Chronology of Huawei's ban: what has happened up to now and what to expect

Last Friday, the US Department of Commerce added Huawei to the list of entities, also called blacklist. It basically meant that US companies were prohibited from exporting hardware and software to Huawei. The full impact of this became apparent a few days later.

During the weekend, Google suspended Huawei's access to its services. Huawei can still use the AOSP Android, but not the Play Store or other services managed by Google. Existing devices will continue to work and will even receive security updates.

On Monday, the United States decided to postpone the 90-day ban. A few days earlier, Huawei had announced that it had enough chips and essential components to last for three months. It is unclear if this means that the company will be able to continue selling phones in the short term.

The Honor 20 and 20 Pro were announced on Tuesday, but the release date has not been fixed yet. On the same day, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro was removed from the beta program of Android 10 Q; therefore, major operating system updates are pending (again, security updates should continue to be released).

On Wednesday, ARM cut ties with Huawei. The Kirin chipsets of the company use ARM cores for the processor and graphics processor (Cortex and Mali). ARM designs are also used in the company's 5G network chips.

On Thursday, TSMC announced that it would continue to manufacture Huawei chips. In addition, a source told the BBC that the ban did not affect the Kirin 985, at least not directly. Indirectly, there is no phone to put it (the Mate 20 would have probably been the beginning of the 985 chip).

If the United States withdraw Huawei from the list of entities in the coming weeks, everything should return to normal. Well, not quite – Huawei will certainly intensify its efforts to reduce its reliance on US hardware and software. He is already working on an operating system internally.

If the ban remained in force longer, Huawei would certainly be affected and could be difficult to recover – its rivals would quickly resume any market share lost outside of China. Huawei will lose income.

And if it takes months, Huawei's business outside China could be over. Clearly, the company will continue to operate in its home country. However, its overseas operations in the areas of smartphones, laptops and network equipment may not recover.

Here is a brief overview of other companies that have stopped shipping to Huawei. The company may find local alternatives (eg, BOE screens), but it will be difficult to replace everything.

EE launches on May 30 its first 5G network in the UK, but has abandoned its plan to sell Huawei 5G phones. Vodafone also suspended its pre-orders for the Huawei Mate 20 X (5G). Japanese operators KDDI, NTT Docomo and SoftBank have delayed the launch of new phones Huawei (SoftBank, by the way, owns ARM).

Huawei has been excluded from the SD Association, which means it can not publish new models with a microSD slot. It has its own NM card format, but these are made by Toshiba and Toshiba has just stopped deliveries to Huawei.

Panasonic has also suspended its exchanges with Huawei. Intel, Qualcomm, Xilinx and Broadcom have also halted their deliveries to Huawei. This does not only affect the smartphone sector of the company, but also the activities of his computer and his server.

The memory maker Infineon also reportedly broke with the smart phone manufacturer, but the company denied it.

Huawei protests against the decision of the US Department of Commerce and says it has put in place relief plans. However, a lot of things happened in the space of a week and it hurt not only Huawei, but also its American partners. What happens next will be one for the history books.