Intel may sell chips to Huawei and AMD suffers setback

As Alexandra Alper from Reuters announced, Intel is once again allowed to sell chips to the Chinese company Huawei and thus a complaint by AMD to the American authority fails at the same time.

But what happened? Intel had a license from the Trump administration at the time that allowed the company to sell chips to Huawei. The Chinese company has been struggling for years with the ever-increasing sanctions imposed by the USA against China and against the company in particular. Its competitor AMD did not like the fact that Intel has such a license and filed a complaint. The accusation is that the USA is trying to stop China’s access to highly developed American technology and a license like this would contradict this goal.

Another argument is that AMD had not received permission for such a license and had lost billions of dollars due to the US sanctions against China. The figures speak for themselves. The share of sales of Huawei laptops with AMD chips fell from 47.1% in 2020 to 9.3% in the first half of 2023, according to an internal AMD presentation with data from NPD and GfK.

For Intel, on the other hand, the share of sales of Huawei laptops containing Intel chips has increased. During this period, the figure has grown from 52.9% to 90.7%. This resulted in a balance sheet difference between the two companies of around USD 512 million.

But Intel can breathe a sigh of relief, as the authorities have put the entire proceedings on hold. There is no reason for this. This is definitely a major setback for AMD in the chip supply race and it will certainly not be easy to close the gap again. However, Intel’s license will expire later this year and whether an extension will be considered is written in the stars. We are curious to see what the future will bring.

Source: Reuters