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by synaesthesisx 2227 days ago
As someone long Qualcomm this is excellent news.
3 comments

Why? Qualcomm is a US company, subject to the same export restrictions.
Qualcomm and Huawei are both "fabless" semiconductor companies, like NVidia or AMD. These companies design chips, but do not own foundries to manufacture them. TSMC is a "pure-play foundry", a company that does not design chips, but only manufactures chips that other companies have designed. TSMC is the largest and most advanced foundry.

Huawei (a Chinese company) and Qualcomm (a US company) both design modems[1]. Huawei and Qualcomm both need TSMC's fabs, or else they will not be able to manufacture their most advanced designs. If Huawei can't buy from TSMC, then new Huawei modems will have to be manufactured with inferior or more expensive alternatives.

With Huawei chips now more expensive or less performant, products designed by Qualcomm will be better in comparison. Presumably, this will cause Qualcomm's stock to rise in value, although it may be a net negative for the worldwide economy.

See also the recent announcement that TSMC reached an agreement with the US government to move some of its production to Arizona [2].

[1] Huawei's Kirin/Balong chips directly compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips: both are currently manufactured on TSMC's 7nm process.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23187698

Huawei is a competitor in the mobile SoC field.
Laugh until China bans Qualcomm...
Doesn't Qualcomm lose all future revenue coming from Huawei in this scenario? Please explain.
Huawei is one of their largest competitors in terms of 5G chipsets. Restrictions on Huawei would also likely help US companies like Apple, so this move would be a net positive.
and for those that ask why didn't Qualcomm sue Huawei to oblivion, just like they did to Apple in US and China?

Qualcomm did. China's antitrust body proceeded to fine them for 1B and forced them to offer reasonable IP licencing deal to local tech companies.

Which isn't unreaaonable: the Apple Qualcomm case is going in a similar direction in the US.
Thank you for explaining. It’s weird because it seems the overall sentiment with this move is negative on Qualcomm; perhaps because of the short term loses.