14 DAY TRIAL // US government officials, as well as representatives of a series of American technology giants, will meet to discuss the Huawei ban, according to a Reuters report.
Companies like Intel, Qualcomm, Google, and Micron will attend the meeting, along with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Broadcom and Microsoft are also likely to be invited to the meeting, albeit none of the companies mentioned in the report offered a confirmation so far.
While officially the meeting’s agenda notes a series of topics, including what the aforementioned source describes as “economic matters,” the restrictions against Huawei will also be discussed, especially as several have warned that the US industry itself could be affected.
The Huawei saga
An executive order signed by President Donald Trump in mid-May forbids Huawei from doing any business with American companies. This means the Chinese firm can’t use products developed in the United States, and these include software like Android and Windows, which were used to power its devices.
More recently, US officials said they would begin offering temporary licenses to work with Huawei, as long as the collaboration does not affect national security. This is expected to happen in a couple of weeks, albeit the Chinese tech giant calls for the United States to remove the need for temporary licenses altogether.
Meanwhile, Huawei has been struggling to reduce reliance on American firms by trying to develop more components in-house. At the same time, Huawei has reportedly been working on its own Android replacement, albeit the company said recently this project was only supposed to serve as an IoT operating system, and not a platform for mobile devices.
Earlier this year, people familiar with the matter said Huawei’s OS could be finalized in the fall and be installed on devices aimed at the Chinese market going on sale by the end of the year.