Huawei’s silent chip progress helping to revive smartphone market share

Huawei is playing a silent game when it comes to its chip progress, but this silence is helping the firm to regain its shares in the smartphone market. That’s what the ongoing media headlines and the company’s chiefs have outlined in recent days.

Ren Zhengfei, the Founder of Huawei Technologies, showed positive relief when asked about the company’s chip progress. He revealed that though the firm’s chipsets are one generation behind the US tech, they aren’t the subject of concern at present.

The Founder further illuminated China’s strategy to overcome US chipset sanctions. He mentioned that the company is focusing on achieving chip self-sufficiency.

As said, this will be possible with China’s advanced computing capabilities that are comparable to the best in the world. Ren also highlighted the firm’s efforts in the non-hardware field and said that the country can compensate via advances in software.

“Our country will be more and more open, and this will promote our progress. China will break all restrictions to achieve great rejuvenation.”

Going into the flashbacks, Huawei has really made great improvements in its chipset technology. The company hit sanctions in 2019, losing its hands on 5G chips.

But in 2023, Huawei reignited the Kirin 5G flame for its smartphones with the Mate 60 series. The company even started keeping its chip progress a secret to avoid unnecessary scrutiny from the US side.

Huawei Mate 60 smartphones (Image Credits: Weibo)

Were these chip improvements helpful?

Of course! Mate 60 Pro, powered by the Kirin 9000s 5G chip, resulted in booming sales and helped the company to increase its smartphone sales by 47% year-on-year. At the same time, the firm’s market share placed it on fourth place.

Huawei’s journey to return to its original crown began in 2023 with the Mate 60 series. Since then, the company has continued to touch new heights in the smartphone market with the power of the Huawei Kirin 5G chip.

The 2023 annual report shows that Huawei consumer business collected a revenue of 251.5 billion yuan with a growth of 17.3%. But that was just the beginning.

With the launch of Pura 70 series (Kirin 9010) and Mate 70 series (Kirin 9020), Huawei once again proved that it is capable of achieving its goals with or without the advanced US technologies. Even though struggles still exists, but it is doing well.

In the 2024 annual report, Huawei achieved 339 billion yuan in sales in the consumer business with a sharp hike of 38.3% from the last year. To be specific, the smartphone shipment jumped to 37% year-on-year with a rise of 16% in the market share.

Hence, the company’s hope for positive growth in its chip business won’t be a wrong theory. Huawei might have some secret plans on this matter that will come into the light in the future.