BEIJING: Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 90 smartphone series on Thursday, betting on its in-house operating system and redesigned chip architecture to boost its performance in the face of US curbs on shipments of advanced semiconductors. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday ahead of the launch, Huawei consumer business chief Richard Yu said the company still faces constraints in the supply of advanced chips. "Advanced semiconductor capacity remains very limited in China, and Huawei's Ascend AI chips also draw on that same capacity," Yu said. "The capacity for smartphone chips remains tight, even though rising smartphone prices have curbed shipment volumes (for handsets)." The launch will test whether Huawei can keep advancing its smartphone lineup despite US restrictions that have limited its access to cutting-edge chipmaking tools, forcing the company to develop alternative ways to boost processor performance. The Mate 90 series succeeds the Mate 80 line launched in November 2025. Premium models, including the Mate 90 Pro Max, are powered by Huawei's Kirin 9050 Pro, a system-on-chip built with a technique Huawei calls "LogicFolding". The method restructures a chip's internal wiring in three dimensions rather than the conventional flat, two-dimensional layout, allowing for denser, faster processing - though it requires more wafers to produce. Eric Xu, Huawei's rotating chairman, said at a media event in Shanghai last month that supply of the company's Ascend 950 AI chips could not meet domestic demand due to capacity constraints. Yu said China's advanced chipmaking still relies on deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, and that while extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology is "valuable", Chinese manufacturers are still working towards it. Huawei would use more chips built with the LogicFolding technique in future smartphones, Yu said. Huawei did not disclose who manufactures the Kirin 9050 Pro. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China's top logic foundry, is widely believed to produce the Kirin chips used in Huawei's Mate series as well as its Ascend AI processors. SMIC did not respond to a request for comment. Huawei's latest phones run on its homegrown, Android-free HarmonyOS 7 operating system, which Huawei says supports more than 450,000 apps and services. The Mate 90 Pro Max with 16 GB of memory and 512 GB of storage will be priced at 9,999 yuan ($1,491), 2,000 yuan more than the same version of its predecessor at launch. The standard and Pro models start at 5,999 yuan and 6,999 yuan, respectively. Huawei said the top-end Mate 90 models deliver a 31% increase in overall performance over the previous flagship generation. Higher prices for handsets Chinese smartphone makers are grappling with rising memory and component costs, leading them to raise prices and shift more shipments toward premium models. Yu said rising memory prices had added an average of $200 to the cost of each handset, weighing on Huawei's profit margins. "We have to increase prices as well, yet at a slower pace," Yu said. China's domestic smartphone shipments fell 7% year-on-year between January and August, even as Huawei's shipments in the country rose 13%, according to research firm International Data Corporation (IDC). The average selling price of smartphones in China climbed 11.3% year-on-year in the second quarter to $543, while the average price of Huawei smartphones declined 14.7% to $628, IDC data showed. Apple vs Huawei foldable Apple announced its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, last month, entering a category long dominated by Samsung Electronics and Chinese rivals such as Huawei. Yu said he welcomed Apple's entry to the market. "I am very pleased to see the launch of a similar product by our peers," Yu said. Huawei currently holds about a 75% share in China's foldable phone market, he said. "Between September 10 and 13, our Pura X Max foldable phone sales shot up 76% week-on-week right after Apple Duo's launch," Yu said, adding that shipments of the Pura X Max, which is similar in size to the iPhone Duo, had topped 1.2 million units in China since its April release. Apple is expected to ship 6 million iPhone Duo units in 2026, with China - the world's largest market for foldable phones - accounting for nearly a quarter of that total, according to data from Counterpoint Research.
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