Gadget town has started talking about the Huawei Mate 40. For a phone that is “not Android”, the tech industry is still pretty much interested in the smartphone from Huawei. We still are because we want to know how many millions of phones the top Chinese mobile OEM will sell. It’s even more interesting because, in the past quarter, Huawei has overtaken Samsung last in the global phone market. It may still change as Samsung hopes to bounce back this second half of the year.
Huawei is also busy with other things like 5G. After officially announcing the HONOR X10 Max and HONOR 30 Lite, the Huawei MatePad 10.8 tablet was also introduced with faster WiFi 6 support. The company is also now working on the Huawei Mate 40 Pro. We’ve seen renders showing dual selfie cameras and a waterfall display.
The rendered images of the next-gen Huawei may be early but it’s the next premium flagship from a major brand. A Q3 reveal is targeted so we can expect the next few weeks and months, we will be seeing related leaks, rumors, and speculation.
The Huawei Mate 40 is said to be the last model that will run on the premium Kirin processor. Huawei also confirmed this information. Kirin is Huawei’s very own but the group will not be able to do business properly.
TSMC has ended its deal with Huawei, following the Trump administration’s trade ban of the Chinese OEM. It is one bittersweet end although we’re no longer surprised. In May, TSMC stopped getting orders from Huawei. TSMC said it could still survive even without business with Huawei.
Huawei has the HiSilicon subsidiary but with this development, it may not be able to do its business properly. HiSilicon only designs the chips but the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the one manufacturing it.
Huawei could still reverse the decision by asking the US government’s approval. We highly doubt that will happen though. TSMC just made the decision to discontinue getting orders from Huawei as they also had to ask permission from the government since they use US equipment.
The Huawei Mate 40 will be the last Huawei device to use HiSilicon’s Kirin chip. This detail has already been confirmed by Yi Chengdong, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business, at the 2020 Summit of the China Information Technology Association.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm is lobbying the US government to allow them to sell products to Huawei. As per a recent article on WSJ, Qualcomm wants to revoke the restrictions so it could provide chips to the Chinese OEM and have their products be used in Huawei’s 5G phones.
Qualcomm could lose billions if it won’t be able to sell to Huawei. Qualcomm is restricted at the moment while its foreign competitors are not. A source said the restriction has already awarded Qualcomm’s rivals eight billion dollars worth of its share in the market.
This development could still worsen a lot of things. The executive order is said to be threatening thousands of jobs in the US since a number of restrictions are still in place.
