On October 27, according to foreign media reports, U.S. Senate Republicans released a report saying that Seagate, a major U.S. data storage equipment supplier, continued to supply hard drives to Huawei, which the U.S. said had violated U.S. commerce. the ban on Huawei.
Beginning on May 15, 2020, the United States began a series of sanctions against Huawei, from prohibiting Huawei from using chip design software of American companies, to August 17, 2020 prohibiting foundries containing American technology from producing chips and supplying them to Huawei , and until September 15, 2020, to prohibit the supply of chips with US technical components to Huawei. Since then, the US chip sanctions against Huawei have officially started, and many well-known chip companies such as TSMC, Qualcomm, Samsung, and SMIC have been forced to stop supplying chips to Huawei.
Although the United States has issued a ban on restricting Huawei, Seagate said in 2020 that its product business is not covered by the ban in the United States, and neither hard drives nor solid-state drives are manufactured in the United States. subject to prohibition. American politicians objected that as long as the technology developed in the United States is used, it should abide by the regulations of the United States.
Founded in 1979, Seagate is currently the world’s largest manufacturer of hard disks, magnetic disks and read-write heads, headquartered in Scott Valley, California, USA. Seagate is a global leader in the design, manufacture and sale of hard drives for enterprise, desktop, mobile and consumer electronics.
As an important supplier of Huawei, Seagate has played a crucial role in Huawei’s storage business, which is the world’s fastest growing. At the same time, Seagate’s stock has risen nearly 86% since September last year, even as the chip is out of stock globally, as the US’s exclusive supplier of Huawei’s hard drives.
At present, Seagate has not made a clear response to this report, so it is not known whether Seagate will continue to supply Huawei in the future. However, if the United States is still pressing forward, as an American company, Seagate will probably Forced to abandon the deal with Huawei because they could not bear the pressure, both companies will lose a major business by then.
Under the ban on China, hard disk manufacturers still supply Huawei
As early as May this year, it was reported that Seagate, the world’s leading hard disk manufacturer, still has a cooperative relationship with Huawei despite the U.S. escalating its ban on Huawei.
Therefore, Seagate and the United States issued an inquiry and investigation order. The content is whether the hard disk manufacturer has complied with the relevant ban, that is, it will continue to supply hard disk products to Huawei only after obtaining the application.
In fact, not only Seagate, but many American companies want to cooperate with Huawei. Prior to this, Western Digital had previously obtained a license to sell products such as disk drives and solid-state hard drives to Huawei. However, companies are still prohibited from exporting prohibited products and technologies to Huawei until they obtain an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Therefore, after the ban came into effect, Western Digital applied to the US government more than once, hoping to resume the supply of chips to Huawei, but the US government did not respond.
Therefore, many people in the industry are also speculating that Seagate may choose to contact Huawei alone without the consent of the US government because of the results of Western Digital!
It is worth mentioning that it was previously reported that after the ban took effect, a large part of Huawei’s annual hard disk drive purchases worth $800 million came from Seagate.
U.S. Senate Democrats said Seagate did not apply for a license to sell to Huawei. Although officials said they had stopped shipping hard drives to Huawei, they did not specify when they would stop shipping.
US still fears Huawei
The US sanctions against Huawei, in the final analysis, is still because of Huawei’s 5G technology.
On November 17, 2016, Huawei’s polar code solution was adopted at the meeting as the final solution for 5G, the 5G era kicked off, and Huawei became one of the leaders of the 5G standard.
In an era where computer networks control the most powerful weapons, any country that dominates 5G technology will have economic, intelligence and military advantages in the 5G era.
As a result, the United States, which is based on high technology and enjoys hegemony in the international community, cannot sit still. The United States cannot tolerate someone surpassing itself in technology.
As a result, the Trump administration cut off Huawei’s access to products such as computer chips in the United States on the grounds that “Huawei products may be used to spy on Americans and threaten U.S. national security.” Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations and said the U.S. restrictions were unreasonable. However, the United States ignored it.
Since then, the United States has launched a series of sanctions programs against Huawei, restricting Huawei’s access to specific American technology or direct products of software, and any unlicensed products cannot be exported to Huawei.
With the release of the ban on China, major global chip manufacturers such as TSMC, Samsung, Intel, MediaTek, Qualcomm, SMIC, and Hynix have successively stated that they will not be able to continue to provide services for Huawei in the future. This move directly destroyed Huawei Smart A large part of the mobile phone business, Huawei was forced to spin off the Honor mobile phone and survive by breaking its arm. This ban has greatly restricted the sales of Huawei’s telecommunications equipment products. So far, Huawei’s 5G mobile phone business has been hit hard, and it has been forced to develop new business lines.
The storage business is one of the few business sectors that Huawei is less affected by and has a leading share in the world.
According to IDC’s market data on storage trackers for the second quarter of 2020, Huawei’s external storage revenue market share growth rate leads all other vendors.
During the same period, the market share of all-flash enterprise Pure Storage declined for the first time in several years. Revenue in the overall external storage market in the U.S. fell 5% to $6.59 billion. Huawei is reported to use Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba hard drives in its growing external storage business.
Huawei’s storage business has grown rapidly and has gradually taken the leading position in the world.
As a result, the United States felt the threat and continued to increase restrictions on Huawei, aiming at the current Huawei storage business to start. If Seagate is forced to stop exporting hard drives to Huawei under pressure from the United States, I wonder if Huawei’s storage business will be affected.
Epilogue
With a series of sanctions after Huawei was suppressed by the United States, a large number of domestic companies have responded and started to fight back. Domestic high-tech companies such as HiSilicon, Ziguang Guowei, Zhongwei, and North Huachuang have begun to be wary of the United States. Then seek cooperation with the United States, and now they have begun to independently develop technologies in their respective fields.
At present, there are various signs that the continued suppression of Huawei by the United States has been completely useless. Now Huawei has begun to make efforts in the direction of self-research and production. Previously, it was reported that the Wuhan Huawei “Light Factory” project FAB2, which was built by the China Construction Eighth Bureau, was the main owner. The main structure of the factory has been capped, which also proves that Huawei’s self-built chip factory is not empty talk. At present, the factory has been constructed and production is about to start.
Today, the United States still maintains a strong policy towards China and Huawei. You must know that China is the largest economy in the world, and many countries need to rely on our market. Since the ban on China was issued, many American companies have been submitting applications to the United States for lifting The ban can be seen from the fact that Apple has been relying on China and does not want to leave. It can be seen how important the Chinese market is to American companies. If the ban cannot be ended as soon as possible, once the domestic market is completely lost for American companies, the consequences will be disastrous.
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