The unthinkable may have happened – research firm Omdia claims Qualcomm has lost its leadership position in shipping smartphone chips to MediaTek, because of US sanctions against Huawei. The firm’s latest report says MediaTek took 27% of the smartphone chipset market in 2020, just ahead of Qualcomm’s 25%, although the US firm still dominates 5G and powered 39% of the 5G handsets sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2020. But the US sanctions are, as predicted, hurting US firms as well as Huawei. Those sanctions have denied Huawei access to most US components, since US chip suppliers are barred from supplying the Chinese giant without special licenses (which have generally not been forthcoming). In addition, Huawei has been restricted…