China’s Huawei Technologies launched its latest smartphone series, Mate 70, on Tuesday, equipped with a homegrown 5G chip and its own operating system HarmonyOS Next.
The shift to HarmonyOS from an open-source Android operating system will mark a clean break from US technology for the firm.
Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, said the device would be “the most powerful Mate phone ever”.
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The smartphone series will also be Huawei’s latest challenge to iPhone-maker Apple, which has been consistently losing market share in China — its second key market after the United States.
Mate 70 prices will start at 5,499 yuan ($758), a touch below Apple’s base iPhone 16 model, which sells for 5,999 yuan in China.
Huawei’s Yu said the Mate 70 has an improved processor and is the first mainstream smartphone to include a satellite paging system.
He said it would be the “first civilian smartphone” able to connect to three Chinese satellite systems: BeiDou navigation satellite system, Tiantong satellite and China’s low-earth orbit satellite communication networks.
The smartphone series is also enabled with generative artificial intelligence, and other AI functions such as live transcription and translation of phone calls. In contrast, Apple’s latest iPhones are yet to offer the company’s AI features in China.
At least some versions of the Mate 70 will use Huawei’s Kirin 9100 chipset, made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).
Production challenges, however, may restrict them to higher-end models, according to a source familiar with the matter. Those challenges include a low chip yield, which refers to the proportion of chips that are fully functional, as chipmaker SMIC remains cut-off from cutting-edge chip technologies due to US sanctions and export curbs.
Experts told the New York Times that Huawei was forced to delay the launch of the Mate 70 series due to bottlenecks in chipmaking, even though production for some of the phone’s components began as far back as July.
Those problems could also likely worsen next year in light of a decision by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to stop producing all advanced chips for Chinese AI firms, they said.
The move by TSMC — the world’s largest contract chipmaker — means more and more Chinese firms will become dependent on China’s SMIC to ship their chips, they noted.
Chasing tech self-sufficiency
The Mate 70 is the successor to the Mate 60 series released in August last year, widely seen as Huawei’s re-emergence after it was nearly decimated by US sanctions in 2019.
Those sanctions also cut off its access to Google services, and effectively the Android operating system.
Huawei has since worked on developing its own operating system. The first version of HarmonyOS was based on open-source Android code, and hence allowed Android apps to run on Huawei phones.
But the HarmonyOS NEXT, which began public testing this year, represents a complete break from Android. Its performance will be a key test for Huawei’s ability to operate without US tech.
The Mate 70 series is the first major commercial rollout of the HarmonyOS NEXT.
According to Yu, Mate70’s advancements, coupled with the HarmonyOS operating system boost the smartphone’s performance by 40% compared to previous models.
The OS will also allow Huawei phones to connect with other products the group offers, like electric cars and smart watches.
Key challenges ahead
The break from Android means that every app that runs on the Mate70 series will need to be re-wired for compatibility with HarmonyOS NEXT.
But it is not yet clear if global app developers want to spend resources on building a new version of their apps — specifically for China.
Rich Bishop, co-founder and CEO of AppInChina, a publisher of international software in China, told AFP that one third-party agency in China asked for 2 million yuan ($276,000) to custom-fit a foreign app for HarmonyOS Next.
“Huawei has the largest user base in China, but it’s still going to be difficult to get international developers on board,” Bishop told the Financial Times.
To convince them, Huawei will need to continuously improve the OS and “convince the developer community that it is committed to the long-term development of the Harmony ecosystem”, Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group, told AFP.
‘No way back leads to victory’
But Huawei has indicated it is committed to HarmonyOS in the months leading up to the Mate70 series launch.
According to the Financial Times report, Huawei has been conducting online and offline training exercises since last December to “hold developers’ hands” and get them acquainted with the operating system.
One Huawei staffer told the FT the firm also has “support on standby ready to help solve issues.”
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Huawei said it was targeting getting 100,000 applications ready to run on the Harmony operating system. There are currently 15,000 applications based on Harmony that can meet consumers’ basic needs.
Huawei chairman Xu Zhijun said the firm was working on making social media apps like Tencent Holdings’ WeChat and ByteDance’s Douyin available on Harmony, along with those like China’s official taxation app.
“Huawei will unwaveringly invest in developing the Harmony ecosystem, and strive to make the impossible possible,” Xu said.
He also called on developers to “work hard” on increasing apps on the system and asked government agencies, state companies and social organisations to use Harmony as their operating system at work.
Xu also asked consumers to be tolerant of the system’s immaturity, saying, “the more people use it, the more quickly it will become mature.”
“No way back leads to victory,” he said.
For now, though, Huawei is also giving buyers of the Mate 70 smartphones the option to opt out of HarmonyOS Next.
- Reuters, with additional editing and inputs from Vishakha Saxena
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