Potential backfire from Google Ban

Gatekeeper said:

Guys, as interesting as this discussion is, (I admit its way too techy for my little brain, I'm not wire that way, I Think I'll stick with numbers). Lol.
The bottom line is:
Is this ban a problem for huawei (and by implication, China/USA trade war, because the only reason why Huawei is singled out) ?
If so, how big a problem in the short, medium long term?
Also, as the title of this thread said, will it backfire onto Google (and by implication the USA)?

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To answer your questions, yes, this ban is a problem for Huawei. How big of a problem is difficult to say, but I would venture that while it is certainly not a small problem, neither is it insurmountable.

Whether or not it will backfire on Google depends entirely on how successful Huawei will be with their own OS and App ecosystem. If Huawei can pull it off, then Google will have a serious competitor on its hands.

hkbc said:

I read with some amusement the occidental centricity of the western media and this forum regarding smart phones and ecosystem and the impending death of Huawei. Truth is China is the largest smart phone market in the world, its large enough that products like weChat goes toe to toe with Whatsapp the Chinese market is huge and with huawei effectively barred from the US, and Google banned in China, Huawei already has to work in a 'multi-mode' manner, all the talk of loss of western markets, watching Canadians on youtube pontificate about the trouble huawei is in, and talking about restricting it to "just" the Chinese market, well even if Huawei captured 100% of the Canadian market it would represent something less than the size of the available market in the pearl river delta. If you've ever seen how mobile technology is used in China it would readily show how comparatively backward most western countries are.

The fact that a number of US semiconductor companies counts Huawei as their largest customer if Huawei is forced to buy elsewhere or develop their own kit it just means more pain and hurt in the US hi-tech sector.

As usual Trump's bluster is headline grabbing but does real harm usually to the US it self because they are not well thought through.

The reason China is not interested in a trade war isn't because of any fundamental inherent weakness, its simply its got better things to do, where as the Trump administration instead of making america great again is simply trying to stifle the competition because in its outlook its better to be the top beggar because Number 1 of something diminished is is better than joint number 1 of something great

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Huawei's biggest challenge is not loss of market share but replicating the complex supply chain they are being denied. Can China really reproduce all those American products and build a domestic ecosystem that is independent of American input all within 1-2 years? I guess we will see.

I don't know, China's been having a very tough time even making decent chips. It has a long way to go.

solarz said:

Whether or not it will backfire on Google depends entirely on how successful Huawei will be with their own OS and App ecosystem. If Huawei can pull it off, then Google will have a serious competitor on its hands.

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A competitive force in the Chinese market sure but beyond that?
It’s one thing to set up said Apps and OS in a Chinese controlled web after having been isolated but another to take it globally. China does have a large population sure but to really compete with Google even Apple they need to launch that OS across more than just the Chinese markets.
As you have pointed out already Google is walled from offering some services in the PRC but that ban ends at the boarder. It artificially stimulates a potential for said Fork and Apps store but outside of The PRC that artificial barrier ends with buying another device with a Android license. Even if a huge success I doubt that it would totally sink Android below 60% globally. They may hold # 1 maker title right now but then again it wasn’t long ago Samsung held that and before that Apple. It’s a fickle market and people change devices quite regularly.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

A competitive force in the Chinese market sure but beyond that?
It’s one thing to set up said Apps and OS in a Chinese controlled web after having been isolated but another to take it globally. China does have a large population sure but to really compete with Google even Apple they need to launch that OS across more than just the Chinese markets.
As you have pointed out already Google is walled from offering some services in the PRC but that ban ends at the boarder. It artificially stimulates a potential for said Fork and Apps store but outside of The PRC that artificial barrier ends with buying another device with a Android license. Even if a huge success I doubt that it would totally sink Android below 60% globally. They may hold # 1 maker title right now but then again it wasn’t long ago Samsung held that and before that Apple. It’s a fickle market and people change devices quite regularly.

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No, I mean competitor in the international market.

This ban does not affect Huawei's Chinese market *at all*. Google does not even exist in the Chinese market, so Huawei has no need to compete with Google there.

The competition I'm referring to is only for the international market.

I see a lot of parallels between what's happening in the smartphone market with what was happening in the personal computer market 30 years ago. Apple took the lead with their walled garden because it allowed them to craft a superior user experience. However, as GUI matured, the versatility of Windows dominated the market. Just like Google, Microsoft had a suite of key proprietary software that allowed it to dominate the PC market. That's pretty much the story of iOS and Android in a nutshell.

The difference between Windows and Android is that the latter is open source. However, since Google pushes their version of Android, one could look at Android as divided into a Google Android, and the open source Android. The former would be comparable to Windows and the latter would be comparable to Unix.

Unix never took off because it never got any serious corporate backing. MS at one point was flooding the market with Windows. It was always easier to just use Windows instead of learning Unix.

A Huawei OS would be like Linux, a specialized implementation of Unix. They do have an uphill battle ahead of them, but Linux was able to establish itself in a niche market despite Windows' dominance. Would it have done better with a stronger corporate backing? That's difficult to say.

As we said before, the main issue is not with the OS, it's with the App ecosystem. App developers need to weigh the cost of developing and maintaining their apps on an additional platform versus the benefit they will receive from it. This is where Huawei can help promote its OS. If they can make it easy and inexpensive to build and maintain apps for their OS, then they can entice app developers to publish their apps in their app ecosystem.

Just want to add that as ubiquitous as Google Play and Apple's App Store is, there are a lot of problems with them. Separating the wheat from the chaff is a chore on both app markets. Most apps are driven by ads or in-app purchases, which are reminiscent of the old shareware days.

There is a lot of room for improvement that a new player can take advantage of. More prominent sales events, human curators, AI recommendations, better categorizations, profit sharing based on usage instead of advertising, etc.

In fact, does a good mobile ecosystem even need so many apps to be successful? Why not focus on quality instead of quantity? A good productivity suite specifically designed for mobile devices would be able to carry an OS by itself!

India and Africa would be good markets as well. Chinese phones already dominate those markets, so it would not even take much effort to maintain their grip there. Simply package your own OS and apps, and the people there will use it because they have no other choice. Again, this should be a co operative effort between many of the big Chinese phone makers, and hopefully Tencent and maybe Alibaba. WeChat is such a powerful app and it's a shame that a lot of its most powerful features are only bound to the Chinese financial system and limited to China only. There should be an international version and Tencent should aggressively push it's payment system overseas. Having used it in China, it is just so much less hassle than juggling between Uber, Lyft, Kayak, Expedia, Amazon, and Google Pay, Android Pay, Chase Pay, Samsung Pay, and or Apple Pay.

Alright, let's discuss this:

ARM just cut off ties with Huawei. https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/a-...miconductor-strategy.t8511/page-9#post-555352
So:
1. How much of a problem is this?
2. How is it possible if Huawei owns 51% of the joint venture?

We should not that this began on May 16th, before Ren Zhengfei said it wouldn't be a problem.

Huawei can continue to use the latest version of the ARM ISA and manufacture its own chips
Although it makes sense for Huawei to move to open architecture such as RISC V


The final option is an architecture license. Here, ARM would license you one of its architectures (e.g. ARMv7, ARMv8) and you’re free to take that architecture and implement it however you’d like. This is what Qualcomm does to build Krait, and what Apple did to build Swift. These microprocessors are ISA compatible with ARM’s Cortex A15 for example, but they are their own implementations of the ARM ISA. Here you basically get a book and a bunch of tests to verify compliance with the ARM ISA you’re implementing. ARM will offer some support to help you with your design, but it’s ultimately up to you to design, implement and validate your own microprocessor design.



Finally at the top of the pyramid is an ARM architecture license. Marvell, Apple and Qualcomm are some examples of the 15 companies that have this license.


the CPU was independently designed by Huawei based on ARMv8 architecture license

manqiangrexue said:

Alright, let's discuss this:

ARM just cut off ties with Huawei. https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/a-...miconductor-strategy.t8511/page-9#post-555352
So:
1. How much of a problem is this?
2. How is it possible if Huawei owns 51% of the joint venture?

We should not that this began on May 16th, before Ren Zhengfei said it wouldn't be a problem.

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Well here is what CMP form CDF said
Huawei does not produce chips, its chips are entrusted to wafer foundries such as TSMC. In this regard, Huawei’s 16nm, 12nm, and 7nm chips are all from TSMC. Will TSMC stop supplying Huawei because of the US ban? Today, TSMC officially issued an announcement on the matter. After a preliminary evaluation, TSMC believes that it meets the export control regulations so it will not stop the supply plan for Huawei. This means that TSMC will provide Huawei’s foundry Kirin 980 with security improvements in the second half of the year. The upcoming Kirin 985 processor will not be affected.


As a fabless semiconductor company, Huawei has two major problem – one is ARM license, and the other is ARM chip manufacturing. In terms of licensing, Huawei not only has its own Hisilicon Kirin and other processors, but also has a permanent license for the ARMv8 architecture, which means that even if ARM does not provide instruction set authorization to Huawei in accordance with US requirements, it will not affect Huawei’s own research and development of ARMv8 processors, because Huawei can design independently since it has a permanent authorization.

manqiangrexue said:

Alright, let's discuss this:

ARM just cut off ties with Huawei. https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/a-...miconductor-strategy.t8511/page-9#post-555352
So:
1. How much of a problem is this?
...

Click to expand...

... dated

• 05.22.19
• 12:33 pm

If Huawei Loses ARM's Chip Designs, It's Toast

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even Uyghurs got inside, so I don't repost the text