After Washington tightened export rules against Chinese technology companies, the Nikkei on Monday claimed that Apple Inc. had postponed plans to utilize memory chips from China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) in its products.
The leading memory chip manufacturer in China, YMTC, as well as 30 other Chinese enterprises, were last week added to a list of businesses that U.S. inspectors have been unable to audit.
According to people familiar with the situation, Nikkei said that Apple had originally intended to use the NAND flash memory chips produced by the state-funded YMTC as soon as this year. Only iPhones sold in the Chinese market were supposed to employ the processors at first.
The newspaper further reported that the company was thinking about eventually buying up to 40% of the chips required for every iPhone from YMTC.
China’s leading memory chip manufacturer YMTC and 30 other Chinese organizations were last week added to a list of businesses that U.S. investigators have been unable to check, escalating tensions with Beijing and kicking off a 60-day clock that could result in even worse penalties.
The U.S. Commerce Department is also looking into whether YMTC sold chips to the blacklisted Chinese telecom company Huawei Technologies Co Ltd in violation of American export laws.
YMTC is China’s best chance of competing in the NAND flash memory market, which has long been dominated by a small number of firms, including Samsung and SK Hynix of South Korea, Kioxia of Japan, and Micron of the United States.
The expansive set of export restrictions imposed on China by the Biden administration aims to halt Beijing’s scientific and military advancements by denying Beijing access to certain semiconductor chips produced anywhere in the world using American technology.
