US sanctions fail to get in Huawei as embattled Chinese vendor reports 23% revenue growth Huawei is apparently like a "plane riddled with bullet holes" that keeps on flying – at least according to chairman Liang Hua. He employed the colourful metaphor twice in a press conference in Shenzhen as he reported the company's first financial results since 16 May, when the US put Huawei on the "Entity List". This managed …
They already do, although wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it has to be licensed under FRAND. Huawei have been working on mobile network tech for 20 years and have a lot of engineers to invent new stuff. While, stereotypically, the Chinese have had little respect for the IPR of others, they recognise the value of the intellectual property. When I visited them many moons ago only VP's could use flash drives or other removable media, phones with cameras were banned.
You raise an interesting legal question. I wonder when Huawei will think of it and investigate their options... It would be hideously complicated, and the lawyers would all win loads of money, I'm sure. The main problem will be that the legal agreement to keep the patents in a FRAND pool is *probably* not with an entity in a country that's banning Huawei.
So, for example the USA is banning Huawei. The main infrastructure vendor there is Ericsson, IIRC. They are based elsewhere. I guess Huawei would have to amend their contracts to state something like "FRAND patents are licensed on this basis assuming equal access to all markets, and if that fails we'll withdraw the license" - but this may only affect new standards-essential patents, and may not be possible to amend on existing ones (until the existing agreements end, whenever that might be).
Ericsson could well give Huawei the finger at this point - after all the patent is embodied in the standards, which are easy enough to compile into code. So Huawei would have to take Ericsson to court over it - no idea which court, or what legal argument they could apply.
IANAL, and it would probably give me a headache to try and work it out :)
Are you suggesting that US companies will be playing fair? Or are you saying that the rules are there to be followed? East and West are on a divergent path.
I'll be on the lookout for the blowback of all the turmoil being generated. Looks like Huawei is following through and getting rid of US supply chains in the long run.
A Trump Patent Reform will be in order. Trump tends to act proactively so I would not be surprised to learn that arrangements are already being made in secrecy.
Trump will have to replace the current patent system with a new one, a new multi tiered system where patent protection will be granted in tiers ranging from full protection to no protection at all. The criteria for protection will be nationality and monetary contribution to Trump family business. Full protection will be granted to american applicants and a few select foreigners that make a substantial contribution to a trump business while no protection will be granted to foreign applicants that fail to contribute substantially to a trump business.
That will take care of Huawei
I imagine Huawei will experience a temporary increase in revenue as firms in the China "sphere of influence" refresh their Western gear to Huawei.
We will see how sustainable it will be to have a Chinese-dominated ecosystem and a separate US-dominated ecosystem. This will present the opportunity for a brilliant startup to develop products and services that are compatible with both ecosystems!
> We will see how sustainable it will be to have a Chinese-dominated ecosystem and a separate US-dominated ecosystem.
Haha - like CDMA and iDEN back in the 90's/00's - US tech that no-one else wanted to play with when a global (or at least "rest of globe") standard was available with GSM & UMTS. The US is not that dominant a player in mobile network infrastructure. That would be Ericsson and Nokia, now that Motorola, Alcatel(-Lucent) and Siemens have withdrawn from the arena. There are other bit players, and perhaps some of the infrastructure sits on US-brand commodity servers, but the US is in no way "dominant".
Modern mobile network infrastructure, in particular 5G, is quite inter-operable - or inter-operable enough to have vendor-regions within an operator.
"That would be Ericsson and Nokia, now that Motorola, Alcatel(-Lucent) and Siemens have withdrawn from the arena."
You do realise, don't you, that the network infrastructure part of Motorola became part of Alcatel-Lucent, which in turn was bought by Nokia - it can hardly be said that either Motorola or Alcatel(-Lucent) have "withdrawn" from the field so much as been re-badged.
Ahem, I worked for Motorola in their infrastructure unit. This unit gradually degraded as Huawei ate it up, leading to a mildly acrimonious dispute when it was bought by NSN. It was then chucked in the bin as there was nothing worth keeping. Literally chucked in the bin. I would very much doubt there is any Motorola infrastructure kit in the field, especially after 8-9 years, now (equally, on a lot of the kit, if you took the badge off you might see the spot where a red shell-like badge was previously).
After working for Motorola, I went to A-Lu. I was only there for a couple of years before the writing on the wall was written in a large enough font for my myopic eyes - it got bought by Nokia too.
In both cases, their market share was shrinking, so the decision to sell a unit to Nokia is in effect withdrawing from the field. No further kit would have been sold (although it does look like Nokia kept the A-Lu small cells as they still seem to be selling those).
This! (I hate when commentards say "This!" but here it fits)
What do they say? All publicity is good publicity. And Huawei has been in practically every news cycle for the past two months. You couldn't even begin to pay enough ¥¥¥ for that amount of free air time.
They're nearly a household name at this point, no?
«And Huawei has been in practically every news cycle for the past two months. You couldn't even begin to pay enough ¥¥¥ for that amount of free air time.» Which leads one to the inevitable conclusion that at least in that single respect, Huawei resembles Donald John Trump (the difference being that, unlike the latter, the former makes good kit)....
Henri
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