Huawei continues its comeback from U.S. blacklist, unveiling a new laptop with a homegrown OS and AI—and an Intel processor

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1. “Huawei’s return to the premium consumer market is a marked change from just a few years ago when the company was struggling to survive in the face of severe U.S. sanctions.

   Yet Huawei got a lifeline from Intel, which reportedly received a license from the Trump administration to continue selling laptop
   processors to the Chinese company.

   Intel’s competitors, led by AMD, are pressuring the Biden administration to revoke this permission, Reuters reported earlier this year.

   An internal AMD presentation reportedly claimed that Intel provided 90.7% of Huawei’s laptop processors in the first six months of 2023, up from 52.9% in 2020. AMD’s share, by comparison, dropped from 47.1% to just 9.3%.

   China represented about a quarter of Intel’s sales last year, making it the chipmaker’s largest market, even ahead of the U.S.

   Still, Intel might be hit by regulatory scrutiny from Beijing, which is trying to reduce its reliance on foreign-sourced technology.

   Huawei is also developing its own AI chips, much like the processors from Nvidia that help train AI models. Chinese customers are reportedly turning to Huawei’s processors given fears that the U.S. could expand its controls on chip sales to China.

   All these new products are helping Huawei’s bottom line. The company said it had 87 billion yuan ($12 billion) in net profit for
   2023, a 144% year-on-year increase.”