Back in November, we saw Huawei and Honor part ways. Huawei announced that it had to sell its subsidiary because of the persistent unavailability of technical elements needed for its devices caused by the US ban. Since then, Honor passed to be the property of the Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co., Ltd., and it has been growing ever since. However, it seems that some people in the US still believe that it could be a threat to national security, meaning that it could soon be affected by an economic ban.
We could say that the United States is directly responsible for the fall of one of the best smartphone companies in the world. Huawei has recently reported a nearly 30 percent decline in year-on-year revenue. The company’s mobile division is now ranked below OPPO, Vivo, and Motorola when it used to be fighting for Samsung’s crown, which could belong to Xiaomi. However, the US commercial restrictions have stopped the company from buying US-made components for their devices and more. And now it seems that the United States is also trying to add Honor to its entity list to make it walk the same path as Huawei.
It seems that several Republican legislators have asked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to include Honor in the US Commerce Entity List. This means that Honor devices could soon lose access to Google services, and it will also stop the company from getting the necessary parts and technology provided by US companies.
They believe that Honor’s separation from Huawei was so that the latter could retain access to US components and the software that’s needed to build its smartphones and more. The main reason for accusations is that the US believes that the company has secret connections with the Chinese Communist Party, something that has always been denied and that hasn’t been proven in any way.
“Analysts have noted that selling Honor gave it access to the semiconductor chips and software it relied on and would have presumably been blocked had the divestiture not gone through…The sale of Honor was not a market-based outcome but rather orchestrated by the Party-state. The same concerns about technology exports to Honor when it was part of Huawei should apply under its current state-backed ownership structure.”
Now, we will only have to wait and see if this request gets approved. If it does, it means that Honor will be facing the same problems Huawei has been dealing with. If not, then we should keep on getting interesting devices, such as the new flagship Magic 3 Series that’s expected to arrive with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor under the hood.
Via Android Central