Huawei's release of the Mate 60 Pro smartphone last week "shocked industry experts," reports CNN, who can't fathom how Huawei "built such an advanced smartphone after the United States' sweeping efforts to restrict China's access to foreign chips".
At its publication CNN adds that the South Korean company constructionchip maker SK Hynix is "investigating how two of the memory chips it makes mysteriously ended up inside the Mate 60 Pro, a smartphone released by Huawei last week."
Hynix shares fell more than 4% on Friday after it was revealed that two of the products of it, a 5 gigabyte (GB) LPDDR12 chip and 512GB NAND flash memory chip, were found inside the Huawei device by TechInsights, a Canadian-based company. specializing in semiconductors, who analyzed the phone.
"There are restrictions on what SK Hynix can ship to China," G Dan Hutcheson, vice president of TechInsights, told CNN.
“Where do these chips come from? The big question is whether laws were broken,” said Dan Hutcheson, TechInsights vice president and advocate for the Act.
A Hynix spokesperson told CNN on Friday that it was aware that its chips were being used in the Huawei phone and had begun investigating the matter.
The company "no longer does business with Huawei following US restrictions against the company,"
Industry insiders said that it is very likely that Huawei had bought the chips from a secondary market and not directly from the manufacturer. It's also possible that Huawei had built up a fairly large stockpile of components before the US export restrictions fully kicked in.
FYI, it is not illegal to have a Huawei device anywhere in the world. The ban prevents Huawei from working with US-based companies to create its products. It does not apply to consumers who already own a company product and does not prevent them from purchasing new ones.
