Huawei is open to enable 5G iPhone: CEO Richard Yu

World
Europe

Huawei's 5G chipsets are open for sale to third-party companies, and the company will "say yes" if US device giant Apple wants to buy it, Richard Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group (CBG), announced on Thursday, according to the Global Times.

So far, Apple has made no comments on Huawei's last offer.

The California-based company is now in a hot seat after Huawei and Samsung rolling out their 5G smartphones successively this year. And even the long-forgotten Motorola has launched its Moto Z3 that can connect to Verizon's 5G network.

The reason that Apple is behind its competitor in this white war is due to the lack of a 5G modem chip, a device that is used to transfer data to a large variety of physical mediums.

Since the company broke up with Qualcomm, a major chip supplier of Apple's iPhone lineups, over patents and royalties issues in 2016, Apple moved solely to Intel for its 5G plan.

But according to Intel, its 5G modem chip will not be available in the first half of 2019, and it never indicated when it believed products will arrive for customers. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple would not have a 5G iPhone ready until 2020.

In January, Apple held talks with Samsung and MediaTek along with existing vendor Intel about supplying modem chips in the near term, but neither company may have chips ready for 2020.

Huawei once said that its 5G chips are only for the "internal products" use and will not sell its self-developed 5G chipsets to third-party companies. But now, the CEO said, "Huawei is open."