Chinese telecom firm Huawei Technologies is working with French-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics (STMicro) to design chips for mobile devices and autonomous vehicles, a move industry analysts said will help secure its global supply chain as the U.S. tightens export controls on the company. The collaboration with STMicro, which began in 2019, will accelerate Huawei’s autonomy from U.S. suppliers. “It’s a good thing for both sides as many European semiconductor manufacturers have been battered by the fallout from Covid-19. Some of them have lost competitiveness in the global market, so forming a partnership with Huawei will ameliorate their financial woes,” said Telecom Industry Analyst Xiang Ligang.

Geng Bo, Vice Secretary General of the China Solid State Lighting Alliance, a semiconductor industry association, said self-driving automotive chips will be the next battleground for Huawei. STMicro has advantages in making automobile chips and it is the supplier for key chipsets to clients like Tesla. Huawei is gradually shifting parts of its chip production from Taiwan-based TSMC to the Shanghai-based SMIC as part of broad efforts to get ready for a more relentless U.S. crackdown. The Trump Administration is considering changing U.S. regulations to allow it to block shipments of TSMC-made chips to Huawei. The U.S. said it will impose new restrictions on exports to China from non-U.S. companies that use products based on U.S.-developed chipmaking equipment to keep semiconductor production equipment and other technologies away from China’s military. “The new rules will require licenses for U.S. companies to sell certain items to companies in China that support the military, even if the products are for civilian use,” the Global Times reports.

HiSilicon, Huawei Technologies’ semiconductor and integrated circuit design subsidiary, has surpassed Qualcomm in terms of smartphone processor shipments in China for the first time amid coronavirus-linked disruptions that have hit most major players, according to a report by Chinese research firm CINNO. In the first quarter of 2020, HiSilicon shipped 22.21 million smartphone processors. Although HiSilicon’s shipments only increased slightly from the 22.17 million units it shipped in the first quarter of last year, it was the only major company that did not see a year-on-year decline in the quarter, CINNO said. As a result, the Huawei subsidiary’s market share surged to 43.9%, from 36.5% during the same period last year. HiSilicon’s steady performance comes at a time when the Chinese smartphone industry is being battered by delayed product launches and dampened consumer sentiment linked to the coronavirus pandemic. Smartphone shipments in the country slumped by 34.7% to 47.7 million units in the first quarter of 2020, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. CINNO’s report showed that smartphone processor shipments in the country dropping by 44.5% in the first three months of 2020, compared to the same period last year. Over 90% of Huawei phones in China now use HiSilicon processors, according to CINNO. However, Huawei Founder Ren Zhengfei said in an interview with Yahoo Finance last year that the company would continue using chips from U.S. vendors such as Intel and Qualcomm as long as it is still allowed by U.S. regulators. U.S.-based Qualcomm, the long-time market leader, fell to second place in the latest quarter with a year-on-year decline in market share from 37.8% to 32.8%. Taiwan’s Mediatek maintained its third-place position, the South China Morning Post reports.