Huawei has just unveiled its latest flagship lineup, the Mate 60 series, which uses the company’s own Kirin 9000S chip after a brief gap. This means that Huawei is no longer relying on Qualcomm for chipsets, which could cause the American chipmaker to lose billions.
Going back to its in-house Kirin silicon shows that Huawei does not plan to back down despite the accursed US trade ban which restricts the phone maker from receiving any American 5G technology. Although the Kirin 9000S does not match up with the most powerful Snapdragon SoC in performance or efficiency, it could finally set Huawei back on its feet.
Despite the US trade ban, Huawei was still one of Qualcomm’s biggest customers for SoCs, which is why it is going to be a huge setback for the latter. Huawei had purchased up to 25 million units from Qualcomm in 2022 and 40-42 million in 2023.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Huawei plans to fully shift toward Kirin SoCs in 2024, meaning Qualcomm will lose around 50 to 60 million shipments next year, which is an alarming number.
Qualcomm’s next flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, is expected to cost $180 per unit. So if the company loses 60 million Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 shipments, this would translate to a loss of a whopping $10.8 billion.
Huawei has not revealed any plans to release Kirin SoCs to other Chinese phone makers, but if it does, it is most likely going to be cheaper than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is rumored to get a price hike this time.
Another rival that Qualcomm needs to account for is the Exynos 2400, which is set to arrive in a few markets with the Galaxy S24 lineup.
