Windows Phone partners Huawei and ZTE labeled security threat by the US

ZTE

The Samsung Focus or ZTE Orbit?

The Us Congressional Intelligence Committee has labeled Huawei and ZTE as security threat to the U.s. and is advising firms to not do business with them. This follows later an xi-month investigation into both companies where their cooperation on certain matters was, according to the commission, sufficiently lacking.

The charges (at least for Huawei) go back a few years hither in the The states where they were defendant of high-level espionage of Nortel, with some fifty-fifty alleging that their IP theft helped destroy the company (come across the excellent CNBC documentary on information technology hither).

Cisco and Motorola have likewise accused Huawei of either stealing IP or their own employees to gain knowledge of those companies. In improver, charges of blackmail, corruption and discriminatory behavior have been alleged likewise.

At present, the United states authorities is actively advocating that both companies be blacklisted here due to their closeness to the Chinese government. The request though falls curt of an outright boycott of the firms. The claim is then bold that we'll reprint it the entire quote from US Congressman Mike Rogers who spoke with hour:

"If I were an American company today, and I'll tell you this as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Commission on Intelligence, and you are looking at Huawei, I would find some other vendor if you intendance well-nigh your intellectual property, if you care about your consumers' privacy, and you care nigh the national security of the The states of America."

Whether or yous not you agree with the claims, this positioning of the The states government and the exposé by the respected news plan 60 Minutes volition have a huge impact on both companies trying to do business concern hither in u.s.a..

Huawei

Huawei and ZTE take both appear intentions for Windows Phone 8 handsets with Microsoft giving the nod to both companies. ZTE has repeatedly gone on record that they want to enter into the The states market (run across our previous coverage) and they recently did so on US Cellular with the ZTE Render (aka Orbit). Huawei are reportedly looking towards early 2022 for their first Windows Phone eight handset.

However, nosotros should signal out that the committees's claims pertain merely to "devices that involve processing of information on a big scale" east.g. larger-scale networks, routers and other mass computer technologies.

Smartphones, for their part, appear to be exempt from the findings. We also know that OEMs cannot really modify the Windows Phone Os in any significant ways, pregnant a Huawei or ZTE phone should theoretically be invulnerable to any sort of nefarious data drove (what everyone here is probably thinking).

Having said that, clearly the impairment is done—or just beginning—for both firms and it is unclear how Microsoft will respond to this situation, if at all.

Nosotros've reached out to Microsoft for a response.

Source: Reuters, 60 Minutes; via Android Key

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