Huawei dreams of becoming a major player in the global smartphone market again. Political hurdles continue to lurk for the Chinese company.

Will 2024 be the year of Huawei’s comeback in the smartphone industry? If it depends on the company itself, yes. Huawei sees big things and hopes to sell sixty to seventy million smartphones next year, writes Nikkei Asia. That would be twice the amount Huawei sold in 2022.

The optimistic forecasts are a new indication that Huawei is gradually recovering. The trade restrictions that the company has been facing since 2019 have put a damper on the smartphone business. This damn year the Chinese company sold 240 million devices, but by 2022 it is unlikely to have reached thirty million. As a result, Huawei fell to tenth place in the global rankings, whereas it was once Samsung’s biggest challenger.

Miracle chip

To make smartphones you need chips and that’s exactly what Huawei has been struggling with in recent years. American export restrictions made it much more difficult for the company to obtain the parts it needed. The USA has now also managed to persuade Japan and the Netherlands to impose restrictions. China relies heavily on imported chip technology, importing billions of dollars annually.

The announcement of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro at the beginning of September surprised friends and foes alike. The device contains a Kirin 9000s processor, which Huawei had manufactured by China’s SMIC. It was originally claimed to have been baked on a 7nm process, which would make it the first Chinese-made chip to come close to the performance of Samsung, TSMC and the like. The Mate 60 Pro is also the first 5G flagship since the trade ban began.

In the end it turned out that the chip wasn’t that great after all and it was a 14nm processor. Samsung and TSMC have already advanced to 3nm. The Chinese chip industry has some catching up to do.

Race against the clock

The USA wants it to stay that way and so new measures are on the way. One of them is to regulate the open source RISC-V architecture to exclude Chinese technologists. It will also make it even more difficult for companies like Qualcomm to get a license that allows them to ship parts to China.

These additional restrictions are bad news for Huawei’s ambitions. According to Nikkei Asia, the company is already making extensive preparations. For example, it would have already asked Qualcomm to deliver the entire annual supply in the first half of 2024. Even with seventy million devices sold, Huawei would not be one of the top sellers; Samsung sells more than 250 million smartphones every year. The road to the top will therefore be long and very bumpy for Huawei.