According to the founder of the British ARM Holdings, who previously worked at Acorn Computers, Hermann Hauser, would be incredibly devastating for ARM. The Cambridge-based chipmaker was forced to suspend cooperation with Huawei after US President Donald Trump placed the Chinese company on a banned organization list due to suspicions of collaborating with Chinese intelligence agencies.
ARM's move followed similar moves by Google and other US companies that had Huawei as a customer. ARM, the architecture chips used in Huawei's smartphones and data center servers, was sold to Japanese investment giant SoftBank for Β£24bn in 2016. ARM was forced to take action to end the partnership due to a number of technologies and components developed in the US and used in its chips.
Mr. Houser says that other ARM customers will begin to reduce their dependence on products that contain American technology. βThis is really very bad for Huawei in the short term, but in the long term it will be incredibly bad for ARM, Google and the American industry as a whole,β he said. - Every supplier in the world will start thinking about how to reduce the risks associated with the threat of stopping their production by order of the American president. All the discussions that I have with European companies at the moment show that they are studying their intellectual property portfolio and developing a strategy to exclude American intellectual property from it - which is extremely sad and destructive.
A 70-year veteran of the computer industry said that this applies to ARM itself: βMost of the intellectual property of our company was created in Europe, but we developed some technologies without thinking too much in the USA. Many of ARM's products include American intellectual property as a result, and ARM has been forced to follow the direction of the US President."
Mr. Hauser, who is currently a co-founder and partner of Amadeus Capital, a fund that specializes in risky investments in technology startups, said that such a position is unacceptable for a non-US company. ARM is now owned by Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank, run by the eccentric billionaire Masayoshi Son. However, as part of the takeover, SoftBank has pledged to keep ARM's headquarters in Cambridge and increase its UK workforce.
βIf America can stop the business of a Chinese company, then, of course, it can do the same with any other company in the world. With such incredible power that the United States has, all the companies in the world are now thinking: βDo we want to be in a position where the American president can simply cut off our oxygen?β When talking with people in the industry, I notice a tendency that they are very wary of approaching now to the purchase of American goods and technologies,β Herman Hauser added.
Supporters of the sanctions believe that Huawei equipment could be used by the Chinese state for espionage. The company denies this, as well as having close ties to the Chinese government. Supporters of the firm argue that America is using Huawei as a sort of hostage and leverage in its trade war with China.
The British government has reportedly approved the use of Huawei equipment in non-critical areas such as antennas when deploying 5G networks. After a high-profile scandal involving an investigation into the leakage of information from closed negotiations on this issue, the notorious British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson was reportedly fired.
Last week, EE became the first mobile operator in the UK to launch commercial 5G networks, rolling out coverage in six cities across the country. Vodafone has confirmed that it will launch 5G in July. Due to sanctions against the Chinese company EE and Vodafone have excluded Huawei 5G smartphones from their offers.
A spokesman for ARM commented: βGiven the evolving nature of the situation, it is premature at this time to predict how this will affect ARM's business. We are monitoring the situation very closely, we are in dialogue with politicians and we hope for a quick solution.β
Source: 3dnews.ru