Huawei struggling to make enough chips for Mate70

Huawei Technologies, a Shenzhen-based telecommunication maker, is reportedly struggling to secure enough high-end chips for the next version of its Mate70 flagship smartphone, the latest upshot in the US-initiated chip war on China.

Huawei and its local chip-making partner, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), both sanctioned by the US, had planned to make 2.5 million chips before releasing the Mate70 for a September product launch, but failed to meet the target due to limited manufacturing capacity and productivity issues, The Information reported.

The Information report said the root cause of the missed target is the “continuing impact of a four-year-old US ban on the supply of chip manufacturing tools to Huawei and SMIC.”

Observers had previously anticipated that Huawei would launch the Mate70 phone in China on September 10, a day after Apple Inc unveiled the iPhone16 in the US on September 9. But Chinese media said the Mate70 phone is now expected to be launched in November instead.

The Information said Huawei may still choose to unveil its Mate70 next week, but the number of phones immediately available for sale will be limited.

It said the company will let customers pre-order and wait for delivery—a tactic similar to that used in the launch of the Mate60 Pro in late August, when US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was visiting Beijing.

In September 2023, Raimondo, the lead US official behind the chip war, said she was “upset” by the launch of Mate60 Pro, which is powered by 7nm Kirin 9000s chips and showed China had found workarounds on US high-end chip bans.

She told a US House of Representatives hearing that her team did not have any evidence that China can make 7nm chips at scale. Last