go and start the process over again, would be a huge victory for them," according to The New York Times. But it may be a difficult case for Huawei to win because US courts usually give federal agencies "a tremendous amount of deference," Ku said.
Previously:
Huawei Funds $56M in Academic Research in Canada. That Has Some Experts Concerned
How China Is Building A World-Beating Phone Network
FCC Tells US Telcos: Buy Chinese Kit And You Won't See Another Dime From Us
American Giants Get 90 Days To Wrap Up Deals With 'Dangerous' Huawei
Huawei's First Google-Free Phone Stripped And Searched: Repair Not Too Painful... Once You're In
U.S. Chief Technology Officer Urges Europe to Take a Stand Against Huawei
Microsoft President Says US Government Isn't Being Open About Huawei Ban
Huawei: ARM Cortex-A77 Cores Would Shorten Battery Life
Huawei Might Put its IOT OS on Mobile Phones After All
Huawei Announces HarmonyOS, a Smartphone OS and Android Alternative
Huawei Doesn't See Open Source as the Fix for Spying Accusations (but They Should)
Huawei Reportedly Helped North Korea Build Out 3G Network in Secret
Huawei's Android Alternative Lives on... for IoT
What Huawei To Go: Hundreds Of Chinese Tech Giant's US Workers To Get Pink Slip
Trump Administration Will Loosen Restrictions Against Huawei
Huawei Soldiers on, Announces Nova 5 and Kirin 810
Huawei Blacklisting Predicted to Cause DRAM Prices to Drop 15%
NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Huawei
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snow on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:22PM (1 child)
No point running offices in a country that you aren't allowed to operate in...
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:55PM
You're right. However, the international mega-corporation as was originally developed inside the US is an organism that evolves appendages that evade laws meant to constrain it.
A good example is ExxonMobil, who has a subsidiary named SeaRiver whose whole duty is to run shipments in international waters so they can avoid liability for things like ExxonValdez happening again. Or maybe more applicably to this case, Mobil Processing Nigeria, a subsidiary founded specifically to circumvent Nigerian laws banning foreign corporations from owning and extracting national oil wealth.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by linkdude64 on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:22PM (3 children)
Just because I own a gun and could conceivably at some point shoot my own family with it, does not mean that I am somehow entirely out of my rights to prevent a stranger with a gun from entering my house.
Yes this is an economic and political gesture rather than one seeking to simply maximize quarterly revenue.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:46PM (1 child)
I agree. China is a total stranger who we've never done business with before. Additionally, I trust the judgement of the Five Eyes, because they are the experts on state-sponsored spying.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:38PM
Alternate hypotheses: linkdude64 is actually the ghost of Richard Nixon
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @11:58PM
You having a gun is beside the point.
A stranger with a deadly weapon entering your house is a cause for concern.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:23PM (11 children)
Trump and the government are testing their power against China. And, I'm afraid that we'll come up short. Europe is generally siding with Huawei. If we can't bully Europe into doing things our way, then the empire is over. I can't say that I'm sorry to see it die.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:10PM
The Emperor has no clothes.
Everyone simply agrees he does because they don't want to look stupid.
There are people who do not live in the United States. 96 % of the world population in fact. (rounded by less than 1%)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:22PM (2 children)
Europe should buy from Nokia, MikroTik, AVM, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Cerio, and Ericson.
Anything else is dumb. Buying from other parts of NATO is however a bit less dumb than buying from non-NATO. Canada and the USA thus beat China and Russia.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:28PM (1 child)
You've got a narrow focus, though I essentially agree with you. It's almost always better for a government to support its local industries. The questions are "how?" and "how much?". For anything deemed "strategic" the answers should be different than for those deemed non-strategic, but even fashions are of some value.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 19 2019, @01:31AM
The answer is "all the way".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Plan_of_the_English_Commerce [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:40PM (3 children)
Our oldest and strongest allies are siding with CHINA of all people... Thanks Trump!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 18 2019, @06:49PM (2 children)
Actually, thank that Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about. I don't think Trump is bright enough to have formulated the anti-Huawei thing all by himself.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @07:37PM (1 child)
I don't think Trump is bright enough to have formulated the anti-Huawei thing all by himself.
I've pointed this out but it bears repeating: it is profoundly dangerous to ascribe to stupidity what is in fact malice. Whether it was Trump personally, or one of his "advisers" doesn't really matter, the motive isn't stupidity, or driven by a fundamental lack of understanding on how things work, be they economies, geopolitics, or whatever, the motive is ethnocentric nationalism and an "Amerika ueber Alles" mentality.
The people aren't stupid (not even Trump, though he probably brings up the bottom of the curve in some respects). He is masterful at manipulation and running the con. He is not, generally speaking, a stupid man. He is an evil, viscous, nasty, small minded women-hating, non-rich hating, non-white hating racist bigot brimming over with malice and with no moral compass, willing to do just about anything regardless of how many millions it hurts (including many in his own base), but it is very, very dangerous to dismiss him and his ilk as stupid, or to mistake their malice for stupidity.
They no exactly what they're doing, and probably have a pretty good idea of what the consequences will be. Unlike most of us, they just don't care.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by legont on Friday July 19 2019, @01:45AM
Trump is simply a businessman who usually gets what he wants, period. His track record of running the US as one of his businesses is so far almost perfect in this regard.
One may or may not like his goals, but the one - grows above 3% - will get him reelected. With any luck he will trigger a wage inflation by 2020 and become a hero of Roosevelt scale.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 18 2019, @10:05PM (2 children)
There was a point when the US was a part of the broader coalition known as "The West" and could be relied upon to act rationally, and (usually) with the interests of the wider group in mind. With exceptions of course, Vietnam is one that comes to mind.
I think there might be a feeling in Europe, and in other allied countries that the current regime is no longer prepared to act in a rational way, so steps are being taken to begin to become more independent.
Baby steps at this point of course, because it is entirely possible that you guys will elect a less belligerent and more predicable government at some point, so bridges shouldn't be burnt.
I wonder what would happen if Germany asked the US to take all their soldiers home?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @10:50PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan [wikipedia.org]
You think that was to help Europe? That was to stop them from going to war with each other every few years.
I wonder what would happen if Germany asked the US to take all their soldiers home
That would last about as long as it took Russia and China to go 'ohhhhh'. Most of Europe at this point has a piss poor national defense. That is by design. They know it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Friday July 19 2019, @01:03AM
France did this long ago. They said they would be part of NATO as an economic and cultural presence, but they would fund and maintain their own military. The US military moved out of France. Stayed in Europe, though. I met a former American soldier once who had been stationed in France. His unit was moved to Germany during that expulsion. That must have happened in the 50's or 60's, since I met him in the early 70's. I don't remember the USSR or China going ohhhhh!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hwertz on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:47PM (5 children)
What about Cisco? Just saying, worrying about Huawei theoretically working for the Chinese gov't is pretty hypocritical when the likes of Cisco are well-known to have helped the Chinese gov't with their national firewall.
I find the current climate disgusting of harping about China's surveillance and Russian companies collecting info, like "Oh those foreign bastards", while the US is running one of the largest surveillance programs on the planet, and the likes of Facebook are gleefully collecting as much info as they can get their hands on with basically a privacy policy of "we'll use the info however we'd like".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:56PM
China and Russia would be foolish to trust critical infrastructure to Cisco, but the attacks on Huawei do seem more like retaliation for forced technology transfers and """intellectual property""" theft under a pretense of overly-cautious infrastructure protection.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:43PM (1 child)
I think an important factor in the equivalency you are setting up is that people are VOLUNTARILY giving their data to Facebook.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @07:30PM
And Lexus-Nexus? And credit cards? And cell phones?
At what point simply being part of a society is "voluntarily giving your data"? Do you control your parents giving your data? Your friends? Your siblings? Your neighbors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Friday July 19 2019, @01:52AM (1 child)
The reason the US went after Huawei was because Huawei beat the US by 2 years on 5G, which is considired the wholy grale of the new brave internet. Whoever controls 5G controls the world for a foreseable future the theory goes.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Friday July 19 2019, @11:07AM
Nothing theoretical about it: On the infrastructure side it's 5+ years service contracts with significant improvements in stability and performance due to firmware and parts upgrades that are largely due to the data Huawei gets from running real world trials. On the baseband side it's patents.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Adam on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:20PM (5 children)
The thing I don't get with these reports is why the US Gov is targeting only Huawei - sure, there are claims of direct government involvement, but I'd be very surprised if any of the other Chinese electronics manufacturers would put up a fuss if asked to backdoor a product for their government.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:44PM (4 children)
Most reasonable suspicion I have seen is that Huawei refused to put in the Five-Eyes backdoors.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @07:34PM (3 children)
More like when you can't beat them in capitalism, you beat them by cheating. That's the type of "free market" US has. As long as you are small, no ones cares. But if you get big enough, then you become a problem for the establishment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @10:52PM (2 children)
That's the type of "free market" China has
Fixed that for ya. Their concept of IP is you invent it we make it and you can pound sand sucker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @11:38PM
Are you refering to the invention of round corners? Or patenting the scrollbar?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @01:56AM
It was not necessary for the capitalist class to do business with China. They chose to do business with China, sending manufacturing jobs overseas. Cry me a fucking river.