Huawei is reportedly planning to stage a comeback in the 5G smartphone industry by the end of this year, as indicated by research firms.
The company faced a ban in the US in 2019, which severed its access to 5G chipsets from American firms. However, a recent report suggests that Huawei may resume using 5G chipsets jointly developed with China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).
Huawei has been working on its own 5G chip designs, but faced challenges in large-scale production. To address this, the company has partnered with SMIC to access manufacturing capacity and utilize the N+1 manufacturing process.
The goal is to create cost-effective 5G chips, although the yield rate is expected to be lower and potentially more expensive than existing 5G chips. The availability of necessary software and hardware from the US remains uncertain, but Huawei is reportedly developing its own electronic design automation (EDA) tools for chip creation.
The ban led to a significant decline in Huawei’s market share, but it is expected that the company may produce 2 to 4 million 5G chipsets initially, with potential for increased numbers in the future. Huawei may release its first smartphone equipped with the newly developed 5G chipset later this year.
