Sales of Huawei Technologies’ latest flagship Mate 70-series smartphones are expected to fall short of the demand generated by the Mate 60, according to analysts, citing the new model’s weaker processor performance and heightened supply chain risks amid geopolitical tensions.
The Mate 70 was launched last Tuesday at an event in Shenzhen, where Huawei consumer business group chairman Richard Yu Chengdong touted the new series as “the most powerful Mate phones in history”. Yu did not mention any details about the processor that powers them and why the new series’ release was delayed till after Singles’ Day, the world’s largest annual shopping festival.
The latest Huawei launch highlighted the Mate 70’s artificial intelligence (AI) features and home-grown mobile operating system HarmonyOS Next, which the company said offers 40 per cent better performance on the latest series over the Mate 60.
The new series – comprising the Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro, Mate 70 Pro+ and Mate 70 RS – features the HiSilicon-designed Kirin 9010 and 9020 mobile processors, according to a report published on Thursday by Canadian semiconductor research firm TechInsights, which said those chips “underperform” compared to the latest processors from Qualcomm and MediaTek.
“Despite hardware improvements and new AI features, the delayed release and modest chipset updates could limit its sales potential,” TechInsights analysts Peng Peng and Linda Sui said in the report.
TechInsights projected Mate 70 sales to reach 3 million units this fourth quarter, representing about 22 per cent of Huawei’s total smartphone shipments during the period.
