Huawei officially confirmed that the Mate 40 flagship will be the last smartphone with its high-end Kirin processors.
Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer business, said the mass production of Kirin chips will be halted after September 15. That date is the same date when the US ban on Huawei will start permanently.
Apple and Huawei manufacture their own chips and it is very budget-friendly to build your own processors. Samsung also has their own chipsets but are not used as widely as Apple or Huawei.
Huawei’s in-house Kirin chips are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry. TSMC, a Taiwan-based company, uses equipment sourced from the US. By that logic, TSMC needs to get permission from the Trump administration to manufacture Kirin chips for Huawei.
Qualcomm and Mediatek are the two options left for Huawei. It would not be an easy task for Qualcomm to supply chips to Huawei. As they are a San-Diego based company the restrictions placed by the US government would cause problems in this deal.
There is a third option, Huawei can get their processors from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), which is China’s biggest contract chip manufacturer.
The issue is SMIC is still using 14nm processors whereas the above 2 are using 7nm processors and are soon to switch to 5nm. So that is a lot of advantage in terms of technology.
Huawei is already struggling with the ban of not using any google service. With this on top, it is a tough road ahead for the Chinese tech giants. One positive for Huwaei is that they are still using the Harmony OS.
Chengdong confirmed that all Huawei IoT products — including PCs, tablets, and yes, even mobile phones — will be based on Harmony OS rather than Android.
He said that 2021 would be the year when we see phones based on Harmony OS rather than the android.