How have Huawei phones changed after the US ban?

Huawei has increased the use of components made in China in its latest smartphones as the US embargo continues to affect. Nikkei and analyst firm Fomalhaut Techno Solutions “dissected” the Huawei Mate 40E 5G and discovered that “made in China” parts accounted for nearly 60% of the device’s total component value, twice as high as that of the Mate 30.

Huawei is still dependent on some of the key American chips it has left over. That shows that the company may lag even further in the near future.

In the first half of this year, Samsung accounted for the largest smartphone market share in the world, according to IDC. Huawei once ranked second but is no longer in the top 5.

Origin of components in Huawei Mate 40E

The Mate 40E was launched in China in March. Fomalhaut estimated the production cost per smartphone at $367, equivalent to the Mate 30 sold in 2019. The value of Chinese components accounted for 56.6%, up from 30%. before. The increase mainly comes from the organic electroluminescent screen of BOE Technology group, replacing the screen of Samsung Electronics. This component alone accounts for nearly 30% of the phone’s value.

According to Yoshio Tamura, President of Asia Operations at Display Supply Chain Cosultants, although BOE is about two years behind Samsung in technology, Huawei is still actively using BOE components to compete with Samsung in the smartphone market.

Huawei used to use Qualcomm chips as the “brain” of smartphones, but due to the US ban, it switched to using Kirin 990E chip developed by subsidiary HiSilicon and manufactured by TSMC. The chip’s performance is on par with other US-origin chips. It was used in the Mate 30.

HiSilicon is also the creator of the antenna switching as well as the power control chip in the Mate 40E. Other Chinese components include fingerprint sensor and battery.

Director of Fomalhaut Minatake Kashio said that Huawei has made progress in self-manufacturing and purchasing domestic components before the US ban. After suffering a series of embargoes, Huawei switched to buying domestic components when the inventory was gradually depleted. American components account for only 5.2% of the total Mate 40E value, but that’s actually up from 2.6% in the Mate 30. There are about 6 US semiconductors in the new model compared to 2 in the Mate 30.

Dissecting the device also shows that no US components are compatible with 5G networks. In addition to chips from Qualcomm, there are chips from another American manufacturer, Qorvo. Mr. Kashio believes this could be the chip that Huawei bought before the ban.

15.9% of components in the Mate 40E are made in Japan, down from 24.5% in the Mate 30. That’s because Huawei uses Samsung products instead of Kioxia’s memory (formerly Toshiba Memory). Mate 40E uses image sensors from Sony and some components from other Japanese companies such as Murata, TDK, Taiyo Yuden and Asahi Kasei. Meanwhile, the value of Korean components in equipment is 11.5%.