Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei isn’t worried about the 90-day grace period that the U.S. has provided, and noted his company is “prepared.”
Speaking to a group of reporters from the Chinese media, Zhengfei said the grace period, in fact, “doesn’t mean much to us.”
“To us, the most important thing is to do our job well,” he said, according to transcripts translated into English sent to MobileSyrup. “What the U.S. will do is out of our control. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the U.S. companies that we work with.”
The comments come after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order, which placed several companies on an ‘Entity List,’ including the Shenzhen-based company and 70 affiliates.
The order doesn’t specifically call out Huawei but it “invoke[s] the International Emergency Economic Powers Act,” a law that grants the president the authority to regulate any commerce that could pose a national security threat to the U.S. In this case, Huawei and the other companies added to the Entity List.
The ban would restrict U.S. companies from doing business with Huawei and other companies on the list.
Immediately after this occurred, Google pulled its business from Huawei. This includes access to apps like Google Maps, YouTube, and the entire Google Play Store.
Not having access to the Play Store means users won’t be able to download or install any Android applications easily. However, users could still download APK files from less secure outside sources.
The U.S. granted a grace period until August 19th to allow companies currently affiliated with Huawei to find other customers. Moreover, this grace period enables Huawei to maintain its current networks and to provide software updates to its existing Android devices.
“We have been receiving support from a large number of U.S. component and part manufacturers over all these years. In the face of the recent crisis, I can feel these companies’ sense of justice and sympathy towards us,” he said.
“Our close relationships with US companies are the result of several decades of effort on both sides. These relationships won’t be destroyed by a piece of paper from the US government. As long as these companies can obtain approval from Washington, we will continue to buy in large volumes from them.”
Correction 05/28/2019: ZTE is not part of the U.S. governments entity list. MobileSyrup has updated the above story to reflect this.
