More bad news for Huawei: ARM Holdings tells staff to stop business with the firm

The US government has put Huawei on the ‘Entity list’ thus banning any company from doing business with the firm without express approval from the government. While a temporary relief has been granted to Huawei for 90 days for existing licenses and products, the same will not extend to newer products from the company.

ARM’s suspension of business with Huawei will be another major blow, and analysts told BBC, they believe it will impact the Chinese company’s ability to develop its own chips. Right now, Huawei’s chipsets use the ARM technology and pay a license fee to the British firm. While Huawei and its Honor phones, which is a sub-brand of the firm, all use the company’s own in-house chipsets under the Kirin series, they are relying on the ARM architecture to power the technology.

Read more: Google is suspending Huawei’s Android license: What does it mean for Huawei smartphone users?

The ARM architecture is widely used in mobile chipsets, including by firms like Qualcomm, Samsung which has its own Exynos chipsets. ARM is licensing this to other companies, which lets them create their own custom processors.

Read more: Huawei’s Android ban could benefit alternative OS like Sailfish OS: Jolla CEO

For now ARM has only said that it is complying with “regulations set forth by the US government”. Huawei refused to comment on the matter for now, adds the report.

ARM and Google are not the only companies ending business with Huawei thanks to the new US regulations. Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Xilinx have all confirmed they are suspending ties with Huawei. Further Face ID parts supplier Lumentum Holdings also announced it was suspending business it does with Huawei Technologies.