Four years ago, Symantec and Huawei formed a joint venture in Hong Kong called, appropriately enough, Huawei Symantec Technologies. The company combined Symantec's security with Huawei's storage and hardware, but last November Symantec announced it was selling its 49 percent stake to Huawei. Today, the reason for that may be a little clearer, as the New York Times is reporting that Symantic is concerned that having close ties with Huawei would be bad for business with the US government.

Apparently the government is looking to bring in private sector help to deal with cybersecurity and Symantec thought running a joint venture with Huawei would prevent it from getting cleared fro classified information. That makes Symantec just the latest in what's becoming a trend of distrust for Huawei, which recently included the Australian government banning it from bidding on a network buildout as well as US government prohibiting it from building LTE (and WiMAX before it) in the states. Although the Huawei's close ties with the Chinese government are the main cause for trepidation, the fact that it only recently began scaling back business with Iran also hasn't weighed in its favor.