United States grants new moratorium on Huawei until mid-August

The US government on Friday extended the moratorium for the fifth time so that the country's companies can continue doing business with Huawei for 90 more days, although it increased pressure on the Chinese telecommunications giant by restricting its access to semiconductors with US technology.

The Commerce Department said this new extension could be the last. The newly announced restriction is "strategically aimed at the acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain U.S. technology and software.

The U.S. government is thus giving another twist to its pressure on Huawei. However, it also renewed for another 90 days of margin, until August 13, the license to companies that maintain commercial links with Huawei.

The U.S. executive is wary of the company's ties with the Chinese government and says he suspects that Huawei might use its mobile phones and other technological equipment to spy abroad and provide information to China's leaders.

Although the market share of Huawei's mobile phones in the United States is very small (less than 1%, according to the latest data from Statcounter), the Chinese company does have a strong presence as a supplier of telecommunication equipment in rural areas of the country.

Its products, which are substantially cheaper than those of its competitors, have enabled the deployment of wireless networks in large, sparsely populated areas of the country where, but for Huawei, these infrastructures would have been practically unfeasible from a financial point of view.

Of all Huawei's U.S. providers, Google has the highest profile, since the phones that the Chinese manufacturer sells worldwide (and which are especially popular in markets such as Latin America and Europe) come pre-installed with the Android operating system and services such as Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube and the Google Play application store.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Commerce announced new restrictions to prevent the company from having access to chips or semiconductors in the global market. The measures affect manufacturers in third countries that use U.S. software or technology to develop products that they then sell to Huawei, a route that the U.S. government has now acknowledged allowed it to circumvent measures taken last year to prevent it from working with U.S. components. Washington is claiming veto power over global suppliers to which the Chinese manufacturer will have access to develop its own semiconductors.