Huawei Announces Last Major Phone Before US Ban Forces Rethink (bloomberg.com) 20
Huawei introduced the Mate 40 smartphone series on Thursday, potentially its last major release powered by its self-designed Kirin chips. From a report: China's biggest tech company by sales has been stockpiling chips to get its signature device out in time to compete with Apple's iPhone 12 over the holidays. Huawei will have to overhaul its smartphone lineup after Trump administration sanctions that took effect in September curtailed its ability to design and manufacture advanced in-house chips by cutting it off from the likes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The company's consumer devices group, led by Richard Yu, was already prevented from shipping handsets with the full Google-augmented Android experience. But that didn't stop it from surpassing Samsung Electronics to become the world's best-selling smartphone maker in the summer, largely on the strength of growing domestic sales. Without a contractor to produce its own chips or the ability to buy processors from a supplier like Qualcomm, prognostications for the division's future are less rosy.
The 6.5-inch Mate 40 and 6.76-inch Mate 40 Pro feature the 5nm Kirin 9000 processor, second to Apple's A14 chip to offer that advanced manufacturing node in consumer devices. The system-on-chip contains 15.3 billion transistors, including eight CPU cores maxing out at a speed of 3.13GHz and 24 GPU cores that Huawei claims give it 52% faster graphics than Qualcomm's best offering. Both devices have sloping glass sides and in-display fingerprint sensors. The new rear "Space Ring" design accommodating Huawei's multi-camera system is reminiscent of the control wheel of iPods of yesteryear. It plays host to a 50-megapixel main camera accompanied by zoom and ultrawide lenses.
The 6.5-inch Mate 40 and 6.76-inch Mate 40 Pro feature the 5nm Kirin 9000 processor, second to Apple's A14 chip to offer that advanced manufacturing node in consumer devices. The system-on-chip contains 15.3 billion transistors, including eight CPU cores maxing out at a speed of 3.13GHz and 24 GPU cores that Huawei claims give it 52% faster graphics than Qualcomm's best offering. Both devices have sloping glass sides and in-display fingerprint sensors. The new rear "Space Ring" design accommodating Huawei's multi-camera system is reminiscent of the control wheel of iPods of yesteryear. It plays host to a 50-megapixel main camera accompanied by zoom and ultrawide lenses.
"Free market" (Score:4, Insightful)
Only when it suit us.
Re: "Free market" (Score:2)
Re:"Free market" (Score:4, Informative)
As it should be. If an economy doesn't do what you want, you fix it. The "free market" is not a law of nature - it needs a state to protect it and to monitor and regulate it.
Re:"Free market" (Score:4, Insightful)
The "free market" is not a law of nature - it needs a state to protect it and to monitor and regulate it
That's not what US politicians are telling people who protect their own economies.
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Well, don't listen to them, then. Time will tell who's right.
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Thanks for the free advice, totally worth the fee, but sadly I don't get the choice whether to "listen" to them or not.
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Riiight, how free is the Chinese market to US products again?
Unlike the US, I've never heard China claim to be "the champion of international free trade". It is the hypocrisy that's the problem, not the actual position, because you can argue about economic principles, but you can't argue with a liar like the US, which moves the goalposts as it suits them.
Oh right You have to have a Chinese company "sponsor" you (translation - give them a cut) or build it in China or you ain't selling shit.
Please stop lying. You can sell shit and not involve a "sponsor" - there isn't even the category "sponsor" when you're running a company in China.
https://www.saporedicina.com/e... [saporedicina.com]
WuFlu
Oh, I see, the "let's throw the kitc
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"Racist"? Really? Got no other cards to play, but "racist"? Please, go get a dictionary and come back to argue when you know what those words you're trying to use actually mean, ignoramus.
Just the tip of the iceberg (Score:1)
China is looking to block sale of ARM to a US company to prevent this kind of thing happening.
There are a lot of other companies that could get caught up in this too. Now that the US has demonstrated its willingness to do this and several other countries have followed in banning Huawei gear they will be looking at every acquisition, every new site, every investment to see if it could be caught up in a trade war.
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China is looking to block sale of ARM to a US company to prevent this kind of thing happening.
Why would anyone care what China thinks about it? China is not party to the transaction, nor do they have a claim on any of the companies involved.
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Arm has significant operations in China.
They are selling their semi-autonomous Honor brand (Score:5, Insightful)
Huwei has stated that they are in survival mode.
Most of the income comes from the telco and datacenter units, not SmartPhones.
I guess they will go in stages. First sell the "Honor" brand. That will not only infuse them with cash, but also leave more of those sweet stockpiled components for the main (i.e. Huawei) brand. Then do an Apple and sell last year's (and the year's before) Huawei branded models at increasingly discounted prices.
And then, finally, offload support of Huawei phones to a third party.
Meanwhile, while the press and the populace are distracted with the phones part (which is a small drop in the big bucket), the real fight will be to regig the supply chain to get parts to keep making 5GNR Base stations, 5G Cores, Routers, Eth switches, DWDM muxes, Routers, Servers and storage.
Some of that regiging is happening right now:
Micron DRAM and Flash is now being substituted by Elphidia-Toshiba and Samsung-SK Hynix and some domestic alternatives.
Xilinx FPGAs are being substituted by Altera (Intel has a Govt exception to keep selling to Huawei), and some domestic alternatives.
HDDs (for their storage arrays) are being sourced from Toshiba, instead of Seagate and WD.
They are investigating substituting Mellanox with Tejas Networks.
X86 Processors keep comming from intel (because of said govt' exception), but they are looking at THATIC and Zhaoxin.
They are looking at SMIC for 14nm fab technology. Not flashy for consumer goods like smartphones or laptops, but good enough for the ASICs and ARM processors needed to keep making telco gear.
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I'm sure the government won't let Huawei fail.
They have some incredible phones. MKBHD just reviewed their latest one. Arguably the best cameras on any device.