Chairman tells staff to stay calm after US slaps crippling ban on ZTE

ZTE can’t buy from American companies, which reportedly provide up to 30% of its components

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ZTE’s Blade V8 Pro on display at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (Picture: Bloomberg)

Published: 9:00pm, 17 Apr 2018Updated: 8:23am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

ZTE’s chairman is urging employees to remain calm -- after the US government banned American companies from selling it any hardware or software for seven years, potentially crippling its smartphone business in its biggest market.

Chairman Yin Yimin told staff that ZTE was taking the ban very seriously, according to an internal memo seen by the South China Morning Post. Yin asked employees to work together and not to panic. “I’d like to appeal all employees to maintain a state of calm, to man one’s post and do one’s job well,” says the memo.

ZTE may be a Chinese company, but its products contain a lot of American technology. Reuters estimates that 30% of ZTE’s components come from the United States, including Snapdragon CPUs from Qualcomm.

And it isn’t just physical parts: The ban extends to software, too. Android itself is open-source, so ZTE can continue to use the operating system -- but the same may not be true of Google’s Android apps, which require an agreement between the American company and the Chinese handset maker.

If covered by the ban, it would mean no Google Maps, no Gmail, and no Google Play Store -- some of the biggest apps in the world, all missing from ZTE’s handsets.