Apple Shelves Plan to Use YMTC Chips
- October 17, 2022
- Posted by: Quatro Strategies
- Category: Manufacturing
U.S. tech giant Apple is set to freeze plans to use memory chips from China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) in its products after Washington imposed stricter export restrictions on Chinese technology companies, including YMTC. Apple had originally planned to start using state-backed YMTC’s NAND flash memory chips as early as this year. The chips were initially planned to be used only for iPhones sold in the Chinese market.
The U.S. tech company had been considering to eventually purchase up to 40% of its chips used in all iPhones from YMTC.
Washington last week added 31 Chinese entities, including the country’s top memory chipmaker YMTC, to a list of companies that U.S. officials have been unable to inspect, starting a 60 day-clock that could trigger much tougher penalties.
YMTC is also being investigated by the U.S. Commerce Department over whether it violated Washington’s export controls by selling chips to blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
Biden administration’s sweeping set of export controls on China is aimed at hampering Beijing’s technological and military advances by cutting the country’s supplies off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment.
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