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ZTE Shuts Down Main Business Operations After US Ban (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: ZTE wasn't kidding around when it suggested that a U.S. Department of Commerce order would "severely impact" its survival. It's hard to image a successful path around the seven-year ban on the sale of U.S. products to the company imposed after it reportedly failed to sufficiently reprimand staff for flouting Iranian sanctions. Earlier today, in fact, the Chinese smartphone/telecom manufacturer announced that it had ceased its main business operations as it attempts to figure out the best way forward. "As a result of the Denial Order, the major operating activities of the company have ceased," the company wrote in an exchange filing spotted by Reuters. "As of now, the company maintains sufficient cash and strictly adheres to its commercial obligations subject in compliance with laws and regulations."
Making all there old products....
ZTE looks like a huge company with operations all over the world. According to Wikipedia, cell phones only account for roughly 29% of their operations. So being shut out of one market (albeit a major one) in one sector of their business is enough to knock out the entire company? Something doesn't smell right.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I'm saddened to see them go; I love my ZTE Blade Spark. It's a _huge_ phone for under $100. The usable area of the display is bigger than the iPhone 6/7/8 plus and the battery lasts all day. ;(
First time I heard someone say it was regarding Iran sanctions as opposed to xenophobia. Almost as if all the previous stories were #FakeNews.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Trade wars can definitely can make things rocky, and are not necessarily easy to win...
All China has to do in retaliation is ban manufacturing Apple/Google products in its country, and it would severely harm those companies in the US...
About a year and a half ago I got each of my kids a ZTE ZMax Pro. I went with these phones because they were both affordable and full-featured.
They were $179 (unsubsidized). Specs were not quite on par with my LG V20, but they were decent.
- 1080p resolution
- 32GB storage, 2GB memory
- Decent cameras
- Only USB 2.0, but Type-C plug. (I got so tired of needing new micro-USB cables every other month for my kids)
- MicroSD slot (hate that so many phones have dumped this in an attempt to force users to utilize cloud storage to increase telecoms data usage profits, I expect since T-Mobile forced everyone into an "unlimited data" war that we will see the slots return as standard on Android phones.)
Google shows the user rating for the ZTE Zmax Pro as 4.3, which is pretty decent for a no-name budget phone. And to be honest, I've had less problems with my kids ZTE ZMax Pros than I did with either my Samsung Note 2/S5 Active.
defender of the free world, waiting for the new name of evil to register their next application. No civil rights violafions here, no Administrative Procedures Act violations, great job! now bring our buoys home.
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First time I heard someone say it was regarding Iran sanctions as opposed to xenophobia. Almost as if all the previous stories were #FakeNews.
I believe this was also one of the bullet points for Chinese trade sanctions; meaning, it's one of the half-dozen or so ways in which China cheats on their end of the trade agreement. They turn a blind eye to their companies that do this (and trade with North Korea).
China wanted to buy Qualcomm as they realized they had a dependency on Qualcomm chips but US did not allow it. Now they will try other tacks, maybe offer Qualcomm engineers huge salaries to come to China and build a competing chip. The US is like a 3rd world country now where politics drive trade decisions rather than rules.
**Life is too short to be serious**
ZTE is a publicly traded company, and a massive one at that. What you're proposing is that every single ZTE shareholder would have to somehow invest in this new company, every single employee would have to resign from the original and join the new, and every single asset would have to be transferred to the new company tax free.
No, most shareholders are irrelevant. However the new company will have the same major shareholders (founders, early investors, communist party officials, etc ... the pre-public and government folks) and possibly the same executives. As for assets they will get the good valuable and important stuff and the old shareholders will get to keep the legacy and unimportant stuff, and the mistakes.
I've seen this in the US. A company goes bankrupt. The previous owners/management contact the company that was supposed to do the asset auction and they make a pre-auction bulk purchase of the good stuff necessary to reboot under a new name.
The rest of the world gives less and less of shit about a certain future 3rd world wasteland nation.
The message I get from this is, don't depend on any American made parts because the American govt can (and will) simply cut you off and destroy your business with no recourse.
Surely this will decrease the wider worlds willingness to depend on American made parts and businesses?
China is a pretty big market to potentially lose.
you need an intro as good as Jordan Maxwell Cheeseball Mfgr Inc if anyone is to listen anything you have to say. That and more chins than little Chinatown.
(ex. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OqtX5BhJNBM )
One of many SOC manufacturers. ... Hint: The patent money doea not go to the inventor employees. But to the type of leech usuall called boss or stock holder or board, etc.).
At best, they would be "dependent" by pointlessly honoring US patents (aka protection money for leeches who don' work.
The fact that any company sold anything to Iran at all under sanctions was basically a "let's see you stop me" move, and they got rightly called on that.
True they didn't have the sophistication to create a cutout company. A Czech company created a non-EU cutout company to sell goods to, who would in turn sell goods to Iran. Different ownership, a friend of a friend owned the cutout. The Czech company got its extra sales at a good price, the cutout got a good markup and basically reshipped unopened boxes. The Iranian buyers paid noticeably more for the goods but it understood the complications and workaround.
Now this was possible since the goods were consumer luxury items. Not tightly controlled and tracked military grade type stuff. YMMV depending on the goods.
The US is like a 3rd world country now where politics drive trade decisions rather than rules.
Dude, we now have just as many job openings as we have unemployed, for the first time in ever.
Also, the Qualcomm thing was part of the China trade sanctions, for China turning a blind eye towards companies that did business with N.Korea.
This indirectly led to the end of the Korean war.
If you could go back in time and choose or reverse the Qualcomm decision, which choice would you make: the one for a healthy Qualcomm, high US unemployment, and North and South Korea rattling sabres?
Or would you choose the situation we have today?
Most of the tech press is centered around the smartphone business (TFA is one of the few I've seen which does not make much emphasis on Smartphones, but does not tell the whole story), and the lack of Qualcomm Chips and Google services on the phones, but the problems run much deeper.
The bulk of ZTE's money do not come from the terminal business (Smartphones + CPEs [think ADSL/GPON modems and Wifi]). No, the bulk of ZTE's money comes from telco network gear, and there the sanctions already got their effect.
ZTE uses Acacia's chips for their optical (think fiber optics) equipment, and Acacia's shares are way down as a result.
You need Broadcom chips for the CPEs, MIPS and Brocade chips for the telco routers, PowerPC chips for the telephony switches, Altera's FPGAs for a myriad of specialized functions. and the list goes on and on...
You need certain OSs for your BSS/OSS systems. Things Like RedHat and Suse (yes, Linux is FOSS, but in order to play nice with the telcos, you need the certified Cosher/Halal versions).
While on the subjetc, while the guys of OpenSS7 have done a huge aamount of work, the SS7 solutions available and viable on linux are all the commercial variety (or you have to go to the ussual suspects), and all based in the USoA. Same for the X.700 implementations (SNMP's mucular, smart, badass, MMA older brother) in Linux and other OSs (HP-UX, AIX and Solaris).
Your boards run all sorts of RTOSs, for instance, wind-river...
Your IPTV gear needs all sorts of Processors and SW subjected to the embargo...
As a result of the ban, all these technologies are off-limits to ZTE now.
So no, this is not about "Qualcomm chips and Google's OS for Smartphones". If it were only that, the company would continue operating, and in less than 18 months, you would have a "Mediatek + AOSP based" Smartphone from ZTE taking over a decent chunk of market...
Good we have slashdot to get/set the record straight.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Nice that we have cut them off, BUT, China will retaliate SOON about that. Keep in mind that ZTE was controlled by the CHinese communist party, which is why they were giving out information to other nations.
Chances are good that China will stop rare earth minerals again, BEFORE Japan has started their mining operations. America really needs to remove all critical dependencies from our economy. It is one thing to depend on an alley, but another to depend on somebody like CHina.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
> BEFORE Japan has started their mining operations
Japanese countryside is beautiful, let's hope they don't turn it into moonscape, especially since the entire island isn't very large to begin with. What mining has done to scar the face of e.g. Germany is simply indescribable.
(Hayao Miyazaki, the japanese Walt Disney already made an animated movie titled Princess Mononoke back in 1997, where the main conflict was between the spirits and animals of wilderness versus miners of the "early modern era" industrializing human civilization.)
Violating Sanctions matters. Hopefully, the top 100 in ZTE are personally named in the ban too, regardless of which company they might happen to work.
They thought they'd get away with it, because nobody would be watching. How many prior times had other Chinese companies gotten away doing the same thing?
They were wrong, this time.
But it won't change the mainland Chinese business culture of trying to get away with whatever they can against foreigners.
Just to add - watch out for the Chinese grandmothers too.
Access to a market is never unfettered. For better or worse, we trade some governmental control of access to the market for various benefits (quality control, protection for domestic competition, etc.), so market regulators are thus granted the right to set conditions for market entry.
In this case, we demand that participants not trade with our enemies. ZTE violated that rule. We imposed a limited regime of punishments--a corporate fine and a request that the responsible corporate officers be punished--that the company had to agree to if it wanted to continue to trade in this market. ZTE essentially lied: it's employees weren't punished after all. By violating the terms of its punishment, it effectively opted out of the market.
I'm no economic nationalist, but my concern is that this might push China to create domestic competitors to Qualcomm and the other key US-based parts suppliers, making matters worse for US companies in the long run and likely negatively impacting the US economy. On the other hand, more competition should drive quality up and prices down, which is good for me as a consumer. So I'm conflicted.
Darn. I just tried to update my phone, and it said "Network Unavailable" (and my network is working just fine).
Samsung NEVER updates their phones. ZTE was doing a FANTASTIC job of updating their phones.
That makes sense. I was missing the supply chain component of the ban.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
A LOT of the IP for cell phone technology is covered by loads of patents in the US (and most anywhere else a Japanese, Korean or European cell phone company sells phones, which is pretty much everywhere) Good luck building anything that connects to a 4G network without running through a gauntlet of patent infringement claims.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
By sheer numbers, LG and Qualcomm own half of the 4G encumbering patents. Nokia is the only European company that holds a significant number, which is about on par with a small US company called InterDigital that exists basically to license cell phone patents.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Demand will be fulfilled by other suppliers that follow the rules.
Plain and simple. Unfortunately this is overdue.
There are obviously some good people in the company but they have to take responsibility for allowing a bunch of pirates run around.