TAIPEI – Huawei Technologies on Monday launched their latest smartphone as the Chinese tech giant tries to show that it still has the innovative edge despite the US breakdown.
The launch of the new phone – known as the Mate X2 – comes just days after Nikkei announced that Huawei will make half of its smartphone production this year due to Washington’s trade restrictions, which have company cut off almost entirely from their global suppliers from last September.
Unlike Huawei’s previous folding phones, which fold back so that the screen folds around the outside, like a book cover, the Mate X2 folds in, a style that is harder to do. Chinese display assistant BOE Technology is the leading supplier of these flexible screens for Huawei folding phone.
The Mate X2 will have two screens. When folded, a 6.45-inch outdoor screen acts as the main display. When expanded, the phone becomes an 8.01-inch tablet as small as 4.4 mm thick. Previous generations of the Mate X were at 5.4 mm.
The second and third rounds of the U.S. crackdown have “done our job[s] very sad … but thanks to our channel partners and users … we came alive in 2020, “said Richard Yu, Huawei ‘s head of consumer electronics business, at a launch event on pre-scheduled online.
The Mate X2 will start selling from Thursday with a starting price of 17,999 Yuan ($ 2,785). Yu said the company has tried to increase production capacity to meet customer demand.
The new phone is powered by the company’s 5G Kirin 9000 mobile processor, manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. until U.S. sanctions halted such shipments in September last year.
Huawei was able to collect some 20 million Kirin 9000 5G chipsets before they lost access to their global suppliers, sources told Nikkei Asia. Washington began imposing export controls and other restrictions on Huawei in 2019, arguing that the company poses a threat to national security.
Yu has previously said that if the U.S. ban is not lifted and Huawei can get back to TSMC, its former major contract-making partner, this generation of Kirin chipset will be the last one.
The Kirin 9000 is also used in Huawei’s 5G capable Mate 40, which was released last October to embrace Apple’s all-time 5G-powered iPhones. Huawei shipped about 5 million Mate 40 handsets in 2020 and could add about 8 million across the lifecycle, according to Jeff Pu, an analyst at GF Securities, compared to the Mate series former, which could dispose of up to 15 million units.
Overall, Huawei’s smartphone shipments fell 42% on the year to 32.3 million units in October-December, dragging the company to fifth place globally, after Apple, Samsung and compatriots Xiaomi and Oppo . For 2020 as a whole, Huawei remained the No. 3 smartphone maker in the world, delivering 189 million smartphones, or 21.5% less than the previous year. The Chinese tech champion even sold the Honor budget handset in November last year to help the smartphone industry avoid U.S. restrictions and get back to critical parts and supply chain support.
The Mate X2 will run on Huawei’s HarmonyOS, which the company has been developing strongly since losing access to Google’s Android operating system, and the company will upgrade its smartphones with HarmonyOS from April, Yu said.
Huawei Mobile Services, the company’s own version of Google Mobile Services, now has more than 580 million active users, he said.
Like Huawei’s previous hybrid phones, this latest version is only available in the Chinese market.
Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker last year, introduced its first smartphone in 2019 – the same year as Huawei – and has introduced several new versions since then. These include the Galaxy Z Fold series, which folds like a book, and the Galaxy Z Flip series, which folds like a flip phone.
Both companies had high hopes that the folded phones market would help revive smartphones and showcase their technological capabilities. However, only 1.9 million folded smartphones were shipped in 2020, with Samsung and Huawei accounting for 72% and 11%, respectively, according to IDC. In total, 1.29 billion smartphones were shipped last year.
Huawei’s previous hybrid phones – the Mate X and Mate Xs – are only available in China and in limited sizes.
At the same time it is not yet clear whether Huawei will be able to introduce its latest P series phone in the first half of the year as it typically competes against Samsung’s flagship S series. The Mate series, an uncomplicated phone that is different from the Mate X line, is usually released in the second half of the year to take over the iPhone.
Samsung has already launched their latest S21 5G smartphone in January, and Xiaomi unveiled its latest flagship handset, the Mi 11 series, at the end of December.