Huawei chairman expects ‘normalcy’ to return to chip market
By Dani Rovirosa
Brussels, Jul 9 (EFE).- The chairman of Huawei, Liang Hua, said during an interview with Efe that he hopes that the semiconductor industry “can return to normality” in the face of the global crisis that the sector is going through due largely to the shortage of chips during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit technology companies hard.
“We hope that in the future the semiconductor industry can return to normality and that confidence can be rebuilt,” said Liang of an essential material in the manufacturing of cell phones, tablets or televisions, for which a growing number of sectors, including the automotive industry, are also competing.
A large part of the current shortage of chips can be explained by the decrease in supply that has been dragging on since last year, when factories had to close at the beginning of the pandemic.
This has been compounded by the increase in digital demand that confinement has generated.
“We can expect to see that the manufacturing capacity will increase in the future,” the Huawei president predicted, because “different regions and countries are starting to make plans of manufacturing their chips.”
“We have seen the plans that Europe has announced, and we have seen similar moves from Korea, Japan and also China,” Liang said.
“We hope that Europe can make progress in its own semiconductor plans,” he added.
Liang asserted that Huawei’s smartphone business “has been impacted pretty largely” by the fact that “the US has announced several rounds of sanctions” against the company.
Among them, the veto adopted by former President Donald Trump to prevent Huawei from developing the 5G network in that country or the ban on US companies from selling components to Chinese companies.
