Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 70 smartphone series on Tuesday, bolstering its premium smartphone comeback while showcasing its own operating system in a clean break from US technology.

The Mate 70 is the successor to the Mate 60 series released in August last year, widely seen as marking Huawei’s comeback to high-end smartphones in competition with Apple after its business was badly hit by US export curbs.

Its launch comes as the US is expected to announce new export controls that could add up to 200 Chinese chip companies to a trade blacklist as soon as this week, restricting their access to US suppliers.

The device is the “the most powerful Mate phone ever”, Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, said at an event in the company’s hometown of Shenzhen that was livestreamed online and at its stores.

Mate 70 prices will start at R13 700 on a direct currency conversion, slightly below the cost of the base iPhone 16 in China.

Yu also said the Mate 70 is the first mainstream smartphone to include a satellite paging system, has an improved processor, and runs on Huawei’s own HarmonyOS Next operating system, which together boost performance by 40% compared to previous models.

The Mate 70 series is the first major commercial roll-out of HarmonyOS Next, a significant step in Huawei’s push for software independence since US curbs cut off its access to Google services in 2019.

Complete break

While Huawei’s earlier versions of Harmony OS maintained Android compatibility, HarmonyOS Next — which began public testing this year — represents a complete break from Android.

Last week, Huawei said it had secured more than 15 000 applications for its HarmonyOS ecosystem, with plans to expand to 100 000 apps in the coming months.

Teardown analyses revealed both the Mate 60 and the Pura 70 series — launched in April — feature advanced chips manufactured by SMIC, underscoring the country’s growing semiconductor capabilities despite Western export controls.

Read: Huawei announces the Mate XT, a tri-fold smartphone

Huawei, however, has not confirmed this. It does not typically discuss its chip advancements at product launch events, with improvements usually discovered by teardown firms later.

At least some versions of the Mate 70 will use Huawei’s Kirin 9100 chipset made by top Chinese contract chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), though production challenges may restrict them to higher-end models, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the chip.

The patriotic sentiment surrounding Huawei’s technological breakthrough has helped fuel its market recovery and intensified competition with other players, including iPhone maker Apple, in China — the world’s largest smartphone market.

Huawei was ranked as China’s number-two smartphone vendor in the third quarter of 2024, with deliveries exceeding 10 million units for the fourth straight quarter, according to research firm Canalys.

This is a significant rebound from the second quarter of 2022, when it shipped just 4.1 million units. Research firm Counterpoint said it expects shipments of the Mate 70 series to exceed 10 million. — David Kirton, Fanny Potkin, Liam Mo and Brenda Goh, (c) 2024 Reuters

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