Huawei expected to get another six months license extension to work with U.S. companies

The Commerce Department is expected to grant Huawei a six-month extension that will allow it to do limited business with U.S. companies.

The Commerce Department put Huawei and other Chinese companies on an Entity list earlier this year which prevented them from doing business with U.S. companies. However, it granted the Chinese company a 3-month temporary waiver which allowed it to do limited business with U.S. firms for that time period.

At the end of that three-month cycle, the temporary reprieve was again extended for 90 days which is set to expire on November 18. After this, if the license is not extended, Huawei will not be able to do any business with U.S. companies.

However, since a number of rural telecommunication companies rely on Huawei for networking equipment, the U.S. Commerce Department is expected to grant the Chinese company another license extension of six months. The previous extension was also granted on similar grounds.

This will still be a limited license meaning Huawei still cannot buy chips from companies like Intel or Qualcomm. It also means that it cannot get new devices certified from Google which prevents it from launching new smartphones pre-installed with Google's Play suite. It will only allow the company to continue pushing software updates to its existing devices like the P30 Pro, Mate 20 series, etc.

Huawei has already launched the Mate 30 series without Google's mobile suite. While the phone runs on Android 10, it does not come pre-loaded with the Google Play Store and other Google apps. While the company can push Google apps to the Mate 30 "over one night," it needs the ban on it to be lifted first and granted a full license to work with U.S. companies.

Source Politico