Last week Patently Apple posted a report titled "Huawei Mocks Apple by Offering them Exclusive Access to their 5G Modems for iPhones." The report noted that in 2018 the U.S. Government attempted to stop Huawei from entering the U.S. Market via AT&T. AT&T did in fact drop their Huawei launch. Then last August President Trump signed a bill banning government use of Huawei and ZTE technology. With foolish rumors circulating of late that Apple has been unable to secure supplies of 5G modems that would push a 5G iPhone out to 2021, Huawei thought that they'd play up Apple's current weakness by offering them exclusive access to their 5G Balong 5000 chip modems.

Huawei clearly understands that the U.S. government would block any such sale of 5G modems to Apple and so the whole CNBC storyline published today intelligently became a pure marketing tool for Huawei rather than a serious report.  

However, it's the political situation which makes their gesture a joke. If the politics of the day were different in the U.S., technically Apple could deal with a competitor like Huawei like they do with Samsung. Business is business.

So it's not that it's impossible for these two smartphone leaders to work with each other in the future for components, but it is impossible under the current political circumstances. I think that Apple would rather deal with Huawei, if push came to shove, if it meant defying Qualcomm.

If anything, the CNBC report showed that Huawei's founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei was respectful of Apple's former co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs.

Specifically Huawei's CEO noted that "Mr. Jobs was great not because he created Apple, but because he created an era, the mobile internet era. Saying that he was great is an understatement. I think he was super-great."

The Huawei boss recalled a story about a his youngest daughter Annabel Yao from 2011, the year Jobs died. "When he passed away, I was on a vacation in the mountains with my family," Ren said. "My younger daughter is a fan of Mr. Jobs, so she proposed that we stop for a moment of silence to mourn him, and we did."

For more on this read the full CNBC report here.

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