Business & Economy

Honor partners with major US tech firms after split with Huawei

Shanghai, China, Jan 22 (EFE).- Honor, the smartphone manufacturing company that recently split from Huawei to minimize the impact of United States sanction against the Chinese tech giant, on Friday said it had signed contracts with some of the largest US chipmakers.

In a statement on its website after launching its latest flagship phone, View40, Honor claimed it had “the flexibility and independence to choose the best solutions for its global supply chain.”

According to the statement, the company has signed contracts with Intel and Qualcomm, apart from other international tech firms such as Microsoft, AMD, Sony, Samsung, MediaTek and SK Hynix.

“The last five months have been an extremely difficult but meaningful time for Honor,” Chief Executive George Zhao, a former top executive at Huawei, said during the launch of the company’s latest phone.

The View40, whose inaugural batch sold out within four minutes of its launch, according to local media, functions on the Magic UI 4.0 system, based on the 10th version of Google’s operating system Android, which is no longer accessible to Huawei after Washington imposed sanctions on the company.

After weeks of speculation, Huawei, on Nov.17, announced the sale of Honor, its low-cost smartphone subsidiary until then, to a consortium led by a public enterprise in Shenzhen, the city in southeastern China where the tech giant is headquartered.

However, the sum involved in the deal has not been revealed.

At the time, Huawei had said that the decision to split the company was taken by Honor’s industry chain “to ensue its own survival.”

The administration of former US President Donald Trump considered Huawei a threat to national security due to its alleged links with the Communist Party of China, believing the brand’s devices could be used to spy for Beijing.

Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations.

In August 2020, the US Department of Commerce announced that Huawei’s global suppliers developing or producing components using US technologies would first need to obtain a license from Washington to sell to the Chinese company.

It effectively meant that the main chipmakers in Europe and Asia, including NXP Semiconductors in the Netherlands, Samsung Electronics in South Korea and MediaTek in Taiwan, could only sell their products to Huawei once the US authorized it.

Analysts in Chinese state media had said at the time that Honor’s sale would allow the new entity to use US technology and Google software. EFE

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