Huawei is in trouble due to changes in chip regulations, unable to independently produce high-end chips such as Kirin 9000, and can only rely on Qualcomm's chips. Qualcomm is the only company to be licensed by the U.S. government to sell chips to Huawei, a situation that has attracted widespread attention in the industry.
For Qualcomm, Huawei is an important customer, not only to enhance its position in the high-end market, but also to increase its market share in the Chinese market. Samsung has withdrawn from the competition, and Qualcomm hopes to use its cooperation with Huawei to compete with Apple in the Chinese market.
However, Qualcomm did not simply provide chips to Huawei, but also obtained huge benefits from it. High-end chips cost a lot, and royalties are paid.
It is reported that Huawei's Mate50 series has sold one million units, becoming half of the domestic folding screen mobile phone market.
However, the United States did not relax controls on chip exports, but signed a three-country agreement and planned to restrict ordinary chips such as Qualcomm.
Qualcomm announced its financial report for the third quarter of 2023, showing revenue of $8.451 billion, down 23% year-on-year, and net profit of $1.803 billion, down 52% year-on-year.
Among them, mobile chip revenue was $5.26 billion, down 25% from the first three quarters of fiscal 2022.
Qualcomm said that even if it faces the risk of losing Huawei's orders, it will continue to supply 4G and other equipment to Huawei and is expected to extend the authorization period.
However, Huawei already has new plans. Yu Chengdong announced that due to TSMC's restrictions, Huawei will enter the semiconductor industry and achieve a major breakthrough in electronic products. Ren Zhengfei asked HiSilicon to invest 20% of its profits in research and development, and promised not to lay off employees and not affect HiSilicon's profitability.
Huawei has invested 440 billion yuan in the past three years and will continue to invest in infrastructure construction in 2023. The core technology is Huawei's pursuit, and it has made breakthroughs in the domestic chip industry with the help of Hubble telescopes.
Huawei has cooperated with domestic enterprises to localize EDA design software at 14nm and beyond, and invested in equipment and circuit boards.
Huawei is making every effort to improve the level of domestic chip production technology, which has reached the world's best level, and plans to put the 14nm process into production. The N+1 process has achieved good results, the 7 nm process has been studied, and there will be more varieties of domestic chips.
Huawei has systems such as Hongmeng, Euler and HMS, and the Hongmeng system has more than 700 million users, making it the world's largest mobile operating system.
Domestic chip production technology continues to improve, and has the conditions for the production of deep ultraviolet lithography machines. SMIC is the world's best in 14nm and will achieve mass production of 14nm processes.
Huawei has made a series of progress in cooperation with domestic chip companies, and is going all out in the exploration of domestic chips, surpassing them almost impossible tasks.