Huawei unveils Mate 90 phones, leans on homegrown chip design to offset US curbs
The launch will test whether Huawei can keep advancing its smartphone lineup despite US restrictions
On October 1st, Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 90 smartphone series, relying on its own operating system and redesigned chip architecture to overcome US restrictions on advanced semiconductor shipments. Huawei's chief consumer business executive, Richard Yu, stated that the company continues to face constraints in the supply of advanced chips, as China's capacity for producing advanced semiconductor chips remains limited.
Moreover, Huawei's Ascend AI chips also rely on the same capacity. The launch aims to determine whether Huawei can advance its smartphone lineup despite these US restrictions. The Mate 90 series, succeeding the Mate 80 line from November 2025, features premium models powered by Huawei's Kirin 9050 Pro, a system-on-chip built using a technique called "LogicFolding."
This technique restructures a chip's internal wiring in three dimensions for denser, faster processing, though it requires more wafers to produce. Huawei's chairman, Eric Xu, acknowledged supply constraints for Ascend 950 AI chips in China due to capacity limitations. Yu emphasized that China still relies on deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines for advanced chipmaking, with EUV technology still under development by Chinese manufacturers.
Huawei plans to incorporate more LogicFolding chips in future smartphones. The company's HarmonyOS 7 runs on the Mate 90 series, supporting over 450,000 apps and services. Huawei has not disclosed the target price for the Mate 90 series. The rising cost of memory and components has led to price increases for Chinese smartphone makers, with Huawei citing a US$200 average increase in handset costs.
Despite this, Huawei's shipments in China rose 13% during the first half of the year, driven by the Pura X Max foldable phone, which saw a 76% week-on-week sales increase following Apple's launch of the iPhone Duo. Huawei currently holds about 75% of the Chinese foldable phone market.
Written by urgent.news from The Business Times - Companies & Markets's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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