Huawei to restart 5G mobile chip output as early as this year
Chinese tech giant lost access to global chipmaking partners in 2020
TAIPEI -- Huawei Technologies aims to restart making cutting-edge mobile chips as early as this year, even as the U.S. and its allies further restrict China's access to key tools and tech used to churn out semiconductors.
Huawei, a onetime smartphone powerhouse, is working with top Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. (SMIC) to put its in-house designed 5G mobile chipset into mass production in the coming months, two people with knowledge of the matter told Nikkei Asia. Huawei has been unable to make cutting-edge mobile chips since Washington cut off the company's access to key American technology and vital global suppliers in 2020.
SMIC has likewise been on a U.S. trade blacklist since late 2020 over alleged ties to the Chinese military, which it denies.
If Huawei succeeds in getting its mobile chips back into production, it would mark a major win for China. Beijing has spent years and millions of dollars attempting to develop a complete domestic chip industry to counter Washington's clampdown on Huawei and other Chinese tech companies, which includes sweeping export controls introduced last October. In a further blow to China's chip ambitions, Japan and the Netherlands recently joined the U.S. in introducing export restrictions on advanced semiconductor equipment.
To make Huawei's chips, SMIC will use 7-nanometer process technology, the most advanced available in China. This is still about two generations behind chips made for global leaders, however, with Apple's iPhone mobile processor produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) using 4-nm and 3-nm technology. And while Huawei's chips may go into production this year, devices built with them are unlikely to hit stores until 2024.
Like Apple, Huawei was once one of TSMC's top clients and an early adopter of its latest production technologies before the U.S. further tightened export control rules against the company in 2020.
Amid the clampdown, Huawei's rotating chairman Eric Hsu has said the company will support all efforts by the Chinese chip industry to become self-reliant. Nikkei Asia earlier reported that Huawei is working with multiple partners across China to build chip production and chip packaging plants.
SMIC has also been striving to become self-reliant. Co-CEO Liang Mong-Song, a former executive with TSMC and Samsung Electronics, heads the company's research and development. SMIC has already successfully demonstrated the production of 7-nm chips, according to a TechInsights analysis in 2022 of a cryptocurrency mining chip made with China's Bitmain Technologies.
Nanometer size refers to the linewidth between transistors on a chip. The smaller the number, the more advanced and powerful a chip is. TSMC and Samsung are now racing to mass-produce 3-nm chips.
Donnie Teng, an analyst with Nomura Securities, said that if Huawei can put its own chip designs into production, it will have less need to buy from Qualcomm, the only chip developer so far that has received U.S. licenses to ship 4G mobile chips to the Chinese company.
"However, the production yield [quality] for a 7-nm node is believed to be quite low, at about 50%, and it still has lots of room for improvement," Teng said. "The chip being available and the chip being commercially ready are different things. ... It's still worth monitoring how it goes, but we understand Huawei is willing to invest a lot on this to bring back its chips."
Teng added that SMIC could face difficulties in expanding capacity for advanced chip production due to the various export controls in place.
Huawei was once the world's second-biggest smartphone maker, trailing only Samsung in shipments. Last year, however, it had a global market share of only about 2%, mostly in China, Canalys data showed, compared to its peak of 17.6% in 2019.
"Chips are essential for all of Huawei's businesses, from consumer electronics to its cloud computing and telecom business," said Ivan Lam, an analyst with Counterpoint. "It needs to spend so much more money, but Huawei knows it must restore its chip supplies, even if they are not as advanced as the ones it could source from the leading global supply chain."
Huawei and SMIC declined to comment.