Huawei's Efforts To Steal Apple Trade Secrets Include Employee Bonus Program and Other Dubious Tactics: Report (macrumors.com)

In a report published Monday, The Information [paywalled] has detailed tactics used by China's Huawei to steal Apple's trade secrets. These tactics include Huawei engineers appealing to Apple's third-party manufacturers and suppliers with promises of big orders, but instead using the opportunity to pry on processes specific to iPhone-maker's component production. From a report: According to today's report, a Huawei engineer in charge of the company's smartwatch project tracked down a supplier that makes the heart rate sensor for the Apple Watch. The Huawei engineer arranged a meeting, suggesting he was offering the supplier a lucrative manufacturing contract, but during the meeting his main intent was questioning the supplier about the Apple Watch. The Huawei engineer attended the supplier meeting with four Huawei researchers in tow. The Huawei team spent the next hour and a half pressing the supplier for details about the Apple Watch, the executive said. "They were trying their luck, but we wouldn't tell them anything," the executive said. After that, Huawei went silent.

This event reportedly reflects "a pattern of dubious tactics" performed by Huawei to obtain technology from rivals, particularly Apple's China-based suppliers. According to a Huawei spokesperson the company has not been in the wrong: "In conducting research and development, Huawei employees must search and use publicly available information and respect third-party intellectual property per our business-conduct guidelines." According to the U.S. Justice Department, Huawei is said to have a formal program that rewards employees for stealing information, including bonuses that increase based on the confidential value of the information gathered.

Comments

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[AmiMoJo]

In the case of the Apple Watch heart rate sensor there isn't really much to tell. The sensor at that time is just a basic capacitative pick-up stack and an off-the-shelf amplifier from Analogue Devices, as the teardown clearly shows. Any cleverness is in the software, and back the it wasn't even that clever - extremely average battery life, average sensitivity and accuracy.

It might make some sense if it was the newer optical type of sensor, but even then it's not an Apple specific part and they could just buy one from the same place Apple gets them.

This claim needs some concrete evidence to back it up.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[AmiMoJo]

They're interested in the manufacturing process - how things are made, integrated, and put together. That's the part that China needs to learn.

That's the part that China taught Apple.

Apple doesn't do most of the manufacturing development for its products, Foxconn does. Foxconn has the expertise in that area, and they will sell it to anyone who pays.