[Salon] Huawei poised to sell millions of its surprise smartphones in China

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

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Huawei poised to sell millions of its surprise smartphones in China

4 Sep, 2023

A large screen advertises the new Mate 60 series smartphone at a Huawei store in Shanghai. Photo: EPA-EFE

Huawei Technologies’ latest flagship smartphones have been met with enthusiasm in China, where some consumers see the device as a symbol of national pride and evidence that the country can break through US sanctions targeting Chinese home-grown technology champions.

The company last Tuesday surprised the market by launching the new Mate 60 and the more advanced Mate 60 Pro. The models were initially available only on Huawei’s e-commerce website Vmall and its physical flagship store in Shenzhen, before landing on third-party sales channels such as JD.com, Alibaba Group Holding’s Taobao and bricks-and-mortar outlets. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The Mate 60 Pro was sold out on Huawei’s official stores on both JD.com and Taobao as of Monday, while Huawei’s Vmall was set to release a new batch for purchase in the early evening after selling out earlier batches. When a Post reporter visited Huawei’s store in Shenzhen’s Nanshan district last Tuesday, shortly after the Mate 60 series opened for sale, around 25 customers had already lined up to buy the handsets.

One of those who managed to get their hands on the new phones was a reporter at Yuyuantantian, a Weibo account affiliated with state broadcaster China Central Television.

A photo that the account posted on August 30, featuring US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo giving a speech during her visit to China, showed a watermark indicating that the image was shot with a Mate 60 Pro.

A photo dated August 30, 2023, posted by a social media account affiliated with Chinese state media, shows a watermark indicating that the image was taken with a Huawei Mate 60 Pro smartphone. Photo: Yuyuantantian via Weibo

Huawei is expected to rack up sales of no fewer than 7 million units of the Mate 60 series, barring any supply glitches, according to Ivan Lam, a Hong Kong-based senior analyst with market consultancy Counterpoint Research.

“If supplies [go] smoothly, sales should be higher than the previous version [of the Mate series],” he said, adding that Huawei was estimated to have shipped between 7 million to 9 million smartphones from the Mate 50 series.

The Mate 60 Pro, which is equipped with Huawei’s in-house Kirin 9000s processor that was known to support 5G connectivity, came three years after the company last released a 5G smartphone, the Mate 40 series.

Under tightened US restrictions imposed in 2020, Huawei cannot obtain advanced integrated circuits from major contract chip makers around the world, but early research by industry experts indicate that China’s Semiconductor International Manufacturing Corp, also under US trade sanctions, used existing equipment to manufacture the 5G-capable chips for Huawei.

A staff member introduces the new Huawei Mate 60 smartphone to customers at the brand’s flagship store in Shenzhen. Photo: Reuters

Huawei is believed to be preparing a stockpile of at least 15 million Mate 60 series handsets, and the firm could place more manufacturing orders if there is sustained consumer interest, according to Arthur Guo Tianxiang, an analyst with market researcher IDC, citing supply chain sources.

Huawei did not immediately respond to a Post inquiry on presale figures of its new smartphone.

Even before the arrival of the Mate 60 series, Huawei managed to climb back to the top five among smartphone vendors in China in the second quarter, shipping 14.3 million units in the first half of this year, according to IDC.

The launch of the Mate 60 series, which was timed right ahead of Apple’s release of the iPhone 15 later this month, will have some impact on the US giant’s firm grasp on the high-end segment in China’s smartphone market, according to Counterpoint’s Lam.

Lam’s view was echoed by IDC’s Guo, who said the Mate 60 series shows that Huawei has “basically weathered through external restrictions in the past few years and is set to become extremely competitive in the premium segment of the market this year”.