Free of Huawei Ties, Honor Brand Enters Talks With Qualcomm

What’s new: Qualcomm has initiated talks to license its technology to Honor, the budget smartphone brand whose sale was announced by sanctioned Chinese tech giant Huawei two weeks ago, according to President Christano Amon.

Speaking at the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2020 on Wednesday in Beijing, Amon said the California-based semiconductor giant was “very excited” about the spinoff. “We’re very eager for the opportunity to partner and work with Honor… we initiated the dialogue and we’re excited about that opportunity in the future.”

Amon said Qualcomm had also applied to the U.S. for authorization to export and sell products from all of its lines to Huawei. It previously said it had obtained authorization for 4G products, and he confirmed it had not been authorized for 5G products.

The background: Whether Honor would be allowed to trade with U.S. firms was a key question after it was spun off from Huawei, which is highly restricted in such trade. The fact Qualcomm has publicly announced it is in talks suggests it believes Honor is a separate entity and thus isn’t subject to restrictions imposed on Huawei.

On Nov. 17, Huawei said it signed an agreement to sell all of Honor’s business assets for an undisclosed amount to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co. Ltd., a company backed by a consortium of more than 30 agents and retailers, including companies affiliated with Huawei’s hometown government of Shenzhen.

Since first banning all U.S. companies from selling to Huawei without a special license last year, Washington has been slowly allowing such sales for non-5G technologies to resume. Qualcomm confirmed to Caixin in mid-November that it was the latest to receive such a license to sell older technology to the firm.

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use.To read the full Caixin article in Chinese, click here.

Ye Zhanqi contributed reporting.

Contact reporter Flynn Murphy (flynnmurphy@caixin.com) and editor Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com)

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