Huawei's access to suppliers is further curtailed by the US administration

A new report by Reuters claims that 38 more "Huawei affiliates" in 21 countries worldwide have fallen under this OEM's status as a US Administration Entity List member. This would raise the grand total of such associates to 152 since May 2019. The goal of this escalated panel of trade restrictions appears to be to ensure the Chinese electronics household name does not obtain technology vital to its operations through "third parties".

The regulations have already resulted in an impending shortage of chipsets developed by HiSilicon, Huawei's dedicated processor-design arm. Despite having such facilities, Huawei remains dependent on IP from companies such as Synopsys and ARM - which are US-based or use US-origin tech themselves - to complete its SoCs, as indeed do the vast majority of simiar players worldwide, Qualcomm included. Therefore, the current Kirin shortage has the potential to become a full-on crisis.

The Semiconductor Industry Association has stated that it is "surprised and concerned” by the US government's latest move to blacklist Huawei. It insists that it will result in potential detriments to US interests in the semiconductor industry; the company had heretofore been a prodigious customer, after all.

In another piece of bad news for the same firm, it seems the temporary general licenses (TGL) by which other corporations, even Google, had had to apply for in order to conduct business as normal with Huawei will not be renewed. Then again, there is now a new requirement for any firm that has an Entity List company "as a purchaser, intermediate consignee, ultimate consignee, or end user” to apply for a license in order to fulfil any relevant contracts.