Huawei Unveils Mate 70 Series Amid Looming U.S. Chip Restrictions
Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies introduced its Mate 70 smartphone series on Tuesday, signaling a significant step in its premium smartphone resurgence while highlighting its proprietary operating system, marking a decisive shift away from U.S. technology.
Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, described the Mate 70 as “the most powerful Mate phone ever” during an event in Shenzhen, the company’s headquarters.
The Mate 70 is the first mainstream smartphone equipped with a satellite paging system, an enhanced processor, and Huawei’s HarmonyOS Next operating system. Together, these advancements deliver a 40% performance boost compared to previous models, Yu stated.
Launch coincides with potential new U.S. trade restrictions
The unveiling comes as the U.S. is expected to announce additional export controls, potentially blacklisting up to 200 Chinese chip companies and further limiting access to American technology, according to Reuters.
Huawei typically avoids discussing its chip advancements during product launches, with technical details often uncovered later through device teardowns. The Mate 70 series serves as the first significant commercial release of HarmonyOS Next, a milestone in Huawei’s drive for software independence after losing access to Google services in 2019 due to U.S. sanctions.
Unlike earlier HarmonyOS versions, which maintained compatibility with Android, HarmonyOS Next, which began public testing this year, represents a complete departure from the Android ecosystem. Huawei announced last week that its HarmonyOS platform now supports over 15,000 applications, with plans to expand to 100,000 apps in the near future.
Market recovery and competitive landscape
Huawei’s technological progress has fueled patriotic sentiment in China, boosting the company’s market position and intensifying competition with rivals like Apple in the world’s largest smartphone market.
In the third quarter of 2024, Huawei ranked as China’s second-largest smartphone vendor, shipping over 10 million units for the fourth consecutive quarter, according to Canalys. This marks a significant recovery from the second quarter of 2022, when its shipments fell to just 4.1 million units.
The Mate 70 succeeds the Mate 60 series, released in August 2023, which was widely regarded as a pivotal moment in Huawei’s return to the high-end smartphone market. Teardown analyses of both the Mate 60 and the Pura 70 series, launched in April, revealed advanced chips produced by China’s SMIC, highlighting the nation’s progress in semiconductor manufacturing despite Western export restrictions.
