If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence?
See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios.
Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.
It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.
It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course.
In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc.
Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.
It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too.
You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.
Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.
As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000.
What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.
The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.
As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?
And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.
I think we should just wait and see on that one.
Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.
Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.
I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.
Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured.
Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.
A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.
But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.
Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc.
The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others.
This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you?
As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.
The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.
If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.
Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else?
Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything?
Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?
How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?
Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do.
Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it.
"A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.
Thanks for playing.
Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.
You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.
Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?
Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.
Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.
You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.
I'm not surprised.
And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.
As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.
And in the spirit of Jaws...
"You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-)
The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment.
That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.
Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon.
The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.
It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."
Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.
Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack.
The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.
And there you have it...
The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.
Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!
Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.
Wow! Is that news?
Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!
Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.
He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.
Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?
Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.
Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes!
Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS.
Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.
It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.
And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS?
In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.
That stack is only going to get bigger.
You've gone off the deep end.
Apple and Google will still be able to design and fab leading edge SoC's; Huawei/HiSilicon will not.
That's a harsh reality. More to the point Google services essentially don't exist in China, so, what exactly is Google losing, given that side loading apps is prevalent in China as well?
"The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan
FFS, there is no Honor subbrand, and Huawei smartphone sales have crashed. Move on, for god's sake.
Ah! Now you put 'FFS' at the end of the post!
Sneaky bounder!
It still means the same though - you have nothing left to shoot back with, and you were shooting blanks from the start anyway .
Where to begin....?
Ah! Something you got right, although it's a case of stating the obvious!
Yes, Huawei,' currently cannot fab 5nm chips.
We are all perfectly aware of that and as I said further up, that will change (possibly mid term or short term depending on technology advances, politics or both).
Next up. Chinese brands and GMS. You have not been paying attention. Huawei was the first major Chinese handset manufacturer to make an impact with international sales. Over the last two years the other major brands (Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor) have been sweeping into non-Chinese markets at breathtaking speed (Honor was already there of course).
They are even present in the US.
As HarmonyOS matures, the lure of switching (if the US tries another Huawei style stunt) will simply be more attractive.
More and more reviewers are beginning to come around to the idea that not having GMS may not be such an issue if HMS keeps moving at its current pace.
Honor was spun off to keep the inertia going. Do you seriously believe it can't be re-absorbed at a later date?
And you are asking me to get real?
Of the three previous top brands, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple, it appears that it is now Samsung, Apple, followed by Chinese brands. The only change is that Huawei's foreign share has been consumed by other Chinese brands, and Huawei has no access to leading edge fabs or SoC's.
Other than that, Huawei is doing just fine, well, except for also losing foreign telecom share.
Details, details. Sure Huawei may eventually get access to competitive SoC's, but it certainly isn't today, or tomorrow. Meanwhile, those sales just keep diving.
It has access to leading edge SoCs. It designs them itself!
The current problem is fabbing them, not designing them.
Huawei's handset share was huge. Even dividing it among Chinese competitors, it remains huge and is growing fast outside China.
Against all the odds Huawei actually increased revenues and net profit for 2020.
It has turned its focus to 5G, AI, Cloud and CE for growth options. Last year HiSilicon made an IoT SoC available to third parties. It will try to get HarmonyOS onto as much IoT hardware as possible. Huawei provided an EV solution (hardware/software) to car manufacturers. It provided 5G based services solutions for aviation, mining, ports, farming, health and science etc.
I'm not even getting into its energy solutions and a raft of other fields.
R&D spending has been increased yet again.
They are not standing still and the fab situation of its ARM strategy is there but they are working to reduce its impact.
We will see if they succeed. Nothing is a given.
But. if your stack is gigantic, it gives you options and 5G is one of the keys threads that tie things up.
"Even as the Chinese government encourages foreign audiences to purchase Huawei products, its leaders warn domestic audiences of the dangers that stem from reliance on foreign technology. Years before the trade war and the Trump administration’s restrictions on Huawei, Xi argued that “the control of core technology by others is our biggest hidden danger” and that allowing foreigners to control core technology “is like building a house on someone else’s foundation.”[1] He declared that “China must have its own technology, and it must have strong technology.”[2]
No one can possibly imagine why the rest of the world is justifiably concerned about an adversary power controlling their infrastructure.
I let you have the last word and didn't make the quip I was going to. I thought you'd had enough with digging holes and falling into them.
All countries want to depend less on others for critical technology or resources. Some are actually able to do something about it. Others are not.
That makes your point about China irrelevant.
Secondly, and you really should try to understand this. No one (and I mean no one) is controlling ICT infrastructure in the way you are implying. NO SINGLE COMPANY.
Take a minute and let that sink in.
These are international standards, created by standards committees. ICT is a collaborative effort which requires interoperability as well as backwards compatibility.
Everything (and I mean everything) is STANDARDS BASED. That includes security!
The carriers run the networks. Governments can limit the carriers. Carriers have licences to operate and use spectrum frequencies.
Huawei does not control infrastructure. It provides infrastructure which complies with internationally agreed standards.
If Huawei could do what you imply (and it can't because no country relies on a single infrastructure supplier and carrier) it would logically mean its instant death. Faster than instant even.
This has been said a million times by everyone with just a grain of common sense. Why would Huawei deliberately push the self destruct button on itself?
It's one of the reasons the US has NEVER been able to put even a shred of evidence on the table. Literally NOTHING. It's why it has been left with no option but to bully and threaten it's allies over Huawei.
The whole thing has nothing to do with 'national security'. It's protectionism.
Carrier networks are made up of equipment from different vendors for good reason and for as much as the US wants to use non-Huawei equipment and wants other countries to follow suit, the reality is that almost all of that equipment is still manufactured in, you guessed it, China! And nothing has happened!
You lost all credibility on this subject long ago. It was your own doing and you can handle that I'm sure. Now, let things go.
Remind me. What was this thread about?
Are you talking about Chinese protectionism? Because there is lots of that. But we know about the extremely high levels of spying the Chinese do. We know how they force foreign companies to take on Chinese partners, who they then must share technology with. We know about the forced labor camps, and the software used to keep track of people. Oh, there’s plenty the government there does. It’s not anywhere near a free country. And Xi is making things much worse. Yes, everyone is worried about China. Even Russia sent tens of thousands of troops to the west around the time China said that they considered the entire western territory of Russia to belong to China.
the destruction of the HongKong treaties. They renewed threats against Taiwan. The taking over of islands in international waters, or that of waters claimed by others.
If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence?
See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios.
Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.
It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.
It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course.
In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc.
Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.
It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too.
You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.
Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.
As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000.
What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.
The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.
As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?
And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.
I think we should just wait and see on that one.
Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.
Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.
I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.
Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured.
Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.
A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.
But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.
Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc.
The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others.
This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you?
As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.
The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.
If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.
Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else?
Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything?
Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?
How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?
Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do.
Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it.
"A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.
Thanks for playing.
Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.
You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.
Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?
Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.
Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.
You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.
I'm not surprised.
And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.
As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.
And in the spirit of Jaws...
"You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-)
The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment.
That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.
Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon.
The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.
It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."
Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.
Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack.
The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.
And there you have it...
The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.
Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!
Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.
Wow! Is that news?
Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!
Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.
He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.
Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?
Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.
Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes!
Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS.
Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.
It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.
And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS?
In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.
That stack is only going to get bigger.
You've gone off the deep end.
Apple and Google will still be able to design and fab leading edge SoC's; Huawei/HiSilicon will not.
That's a harsh reality. More to the point Google services essentially don't exist in China, so, what exactly is Google losing, given that side loading apps is prevalent in China as well?
"The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan
FFS, there is no Honor subbrand, and Huawei smartphone sales have crashed. Move on, for god's sake.
Ah! Now you put 'FFS' at the end of the post!
Sneaky bounder!
It still means the same though - you have nothing left to shoot back with, and you were shooting blanks from the start anyway .
Where to begin....?
Ah! Something you got right, although it's a case of stating the obvious!
Yes, Huawei,' currently cannot fab 5nm chips.
We are all perfectly aware of that and as I said further up, that will change (possibly mid term or short term depending on technology advances, politics or both).
Next up. Chinese brands and GMS. You have not been paying attention. Huawei was the first major Chinese handset manufacturer to make an impact with international sales. Over the last two years the other major brands (Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor) have been sweeping into non-Chinese markets at breathtaking speed (Honor was already there of course).
They are even present in the US.
As HarmonyOS matures, the lure of switching (if the US tries another Huawei style stunt) will simply be more attractive.
More and more reviewers are beginning to come around to the idea that not having GMS may not be such an issue if HMS keeps moving at its current pace.
Honor was spun off to keep the inertia going. Do you seriously believe it can't be re-absorbed at a later date?
And you are asking me to get real?
Of the three previous top brands, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple, it appears that it is now Samsung, Apple, followed by Chinese brands. The only change is that Huawei's foreign share has been consumed by other Chinese brands, and Huawei has no access to leading edge fabs or SoC's.
Other than that, Huawei is doing just fine, well, except for also losing foreign telecom share.
Details, details. Sure Huawei may eventually get access to competitive SoC's, but it certainly isn't today, or tomorrow. Meanwhile, those sales just keep diving.
It has access to leading edge SoCs. It designs them itself!
The current problem is fabbing them, not designing them.
Huawei's handset share was huge. Even dividing it among Chinese competitors, it remains huge and is growing fast outside China.
Against all the odds Huawei actually increased revenues and net profit for 2020.
It has turned its focus to 5G, AI, Cloud and CE for growth options. Last year HiSilicon made an IoT SoC available to third parties. It will try to get HarmonyOS onto as much IoT hardware as possible. Huawei provided an EV solution (hardware/software) to car manufacturers. It provided 5G based services solutions for aviation, mining, ports, farming, health and science etc.
I'm not even getting into its energy solutions and a raft of other fields.
R&D spending has been increased yet again.
They are not standing still and the fab situation of its ARM strategy is there but they are working to reduce its impact.
We will see if they succeed. Nothing is a given.
But. if your stack is gigantic, it gives you options and 5G is one of the keys threads that tie things up.
"Even as the Chinese government encourages foreign audiences to purchase Huawei products, its leaders warn domestic audiences of the dangers that stem from reliance on foreign technology. Years before the trade war and the Trump administration’s restrictions on Huawei, Xi argued that “the control of core technology by others is our biggest hidden danger” and that allowing foreigners to control core technology “is like building a house on someone else’s foundation.”[1] He declared that “China must have its own technology, and it must have strong technology.”[2]
No one can possibly imagine why the rest of the world is justifiably concerned about an adversary power controlling their infrastructure.
I let you have the last word and didn't make the quip I was going to. I thought you'd had enough with digging holes and falling into them.
All countries want to depend less on others for critical technology or resources. Some are actually able to do something about it. Others are not.
That makes your point about China irrelevant.
Secondly, and you really should try to understand this. No one (and I mean no one) is controlling ICT infrastructure in the way you are implying. NO SINGLE COMPANY.
Take a minute and let that sink in.
These are international standards, created by standards committees. ICT is a collaborative effort which requires interoperability as well as backwards compatibility.
Everything (and I mean everything) is STANDARDS BASED. That includes security!
The carriers run the networks. Governments can limit the carriers. Carriers have licences to operate and use spectrum frequencies.
Huawei does not control infrastructure. It provides infrastructure which complies with internationally agreed standards.
If Huawei could do what you imply (and it can't because no country relies on a single infrastructure supplier and carrier) it would logically mean its instant death. Faster than instant even.
This has been said a million times by everyone with just a grain of common sense. Why would Huawei deliberately push the self destruct button on itself?
It's one of the reasons the US has NEVER been able to put even a shred of evidence on the table. Literally NOTHING. It's why it has been left with no option but to bully and threaten it's allies over Huawei.
The whole thing has nothing to do with 'national security'. It's protectionism.
Carrier networks are made up of equipment from different vendors for good reason and for as much as the US wants to use non-Huawei equipment and wants other countries to follow suit, the reality is that almost all of that equipment is still manufactured in, you guessed it, China! And nothing has happened!
You lost all credibility on this subject long ago. It was your own doing and you can handle that I'm sure. Now, let things go.
Remind me. What was this thread about?
Are you talking about Chinese protectionism? Because there is lots of that. But we know about the extremely high levels of spying the Chinese do. We know how they force foreign companies to take on Chinese partners, who they then must share technology with. We know about the forced labor camps, and the software used to keep track of people. Oh, there’s plenty the government there does. It’s not anywhere near a free country. And Xi is making things much worse. Yes, everyone is worried about China. Even Russia sent tens of thousands of troops to the west around the time China said that they considered the entire western territory of Russia to belong to China.
the destruction of the HongKong treaties. They renewed threats against Taiwan. The taking over of islands in international waters, or that of waters claimed by others.
oh year, we should be worried.
I'm not sure where you wanted to go with all that but almost all of it had nothing to do with what I was replying to.
Protectionism. That's what it is. It is irrevelant who practises it (as almost everyone does). There is no problem in calling it out for what it is.
It is habitual everywhere but there are important differences in this case between the US and China.
The US wants to protect its predominance in technology and especially semiconductors (it has outright admitted this and has warned that China is on course to best it) but it wants to do by cracking the whip and have everybody (friend or foe) jump into line. It wants to use threats, bullying and extraterrotorial 'sanctions' to force its will onto sovereign states. No matter what it costs them. It has thrown in the towel on 'competing' because it has nothing homegrown to be able to compete with Huawei's 5G for example. But truth be told, it wasn't even necessary to compete at all. Huawei called the US's bluff and offered to licence its 5G technologies (absolutely everything) in order to create a company or consortium of companies with which to get back into the market. The US refused. Can you imagine why?
If you really want to worry about something you should be worrying about the state of the US semiconductor industry going forward.
You should be worried about the Chinese taking their business elsewhere (EU, Japan and China itself) because the US tech sector will go nowhere fast without one of two things. Revenue and government (direct or indirect) funding.
If you are worried about world stability, then just peruse any book of the US and its record of destabilising vast parts of the world over the last twenty odd years through direct and indirect military action and provoking a worldwide economic collapse. Or read 'The Cost of War' by your very own Brown University.
Nobody is forced to hand over anything to the Chinese. Companies can choose not to enter the Chinese market and thus hand nothing over. Yes, technology transfers have been an element of doing business in China. That is actually changing and if companies transfered IP, they clearly thought it was worth it.
Perhaps it is ironic that companies around the world are now getting their hands tied by extraterrotorial US actions that now require them to stop selling their own products to some Chinese companies simply because those products were designed using just small pieces of US technology. Not only that, but the US changed the rules along the way to make the impact of its sanctions more widespread.
I hope you won't be too surprised when, just a few years from now, companies will not only have excised those technologies from their products but will be sending their revenue dollars to US technology competitors (wherever they may be).
ARM has apparently gone through its technology stack and affirmed that very little of it is of US origin. It is not subject to US extraterritorial actions.
But like I said, what you posted had very little to do with what I was replying too.
If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence?
See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios.
Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.
It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.
It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course.
In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc.
Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.
It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too.
You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.
Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.
As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000.
What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.
The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.
As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?
And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.
I think we should just wait and see on that one.
No, they’re not. They use vanilla ARM cores, and you must know that, so what’s the point? There’s also no evidence that their other cores are all that effective. They have been shown, several times, by Anandtech, to be lying about performance and efficiency. Frankly, I dontbtrushnmich of what they say. And neither should you.
A core is not a SoC.
A SoC is not a core (vanilla or otherwise)
You should know that.
But who am I kidding? You must know it because you are quoting me explicitly differentiating between those two elements.
If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence?
See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There are advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios.
Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.
It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.
It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course.
In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc.
Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.
It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too.
Your argument lost all credibility when you said Android is open source. Whilst it’s foundations may be, the Android as used in smartphones has long broken any open source licensing agreement (typically the data harvest requirements for Google) to the point where it’s totally proprietary. Even with Harmony & proprietary silicon, Huawei are still bound to Google.
What does the 'A' in AOSP stand for?
If an Android vendor were to keep Android but build the whole stack what Android would it use?
Clearly not GMS Android nor any Android that wasn't open source.
Wasn't that painfully clear?
Yes, I'm talking about AOSP.
AOSP is rather strange. Google has the licensing for both, dependent on the other. You can’t legally call AOSP “Android” and you can’t make legally “Android” devices if you also make AOSP devices. You can’t legally use any of Google’s services on AOSP either. So if you do use AOSP, which Google has considered as a stepping stone from cheap Android phone makers to more expensive makers, you have to use third party add-ones, such as the Google Play store, etc.
‘’yes, of course, much of this can be illegally side loaded in some way, as Huawei was trying to get people to do, but it’s still illegal, and of course, you don’t condone that.
You really need to re-read what I wrote.
And you will have to cite something to make what you are saying make sense because it doesn't make a lot as it is.
When you say 'yes, of course, much of this can be illegally side-loaded', it reads as if (from the previous paragraphs) that Huawei cannot legally use 'Android'.
That is clearly false as Huawei has released several 'Android' phones since the restrictions came into place that do in fact run Android (they simply don't run Android 11). From a Google perspective, the issue there is that they are not certified to use GMS. That's why Huawei built HMS.
And as for a device manufacturer not being able to release an AOSP device and an Android device, if I were you I'd stay tuned to the news in less than two weeks.
There was a storm in a teacup recently about Huawei using AOSP as part of HarmonyOS. I haven't read about any licencing issues and they will be shipping both Android devices and HarmonyOS devices. There are even rumours of the the same phones running one OS in one market but another in a different market.
Last I checked, almost all of AOSP was open sourced under the Apache 2.0 licence with Google 'managing' it.
Wake me up when Huawei is relevant in the West again…
Hi, this is your wake-up call.
The "West" consists of slightly more than the United States. In 2020, Huawei was at somewhere around 12% market share in Europe, with Xiaomi slightly ahead, and Apple at 22%, trailing behind Samsung at 32%.
Huawei dipped HEAVILY from 23% in 2019, but they are not, as yet, "irrelevant in the West".
Apple's 50+% market share dwarfing everyone else is a purely US/Canadian phenomenon.
Wake me up when Huawei is relevant in the West again…
Hi, this is your wake-up call.
The "West" consists of slightly more than the United States. In 2020, Huawei was at somewhere around 12% market share in Europe, with Xiaomi slightly ahead, and Apple at 22%, trailing behind Samsung at 32%.
Huawei dipped HEAVILY from 23% in 2019, but they are not, as yet, "irrelevant in the West".
Apple's 50+% market share dwarfing everyone else is a purely US/Canadian phenomenon.
Sure, but without any leading edge SOC's, it isn't going to happen again, is it.
Wake me up when Huawei is relevant in the West again…
Hi, this is your wake-up call.
The "West" consists of slightly more than the United States. In 2020, Huawei was at somewhere around 12% market share in Europe, with Xiaomi slightly ahead, and Apple at 22%, trailing behind Samsung at 32%.
Huawei dipped HEAVILY from 23% in 2019, but they are not, as yet, "irrelevant in the West".
Apple's 50+% market share dwarfing everyone else is a purely US/Canadian phenomenon.
Sure, but without any leading edge SOC's, it isn't going to happen again, is it.
It might not, but the SOC used really isn't going to matter at all.
Samsung is smacking Apple's butt on the EU market, and the vast majority of the stuff they're selling has CPUs that are utterly inferior to all of Apple's offerings.
People don't give a shit about the SOC. Their primary criteria are mostly just "a camera that does WhatsApp". It helps if they can get it for free on a plan. Huawei checks those boxes and offers better cameras than other phones at the same price point.
If they disappear from the market, it won't be the SOC performance that sunk them. Right now, their biggest problem as I see it is lack of trust.
Wake me up when Huawei is relevant in the West again…
Hi, this is your wake-up call.
The "West" consists of slightly more than the United States. In 2020, Huawei was at somewhere around 12% market share in Europe, with Xiaomi slightly ahead, and Apple at 22%, trailing behind Samsung at 32%.
Huawei dipped HEAVILY from 23% in 2019, but they are not, as yet, "irrelevant in the West".
Apple's 50+% market share dwarfing everyone else is a purely US/Canadian phenomenon.
Sure, but without any leading edge SOC's, it isn't going to happen again, is it.
It might not, but the SOC used really isn't going to matter at all.
Samsung is smacking Apple's butt on the EU market, and the vast majority of the stuff they're selling has CPUs that are utterly inferior to all of Apple's offerings.
People don't give a shit about the SOC. Their primary criteria are mostly just "a camera that does WhatsApp". It helps if they can get it for free on a plan. Huawei checks those boxes and offers better cameras than other phones at the same price point.
If they disappear from the market, it won't be the SOC performance that sunk them. Right now, their biggest problem as I see it is lack of trust.
Well, Huawei, for all its flagship photography prowess, is going to get trounced by Xiaomi, who has access to the Qcomm Snapdragon 888, so no, I don't think that Huawei is going to benefit much outside of China, from shipping low SOC spec phones.
Still, your focus on marketshare is telling.
Apple is going to ship something on the order of a quarter billion iPhones this fiscal year, the combined ASP of which is three to four times that of any of its competitors. I'm thinking, that Apple's profit share WW will rise back into the 70% range.
I don't think you are keeping up with current events
So, let me see if I am getting this right.
Huawei already didn't have access to the world's second largest market. In spite of that it still hit the top spot for handset sales last year. Wow!
Then, due to geopolitics, which have nothing to do with national security I might add, the US government attempted to destroy its supply lines from mid September.
In spite of all that it still shipped a staggering 33 million phones in one quarter! Wow!
But wait, there's more! That number itself was negatively impacted by the sale of its Honor division. In reality Huawei phones.
And now, in two weeks HarmonyOS will launch for smartphones and is projected to hit 300 million devices (of all kinds) by the end of the year alone!
That reads as very relevant to me.
Oh, and don't forget that although Honor isn't technically part of Huawei now, it is going to run HarmonyOS too.
Phones, devices and partners running HarmonyOS form the basis of Huawei's 1+8+N strategy and the '1' is the phone.
ARMv9 has apparently been greenlighted for Huawei. ASML has signed a deal with SMIC and US technology is being substituted in the design and manufacturing lines. China has now accelerated its plans for semi conductor independence and it is now simply a question of time. The clock is ticking. It won't take them long to move things along.
I don't think you are keeping up with current events
So, let me see if I am getting this right.
Huawei already didn't have access to the world's second largest market. In spite of that it still hit the top spot for handset sales last year. Wow!
Then, due to geopolitics, which have nothing to do with national security I might add, the US government attempted to destroy its supply lines from mid September.
In spite of all that it still shipped a staggering 33 million phones in one quarter! Wow!
But wait, there's more! That number itself was negatively impacted by the sale of its Honor division. In reality Huawei phones.
And now, in two weeks HarmonyOS will launch for smartphones and is projected to hit 300 million devices (of all kinds) by the end of the year alone!
That reads as very relevant to me.
Oh, and don't forget that although Honor isn't technically part of Huawei now, it is going to run HarmonyOS too.
Phones, devices and partners running HarmonyOS form the basis of Huawei's 1+8+N strategy and the '1' is the phone.
ARMv9 has apparently been greenlighted for Huawei. ASML has signed a deal with SMIC and US technology is being substituted in the design and manufacturing lines. China has now accelerated its plans for semi conductor independence and it is now simply a question of time. The clock is ticking. It won't take them long to move things along.
Comments
the destruction of the HongKong treaties. They renewed threats against Taiwan. The taking over of islands in international waters, or that of waters claimed by others.
oh year, we should be worried.
Protectionism. That's what it is. It is irrevelant who practises it (as almost everyone does). There is no problem in calling it out for what it is.
It is habitual everywhere but there are important differences in this case between the US and China.
The US wants to protect its predominance in technology and especially semiconductors (it has outright admitted this and has warned that China is on course to best it) but it wants to do by cracking the whip and have everybody (friend or foe) jump into line. It wants to use threats, bullying and extraterrotorial 'sanctions' to force its will onto sovereign states. No matter what it costs them. It has thrown in the towel on 'competing' because it has nothing homegrown to be able to compete with Huawei's 5G for example. But truth be told, it wasn't even necessary to compete at all. Huawei called the US's bluff and offered to licence its 5G technologies (absolutely everything) in order to create a company or consortium of companies with which to get back into the market. The US refused. Can you imagine why?
If you really want to worry about something you should be worrying about the state of the US semiconductor industry going forward.
You should be worried about the Chinese taking their business elsewhere (EU, Japan and China itself) because the US tech sector will go nowhere fast without one of two things. Revenue and government (direct or indirect) funding.
If you are worried about world stability, then just peruse any book of the US and its record of destabilising vast parts of the world over the last twenty odd years through direct and indirect military action and provoking a worldwide economic collapse. Or read 'The Cost of War' by your very own Brown University.
Nobody is forced to hand over anything to the Chinese. Companies can choose not to enter the Chinese market and thus hand nothing over. Yes, technology transfers have been an element of doing business in China. That is actually changing and if companies transfered IP, they clearly thought it was worth it.
Perhaps it is ironic that companies around the world are now getting their hands tied by extraterrotorial US actions that now require them to stop selling their own products to some Chinese companies simply because those products were designed using just small pieces of US technology. Not only that, but the US changed the rules along the way to make the impact of its sanctions more widespread.
I hope you won't be too surprised when, just a few years from now, companies will not only have excised those technologies from their products but will be sending their revenue dollars to US technology competitors (wherever they may be).
ARM has apparently gone through its technology stack and affirmed that very little of it is of US origin. It is not subject to US extraterritorial actions.
But like I said, what you posted had very little to do with what I was replying too.
A SoC is not a core (vanilla or otherwise)
You should know that.
But who am I kidding? You must know it because you are quoting me explicitly differentiating between those two elements.
Sales of handsets are logically down but not due in any way to normal market forces.
Huawei hasn't received any 7nm chipsets since September last year. As a result sales are down.
And you will have to cite something to make what you are saying make sense because it doesn't make a lot as it is.
When you say 'yes, of course, much of this can be illegally side-loaded', it reads as if (from the previous paragraphs) that Huawei cannot legally use 'Android'.
That is clearly false as Huawei has released several 'Android' phones since the restrictions came into place that do in fact run Android (they simply don't run Android 11). From a Google perspective, the issue there is that they are not certified to use GMS. That's why Huawei built HMS.
And as for a device manufacturer not being able to release an AOSP device and an Android device, if I were you I'd stay tuned to the news in less than two weeks.
There was a storm in a teacup recently about Huawei using AOSP as part of HarmonyOS. I haven't read about any licencing issues and they will be shipping both Android devices and HarmonyOS devices. There are even rumours of the the same phones running one OS in one market but another in a different market.
Last I checked, almost all of AOSP was open sourced under the Apache 2.0 licence with Google 'managing' it.
The "West" consists of slightly more than the United States. In 2020, Huawei was at somewhere around 12% market share in Europe, with Xiaomi slightly ahead, and Apple at 22%, trailing behind Samsung at 32%.
Huawei dipped HEAVILY from 23% in 2019, but they are not, as yet, "irrelevant in the West".
Apple's 50+% market share dwarfing everyone else is a purely US/Canadian phenomenon.
Samsung is smacking Apple's butt on the EU market, and the vast majority of the stuff they're selling has CPUs that are utterly inferior to all of Apple's offerings.
People don't give a shit about the SOC. Their primary criteria are mostly just "a camera that does WhatsApp". It helps if they can get it for free on a plan.
Huawei checks those boxes and offers better cameras than other phones at the same price point.
If they disappear from the market, it won't be the SOC performance that sunk them. Right now, their biggest problem as I see it is lack of trust.
Still, your focus on marketshare is telling.
Apple is going to ship something on the order of a quarter billion iPhones this fiscal year, the combined ASP of which is three to four times that of any of its competitors. I'm thinking, that Apple's profit share WW will rise back into the 70% range.
I don't think you are keeping up with current events
Huawei already didn't have access to the world's second largest market. In spite of that it still hit the top spot for handset sales last year. Wow!
Then, due to geopolitics, which have nothing to do with national security I might add, the US government attempted to destroy its supply lines from mid September.
In spite of all that it still shipped a staggering 33 million phones in one quarter! Wow!
But wait, there's more! That number itself was negatively impacted by the sale of its Honor division. In reality Huawei phones.
And now, in two weeks HarmonyOS will launch for smartphones and is projected to hit 300 million devices (of all kinds) by the end of the year alone!
That reads as very relevant to me.
Oh, and don't forget that although Honor isn't technically part of Huawei now, it is going to run HarmonyOS too.
Phones, devices and partners running HarmonyOS form the basis of Huawei's 1+8+N strategy and the '1' is the phone.
ARMv9 has apparently been greenlighted for Huawei. ASML has signed a deal with SMIC and US technology is being substituted in the design and manufacturing lines. China has now accelerated its plans for semi conductor independence and it is now simply a question of time. The clock is ticking. It won't take them long to move things along.
ASML didn't license nor ship an EUV machine, so no, not that great a deal for SMIC.
China still barely catching up to oldest 7nm node, and HarmonyOS is still basically AndroidOS.