Qualcomm was granted a license by the U.S. government to sell some of its 4G chips to Huawei, according to Reuters.
The license grants Qualcomm to sell its chips for “a number of products, which includes some 4G products,” said a Huawei spokeswoman to the publication.
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It’s unclear what products the license encompasses, but the spokeswoman did specify that they were related to mobile devices and that Qualcomm’s other licenses are pending review.
The benefits of the license may be negligible, however, as the increasing availability of 5G has gained public interest. With cheaper 5G-ready chipsets arriving with affordable devices, consumers will soon begin to expect it as a standard feature.
Huawei is currently on the U.S. Entity list due to spying concerns over its 5G hardware. In May, the U.S. further tightened its sanction when it barred chipmakers that use U.S. IPs in their manufacturing from selling to Huawei. They included key Huawei partners like AMD, Qualcomm, and Intel, which were already restricted under the previous sanction. In addition, the new rule cut Huawei off from the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a key producer of Huawei’s Kirin series mobile processors.
Richard Yu, Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO, said at the 2020 Summit of China Information Technology Association that the Kirin 9000 SoC, which launched with the Huawei Mate 40 series smartphone, could be the company’s last flagship mobile processor if the situation continued.
During the conference, Yu also said that the production of Kirin chips from its partners will end on Sept. 15.
In order to sell to Huawei, companies need to apply for an exemption license with the U.S. government. In September, Intel and AMD were given the nod to sell some of their products to Huawei after granted this license.
Huawei was not immediately available for comment.