HiSilicon, a fabless semiconductor unit of China’s Huawei Technologies, has used up all its smartphone chipset inventory with no clear source of new supplies as Taiwanese fabs are no longer allowed to produce chips for it under US sanctions.
The Shenzhen-based firm has seen its global smartphone chipset market share fall to zero in the third quarter from 0.4% in the second quarter, meaning that it has depleted all of its inventory, according to Counterpoint Research, a hardware consultancy firm.
Without high-end processors, Huawei can no longer produce 5G-capable phones but still make 4G models for African and Latin American markets by sourcing lower-end chips not covered by US sanctions from Qualcomm and Tsinghua Unigroup’s UNISOC, analysts said.
Huawei has previously suggested that it could use new technology that stacks two chips together to replenish its high-end chips.
Some columnists speculated that Huawei could have successfully applied a new chip stacking technology, first suggested by the company’s rotating chairman Guo Ping in late 2020, that combines two chips into a faster one. That would be similar to what TSMC has done for Apple by stacking two M1 Max chips into a M1 Ultra chip.
Other writers, however, commented that Huawei would not likely be able to obtain 5G chips or parts in the short run and that while a stacked processor might be faster, it would not be suitable for use in smartphones due to its bulky size and high energy consumption.
In May 2019, the US Commerce Department put Huawei and its 70 affiliates on its so-called Entity List on national security grounds. In response to the restrictions, Huawei started using inventory chips plus self-developed Kirin chipsets to maintain its smartphone output. It also boosted the output of Honor, its smartphone brand at that time.
On September 15, 2020, Taiwan’s TSMC stopped producing Kirin chips, resulting in a countdown for HiSilicon’s chip inventory. In November 2020, Huawei had to dispose of its entire stake in Honor in November 2020 so that the unit could obtain foreign-made chips
https://asiatimes.com/2022/12/us-sanctions-bite-as-huawei-runs-out-of-phone-chipsets/
