This is the first time we’re mentioning Huawei’s next-gen flagship smartphone. The Huawei P50 will still be introduced. That is usually expected every year but to be honest, we thought the Chinese OEM would have to rethink its strategies due to the US-China trade war. The company has already sold off its Honor mobile business. Its Huawei P series phones can still be manufactured but it won’t have the Play Store support and other Google services as with the previous Huawei P phones.
The Huawei P50 series will be released in the first half of 2021. It’s not clear when but Huawei usually makes a big announcement every March. A Q1 launch may be expected with a Q2 market release. A Huawei Mate series may still be announced but that’s for an H2 2021 release.
Not much details from Huawei but display suppliers like Samsung Display and LG Display are said to be preparing to supply Huawei. There is already a production schedule. The phone may run on a Kirin 9000 processor which is the same chipset used on the Huawei Mate 40 series.
Next year may be the last for the Kirin group to supply to Huawei since the latter needs to make big changes to survive. Huawei no longer has access to Google Mobile Service, as well as, to some of its core suppliers. All those restrictions resulted to Huawei losing 60 million units in shipment for this year. The number may even be bigger next year.
With Huawei’s misfortune, Samsung is definitely reaping the benefits. It still is the number one mobile OEM in the world but was briefly overtaken by Huawei in the second quarter of 2020. We now doubt Huawei will ever be the top phone maker in the world–not anytime soon.
