Huawei has quietly launched three Mate 60 phones in the last two weeks, all with 5G support. Multiple Chinese sources now claim this is the first step in a new offensive in the global smartphone market. IT Home quotes several insiders who claimed that Huawei is laying the foundation for the Chinese domestic market and continuing its expansion abroad. However, an exact schedule is currently not available.
Huawei was one of the victims in the trade war between China and the US that began over five years ago. As a result, the company was banned from accessing most U.S. technologies. This brought the Huawei P60 Pro and the Mate 50 Pro to global markets with 4G-limited Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipsets. The Huawei Mate 60 relied again on 5G and thus on the in-house Kirin 9000S chipset, which is based on an older 7 Nm technology process.
The company did not officially comment on the chipset situation. However, reports from China showed that the chip is manufactured entirely in the home country. Of course, this raises further questions about how local companies acquired the know-how for such complicated processes in such a short time.
Huawei has already increased its annual production forecast from 30 million in January to 38 million today. Of these, Huawei has already delivered 20 million units. The Huawei Mate 60 Pro models will account for another 6 million, or a third of the remaining orders.
There were also some reports that the series might not leave China. However, Huawei has not yet officially commented on this, so the door remains open for a possible global release. A quick look into the past shows that Huawei used to have a 42% share of the Chinese smartphone market. Today that percentage is less than 10 points. The global market share is currently 3%, compared to almost 20% in mid-2019.
