Huawei Mostly Omits Mentioning Mate 60 Phone in Two-Hour Event (bloomberg.com) 13
Huawei largely omitted mention of its Mate 60 smartphone series at a grand showcase of its new consumer products on Monday. From a report: The Shenzhen-based company will increase smartphone production in response to demand, said consumer division chief Richard Yu, without naming the handset triggering that surge. The Mate 60 Pro earned international notoriety with its advanced made-in-China processor last month, causing concern in Washington about Huawei's progress toward developing in-house chipmaking capabilities despite US trade curbs. Huawei's new phones have fired up the company's sales and were among the top sellers in China in the week before Apple's latest iPhone launch. They are the first 5G-capable handsets that Huawei's put on sale since the Trump administration's sanctions cut it off from advanced tech suppliers. That connectivity is provided by the 7-nanometer Kirin 9000s processor inside -- made by Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. -- which is accompanied by a broad range of China-made components inside each phone.
If you want to blame... (Score:2, Troll)
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Simmer down, Xi Jinpeng. Have another cup of tea.
Multiple possible interpretations here. (Score:4, Informative)
A: Politics. They're keeping mum about the Mate 60 because they don't want to further agitate the people in various other governments (notably, in America, but a couple of others as well) who are concerned about their newfound ability to make advanced chips. This one is the most obvious conclusion to jump to if you haven't been paying attention to how the Chinese government tends to do things; otherwise it's a little odd (normally, you'd expect them to double down, bluster more, and pre-emptively accuse other countries of doing whatever it is they're doing at the moment), but CCP behavior is sufficiently erratic that it can't be ruled out.
B: Normal new-product scarcity. They _just_ developed this chip, and their ability to make it hasn't been scaled up to a level that can even remotely keep up with demand, yet. So after the launch they've stopped talking about it to give production a chance to catch up.
C: Lies and Fakery: The critical chip inside the Mate-60 isn't something they can keep making at all, and the hype behind it was pure narrative-shaping (i.e., a blatant lie for political purposes). There are several different lines of speculation out there as to the source of the chip if they in fact didn't make it themselves. Among others, it's been accused of being a Taiwanese chip that they bought a bunch of just before the sanctions went into effect, or a South Korean chip that they can't continue to obtain long term without the ongoing cooperation of the relevant Korean company. As far as I know this is all abject speculation, but it is entirely consistent with the modus operandi, and so it's a whole lot more plausible than the average conspiracy theory. If true, it would imply that the Mate 60 was inherently a limited run.
Of the three, B (combined with standard-operating-procedure intellectual property theft, to explain how they suddenly got the capability to make such things) is probably the most likely, but I don't know of any way to rule out the other possibilities.
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There are several ways to read this.
A: Politics. They're keeping mum about the Mate 60 because they don't want to further agitate the people in various other governments (notably, in America, but a couple of others as well) who are concerned about their newfound ability to make advanced chips. This one is the most obvious conclusion to jump to if you haven't been paying attention to how the Chinese government tends to do things; otherwise it's a little odd (normally, you'd expect them to double down, bluster more, and pre-emptively accuse other countries of doing whatever it is they're doing at the moment), but CCP behavior is sufficiently erratic that it can't be ruled out.
B: Normal new-product scarcity. They _just_ developed this chip, and their ability to make it hasn't been scaled up to a level that can even remotely keep up with demand, yet. So after the launch they've stopped talking about it to give production a chance to catch up.
C: Lies and Fakery: The critical chip inside the Mate-60 isn't something they can keep making at all, and the hype behind it was pure narrative-shaping (i.e., a blatant lie for political purposes). There are several different lines of speculation out there as to the source of the chip if they in fact didn't make it themselves. Among others, it's been accused of being a Taiwanese chip that they bought a bunch of just before the sanctions went into effect, or a South Korean chip that they can't continue to obtain long term without the ongoing cooperation of the relevant Korean company. As far as I know this is all abject speculation, but it is entirely consistent with the modus operandi, and so it's a whole lot more plausible than the average conspiracy theory. If true, it would imply that the Mate 60 was inherently a limited run.
Of the three, B (combined with standard-operating-procedure intellectual property theft, to explain how they suddenly got the capability to make such things) is probably the most likely, but I don't know of any way to rule out the other possibilities.
I agree with you on B being the likely cause.
But about IP theft, If you consult the webpage on HiSilicon (the arm of Huawei that designs chips) it started in 1991. When I was on Huawei's payroll in 2007 (in Venezuela, as a service delivery manager for local operators ), the internal "strategic documentation hub" I had access to (the boss of my boss told me there were other hubs to which I did not have access), already listed HiSilicon as a strategic asset. At the time HiSilicon was cutting their theeth d
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I'm fascinated by Huawei and Ren Zhengfei. Did you get a flavour of Ren's management philosophy in distant Venezuela, or doesn't it really translate beyond the borders of China?
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I'm fascinated by Huawei and Ren Zhengfei. Did you get a flavour of Ren's management philosophy in distant Venezuela, or doesn't it really translate beyond the borders of China?
Much text and Powerpoint about Ren's philosophy, but the chinese managers stationed here did not abide to those principles... but, from time to time, changes done at HQ dues to Ren's guidance had an impact in these parts.
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Among others, it's been accused of being a Taiwanese chip that they bought a bunch of just before the sanctions went into effect, or a South Korean chip that they can't continue to obtain long term without the ongoing cooperation of the relevant Korean company.
That is impossible. The Kirin 9000S uses the Cortex A510 core which was developed by ARM Cambridge after the US sanctions. And people have analyzed the chips with a microscope, they use their own process.
can you blame them? (Score:1)
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Huawei is a "bad word" pretty much outside of Asia.
I had 3 of their phones. The Mate2, 8, 9 and they were excellent phones.
But when they put the ban in place, that stopped the updates unless you rooted.
Actually no. They offered a (very generous may I add) upgrade path (no rooting needed) for a lot of their phones to their "homegrown" HarmonyOS, which was, more or less an AOSP Android10 fork (not much different from the likes of LineageOS).
Meaning that your mate 8 (which had android 8) or your mate 9 would be better off with it. After that, you just reinstall Google Play services, just like you have to do with LineageOS.
Heck, even your mate 9 can be brought to HarmonyOS 3 (wich is probably android AOSP 12
Already much bigger than just phones (Score:2)
Cuz with the huge buzz from the sudden launch of Mate60 while Raimondo was visiting China, Huawei don't need to say anything more about Mate60 to sell it. In fact, they cannot produce Mate60 fast enough, so why waste precious airtime to talk about it anymore?
What the summary completely omitted was, of course, the real juice of the event. Just a few examples:
- A luxury version (RS Ultimate Design) of the Mate 60
- NearLink (aka Spark), with a much higher bandwidth, that is going to replace Bluetooth (while
I was at the show last week (Score:2)
They admit not all 7nm is the same, but that their dielectric is 7nm and they'll shrink insulation soon.
I was honestly quite surprised I didn't see more westerners. The key signal of the show was that China is ready to move forward alone and that the sanctions are no longer an issue since they can get what they need at home.
The show was amazing. I wanted to see what Huawei was