Huawei Hoping for Better Relations With Biden Administration: US Execs
Top U.S.-based Huawei executives said Friday that they're hopeful the Biden administration will be open to revisiting sanctions against the company, in a virtual briefing for reporters.
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Huawei has been in the crosshairs of the FCC and broader administration since the Trump presidency. It was one of the initial two companies, with ZTE, named to the FCC list of "covered" equipment suppliers deemed to raise national security threats. The briefing followed negative earnings news by the Chinese giant.
The Biden administration is “certainly much more rational and considered” in the actions it takes than the Trump administration was, said Glenn Schloss, Huawei vice president-public affairs and communications. The motivation for further discussions will come if U.S. companies feel “a need for Huawei technology, or want to gain sales or revenue by partnering with Huawei,” he said. Huawei had been spending up to $18 billion annually to buy components from U.S. suppliers before sanctions kicked in, he said.
“There ought to be some openness as Huawei participates in peer-reviewed articles and … hardcore research,” said Andy Purdy, Huawei chief security officer. “They ought to include us in conversations,” he said. “I certainly don’t expect any change in the immediate future,” Purdy said. “I have been heartened by the Biden administration emphasis on the importance of a rules-based order in the international community and that’s quite consistent with what we think is necessary,” he said. “We do hope the Biden administration will be open to having conversations” about “what’s necessary, in the future, for these technologies to bring their full advantages to people and organizations.”
The U.S. government has a presumption that every Chinese company is affiliated with the Chinese state unless it can prove otherwise, Purdy said. “We would love the opportunity to prove that we are independent from the China government and that our products and services should be trusted,” he said. The U.S. also needs to participate more fully in the development of 5G standards, Purdy said. The lack of U.S. participation in 5G standards work has been a growing concern (see 2204130072).
“It’s not every country that’s banning Huawei,” said Paul Scanlan, Huawei chief technology officer-carrier business unit. “I don’t believe the doors are closed in Europe at all,” he said. The hardware Huawei is using for 5G is “applicable to 4G,” he said. “You can aggregate carriers in 4G, and you can get a lot of mileage and do some very clever things in 4G using 5G-based technologies, just as you can apply the same 5G technologies to Wi-Fi 6,” he said: Even in countries “sitting on the fence” on a Huawei ban “there’s significantly scope to play in the 5G area.”
Huawei's Q1 revenue fell by nearly 14% from a year earlier to 131 billion Chinese yuan ($19.8 billion), reported the company Thursday. “Huawei’s earnings announcement this week has essentially confirmed our view that Huawei’s market share in the telecom market plummeted in 2021,” Joe Madden, principal analyst at Mobile Experts, wrote Friday. That puts Huawei behind Ericsson and Nokia for the year in radio access network revenue, he said: “Huawei’s fall from the throne is directly tied to their difficulty in buying semiconductors in the ‘cold trade war’ between China and the United States, and the current wartime environment does not seem like the friendly atmosphere that’s necessary to rebuild trade ties. So this may be the new ‘normal’ for Huawei.”