Makers of cars and electronic devices from TVs to smartphones are sounding alarm bells about a global shortage of chips, which is causing manufacturing delays as consumer demand bounces back from the coronavirus crisis. From a report: The problem has several causes, industry executives and analysts say, including bulk-buying by U.S. sanctions-hit Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, a fire at a chip plant in Japan, coronavirus lockdowns in Southeast Asia, and a strike in France. More fundamentally, however, there has been under-investment in 8-inch chip manufacturing plants owned mostly by Asian firms, which means they have struggled to ramp up production as demand for 5G phones, laptops and cars picked up faster than expected. "For the whole electronics industry, we've been experiencing a shortage of components," said Donny Zhang, CEO of Shenzhen-based sourcing company Sand and Wave, who said he faced delays in obtaining a microcontroller unit that was key to a smart headphone product he was working on. "We were originally planning to complete production in one month, but now it looks like we'll need to do it in two." A source at a Japanese electronics component supplier said it was seeing shortages of WiFi and Bluetooth chips and was expecting delays of more than 10 weeks.

The Federal Communication Commission ordered carriers to remove network equipment that poses a security risk, taking another step aimed at China's Huawei and ZTE. From a report: The agency in a 5-0 vote also said it would establish a list of proscribed equipment, and it set up a program to reimburse carriers for replacing suspect gear that will start once Congress devotes an estimated $1.6 billion. The agency said the actions, which affect providers that take federal subsidies, implement a law Congress passed in March. The FCC, Congress and President Donald Trump's administration are confronting China on a range of issues including trade and the novel coronavirus. The FCC accuses Huawei and ZTE of posing a risk of espionage, an allegation each denies. Last year the agency said subsidies can't be used to buy gear from Huawei or ZTE.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The U.S. Justice Department is talking to representatives of Meng Wanzhou about a potential deal that would allow the Chinese telecom executive to return home from Canada in exchange for signing a deferred prosecution agreement admitting criminal wrongdoing, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co., was detained in December 2018 while she was changing planes in Vancouver. She was arrested on a U.S. extradition request over allegations she lied to a Hong Kong banker in August 2013 about Huawei's control of a subsidiary that's accused of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. She has consistently denied the charges against her.

Shortly after that arrest, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in China, where they remain in detention and face charges of spying for Canada. The report also says the proposed deal could pave the way for China to return Kovrig and Spavor, which is a factor that is in part motivating the discussions, according to the paper's sources. In a report in the Wall Street Journal -- which CBC had not independently verified -- sources say the agreement with Meng would require her to admit to criminal wrongdoing. The newspaper reports that if she does that, U.S. prosecutors would defer the charges against her, and could even drop them at a later date.

Britain will spend $333 million to diversify its sources of 5G wireless equipment after banning China's Huawei from supplying the next-generation technology. From a report: Huawei is set to be excluded from British 5G networks by 2027 due to security concerns, leaving phone carriers reliant on a supply duopoly of Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson. Around $67 million of the total will be spent next year to help build "a secure and resilient 5G network" according to documents published on Wednesday as part of Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak's spending review. The resulting reduction in competition could hurt security and push up prices, so Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden has started a task force to increase the number of suppliers. He is set to publish more details before the end of the year.

Britain's crackdown on Huawei came in July after UK officials said US sanctions made it impossible to verify the security of Huawei's supply chain. The White House accuses Huawei of being a security risk, which the company has always denied. Since then, Nokia and Ericsson have already won major contracts from British carriers like BT Group and CK Hutchison Holdings' Three UK. The phone industry is banking that longer-term initiatives such as OpenRAN -- a project to make mobile network equipment more interoperable and encourage new suppliers -- will eventually introduce more competition.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission affirmed its decision to designate ZTE as a national security threat over concerns telecommunications gear made by the Chinese company could be used for spying. From a report: The action shows that the FCC remains determined to drive ZTE and fellow Shenzhen-based manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co. from the U.S. market, where small rural carriers rely on their cheap network equipment. The agency at its Dec. 10 meeting is to consider rules for listing prohibited gear, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a Nov. 18 blog post that identified Huawei as a threat. The FCC has said ZTE and Huawei pose a risk of espionage, an allegation each company denies. The agency has increasingly scrutinized Chinese companies amid tensions between Beijing and Washington over trade, the coronavirus and security issues. The FCC is considering banning three Chinese telephone companies, and last year barred China Mobile from entering the American market. The FCC on June 30 designated both companies national security threats, and ZTE asked the agency to reconsider its listing. The company said it supplies safe and secure equipment and is "clearly and fully dedicated to complying with all applicable laws in the United States."

AmiMoJo writes: The UK should revisit its decision to ban the Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei from its 5G network in the post-Trump era and recognise that it will worsen England's north-south divide, the vice-president of Huawei has told the Guardian. Victor Zhang's intervention comes as Boris Johnson prepared on Monday to meet the Northern Research Group, the lobby group of Conservative MPs determined to turn the prime minister's levelling up agenda into a reality. Zhang urged the UK to stay true to its roots as the birthplace of the first Industrial Revolution, saying the government could not afford to fall behind in the 5G revolution. In July the UK government, after pressure from the Trump administration, reversed a plan to let Huawei be a controlled 5G supplier, and instead ordered Huawei equipment be stripped out of the country's 5G networks by 2027. Ministers at the time said the reversal was not caused by a new security services analysis of the security threat posed by Huawei, but by the Trump administration's decision to block US conductors being used by Huawei. Zhang said: "The decision is going to have a huge economic impact on the UK. The UK wants to see a balance of investment between London, the south-east, the Midlands and the north of England. World-class connectivity is crucial to this objective, and without that it is very difficult to close the gap in the economic imbalance in the UK."

Adweek has published an article titled "What to Expect: How a Biden Administration Would Tackle Tech Policy." Some of the highlights: Industry observers have told us they don't expect a change-of-guard to upend the Google lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in concert with 11 state attorneys general over the company's search advertising hegemony. Indeed, we could see a spate of antitrust activity brought to bear on Big Tech during a Biden presidency... "Regardless of who wins the presidential election, antitrust enforcement against Big Tech will continue," said Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at liberal think tank the Open Markets Institute....

"Biden will take a...tough position on infrastructure companies like Huawei," said Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at the liberal Progressive Policy Institute, but is "less likely to come down hard on consumer apps like TikTok." He expects Biden to talk tough on China, "but with fewer unilateral tariffs and more cooperation from international allies."

In August the U.S. announced restrictions aimed at preventing Huawei from obtaining semiconductors without a special license.

It might work, reports Engadget: Huawei might have a way to avoid some of the worst consequences of tightening U.S. trade restrictions, provided it's willing to be patient. Financial Times sources claim Huawei is planning a dedicated chip factory in Shanghai that would make parts for its core telecom infrastructure business. It would be run by a partner, the city-backed Shanghai IC R&D Center, and would be considered experimental until it's ready to make chips Huawei can use.

The plant would start by making chips based on a very old 45-nanometer process before moving to 28nm chips by late 2021. That would be advanced enough to make chips for smart TVs and Internet of Things devices, the tipsters said. It would reach 20nm by late 2022, when it could make "most" of its 5G cellular hardware.

Between this and a stockpile of chips, Huawei could theoretically keep its telecom hardware business running with relatively little disruption.

Samsung is back on top as the world's biggest smartphone vendor one quarter after losing its spot to Huawei, according to reports from IDC, Counterpoint, and Canalys. The news comes just as Samsung posted its highest quarterly revenue figures ever, which the company said was helped by a boost in demand for smartphones. From a report: Huawei became the number one vendor for the first time three months ago, benefiting from strong sales in China while much of the rest of the world was operating under constrained retail conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Huawei's shipments fell 7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 24 percent year-on-year, according to Counterpoint, while Samsung's shipments increased by 47 percent over the last quarter. Xiaomi was able to regain the number three spot for the first time in several years, overtaking Apple for the first time with year-on-year growth of 46 percent. Apple's shipments fell 7 percent year-on-year in the July-September quarter, no doubt affected by the fact that its new iPhones this year slipped until October and November release dates.

Huawei introduced the Mate 40 smartphone series on Thursday, potentially its last major release powered by its self-designed Kirin chips. From a report: China's biggest tech company by sales has been stockpiling chips to get its signature device out in time to compete with Apple's iPhone 12 over the holidays. Huawei will have to overhaul its smartphone lineup after Trump administration sanctions that took effect in September curtailed its ability to design and manufacture advanced in-house chips by cutting it off from the likes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The company's consumer devices group, led by Richard Yu, was already prevented from shipping handsets with the full Google-augmented Android experience. But that didn't stop it from surpassing Samsung Electronics to become the world's best-selling smartphone maker in the summer, largely on the strength of growing domestic sales. Without a contractor to produce its own chips or the ability to buy processors from a supplier like Qualcomm, prognostications for the division's future are less rosy.

The 6.5-inch Mate 40 and 6.76-inch Mate 40 Pro feature the 5nm Kirin 9000 processor, second to Apple's A14 chip to offer that advanced manufacturing node in consumer devices. The system-on-chip contains 15.3 billion transistors, including eight CPU cores maxing out at a speed of 3.13GHz and 24 GPU cores that Huawei claims give it 52% faster graphics than Qualcomm's best offering. Both devices have sloping glass sides and in-display fingerprint sensors. The new rear "Space Ring" design accommodating Huawei's multi-camera system is reminiscent of the control wheel of iPods of yesteryear. It plays host to a 50-megapixel main camera accompanied by zoom and ultrawide lenses.

Chinese technology companies including Huawei have expressed strong concerns to local regulators about Nvidia's proposed acquisition of Arm, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter said, potentially jeopardizing the $40 billion semiconductor deal. From a report: Several of the country's most influential tech firms have been lobbying the State Administration for Market Regulation to either reject the transaction or impose conditions to ensure their access to Arm technology, the people said. Chief among their concerns is that Nvidia may force the British firm to cut off Chinese clients, they said, asking not to be identified discussing private deliberations. China's fear is that Arm -- whose semiconductor designs and architecture are central to most of the world's electronics from smartphones to supercomputers -- will become yet another pawn in a U.S.-Chinese struggle for tech supremacy. Nvidia is buying the British firm from Japan's SoftBank, bringing it under American jurisdiction and theoretically threatening its cherished status as a neutral party in the chip industry.

Sweden banned Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE from its 5G mobile networks on Tuesday, citing China's "extensive intelligence gathering and theft of technology." From a report: Since the Trump administration announced its own ban last year, the U.S. government has increasingly pressured allies to follow its lead amid growing tensions between the West and China. In July, the United Kingdom became the first European country to announce plans to exclude Huawei from its networks by 2027. The Swedish government has given telecom companies until 2025 to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from their infrastructure. "China is one of the biggest threats to Sweden," said Klas Friberg, head of Sweden's security services. He said Beijing's "extensive intelligence gathering and theft of technology, research and development" is key to its economic and military development, according to the Financial Times. "This is what we must consider when building the 5G network of the future. We cannot compromise with Sweden's security."

According to The Wall Street Journal, AMD is in advanced talks to buy rival chip maker Xilinx Inc. for more than $30 billion. Slashdot reader Jerrry writes: "Looks like further consolidation in the chip industry is in order if this merger goes through..." CNBC reports: A deal, which could mark the latest big tie-up in the rapidly consolidating semiconductor industry, can come together as soon as next week, [The Wall Street Journal reported]. AMD has seen a higher usage of its products recently, driven in part by an overall surge in chip demand due to a global shift to work from home, and market-share gains from larger rival Intel.

San Jose, California-based Xilinx makes programmable chips used in data centers to speed up tasks such as artificial intelligence work and in 5G telecommunications base stations. The company's business suffered a setback last year when key customer Huawei Technologies Ltd was blacklisted by U.S. officials, preventing it from buying chips from U.S. companies. Government officials have since added other China-based companies, including some Xilinx customers, to the list.

A study finds that 58 percent of faculty at four prominent universities have received grants, fellowships, or other financial support from 14 tech firms. From a report: A paper published in July by researchers from the University of Rochester and China's Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business found that Google, DeepMind, Amazon, and Microsoft hired 52 tenure-track professors between 2004 and 2018. It concluded that this "brain drain" has coincided with a drop in the number of students starting AI companies. The growing reach and power of Big Tech prompted Abdalla to question how it influences his field in more subtle ways. Together with his brother, also a graduate student, Abdalla looked at how many AI researchers at Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and the University of Toronto have received funding from Big Tech over their careers.

The Abdallas examined the CVs of 135 computer science faculty who work on AI at the four schools, looking for indications that the researcher had received funding from one or more tech companies. For 52 of those, they couldn't make a determination. Of the remaining 83 faculty, they found that 48, or 58 percent, had received funding such as a grant or a fellowship from one of 14 large technology companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Intel, IBM, Huawei, Samsung, Uber, Alibaba, Element AI, or OpenAI. Among a smaller group of faculty that works on AI ethics, they also found that 58 percent of those had been funded by Big Tech. When any source of funding was included, including dual appointments, internships, and sabbaticals, 32 out of 33, or 97 percent, had financial ties to tech companies. "There are very few people that don't have some sort of connection to Big Tech," Abdalla says.

Investments by China's Huawei are not regular market transactions but rather "predatory actions" and all countries should ban them, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a newspaper interview on Friday. From a report: "Their investments are not private because they are subsidised by the (Chinese) State. Hence they are not transparent, free, commercial transactions like many others but they are rather carried out to the exclusive benefit of (China's) security apparatus," Pompeo told Italian daily la Repubblica, at the end of his two-day visit to the country. "(Huawei's investments) are predatory actions that no nation must or can allow," he added.

Ben Wood and Geoff Blaber, commenting on Google's new Pixel smartphones at research firm CCI Insight: Historically, Google has been one of the leaders in developing and implementing computational photography, mixing optics with digital sleight of hand to make imaging magic. And again, Google is promising great photography by using software smarts. The camera on the new phones has an ultrawide lens, a Night Sight feature that works in portrait mode, and a setting that lets users adjust the lighting in post-processing. The challenge for Google is that its camera capabilities are no longer unique, as all leading smartphone makers focus on camera and imaging tech to try and make their latest and greatest devices stand out.

[....] Given Google's scale, the progress of the Pixel business has been disappointing, particularly in light of the difficulties Huawei has faced. Mobile operators, retailers and consumers would benefit from a credible alternative to Apple and Samsung. On paper Google should fit the bill, but the company has consistently failed to live up to expectations. Sadly, it's hard to see how these new devices will do anything to address these shortcomings. Google's smartphone hardware strategy is in need of a reset. The company either needs to deliver differentiated flagship Android experiences or mass-market products with broad distribution. Right now, it provides neither and sits awkwardly within a vibrant ecosystem of Android players led by Samsung. Google must prove that Pixel still has a role.

Huawei has failed to adequately tackle security flaws in equipment used in the UK's telecoms networks despite previous complaints, an official report says. From a report: It also flagged that a vulnerability "of national significance" had occurred in 2019 but been fixed before it could be exploited. The assessment was given by an oversight board, chaired by a member of the cyber-spy agency GCHQ. It could influence other nations weighing up use of Huawei's kit. The report said that GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) had seen no evidence that Huawei had made a significant shift in its approach to the matter. And it added that while some improvements had been made, it had no confidence they were sustainable. As a result, it concluded, the board could only provide "limited assurance that all risks to UK national security" could be mitigated in the long-term. In July, the government announced that due to US sanctions Huawei would eventually be excluded from the new 5G telecoms network by 2027, but the Chinese company can continue to play a role in older mobile phone networks and fixed broadband.

The US has argued that using Huawei's equipment creates a risk of the Chinese state carrying out espionage or sabotage, something the company has always denied. Despite the criticisms, British security officials say they can manage the current risks posed by using Huawei's existing kit, and they do not believe the defects they have found are a result of Chinese state interference. Huawei has responded saying the report highlights its commitment to openness and transparency.

Huawei's Italian President says the company is ready to show that its technology does not pose any security risk to the countries that will include its equipment in the creation of 5G networks. Reuters reports: "We will open our insides, we are available to be vivisected to respond to all of this political pressure...," President Luigi De Vecchis said at the opening ceremony of the group's cyber-security centre in Rome. The United States has lobbied Italy and other European allies to avoid using Huawei equipment in their next generation networks, saying the company could pose a security risk. Huawei rejects those charges. "I am speechless that a country the size of the United States attacks another country through the demolition, via groundless accusations, of a company of that country," he said.

De Vecchis said that, despite all the pressure, Huawei had no intention of leaving the Italian market and was considering adding further products in fields such as energy. "It's extremely unlikely Huawei will leave the market because of the current situation," he said.

China is preparing to launch an antitrust probe into Google, looking into allegations it has leveraged the dominance of its Android mobile operating system to stifle competition, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. From the report: The case was proposed by telecommunications equipment giant Huawei last year and has been submitted by the country's top market regulator to the State Council's antitrust committee for review, they added. A decision on whether to proceed with a formal investigation may come as soon as October and could be affected by the state of China's relationship with the United States, one of the people said. The potential investigation follows a raft of actions by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to hobble Chinese tech companies, citing national security risks. This has included putting Huawei on its trade blacklist, threatening similar action for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp and ordering TikTok owner ByteDance to divest the short-form video app.

Beijing has sped up development of a blacklist that could be used to punish American technology firms, but officials say leaders are hesitating to pull the trigger, with some arguing a decision on the list should wait till after the U.S. election. From a report: The debate highlights Beijing's continued grappling with how to respond to the Trump administration without driving the relationship closer to collapse. So far, the Chinese leadership has tried to respond in kind to Washington's actions but has tried to avoid measures that go beyond those of the U.S. A well-timed strike can sometimes work in Beijing's and Chinese companies' favor. After President Trump's campaign for a U.S. company to take over video-sharing app TikTok, Chinese regulators rolled out new export-control rules that have helped TikTok parent ByteDance set terms that could help it avoid losing control of the platform's U.S. operations or crucial technology.

China first announced its plan to create a blacklist of U.S. entities in May 2019, soon after the U.S. restricted telecom giant Huawei Technologies's access to U.S. components and technology. But Beijing refrained from specifying any companies or individuals for the list as both countries' trade negotiators were engaged in the talks that eventually led to the signing of a "phase one" trade agreement in January. As the Trump administration has intensified its attacks on some of China's best-known companies -- also including Tencent Holdings, which runs the WeChat messaging and payments app -- the list has gained urgency. In recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, an interagency group led by Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, who oversees foreign investment and trade, has stepped up finalization of the "unreliable-entity" list -- China's answer to the U.S.'s list of Chinese entities it is targeting for sanctions.