A Weibo tipster has hinted that Huawei could have sufficient supplies of chips for its smartphone models that are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets after December 2021. Recall that the P50 was launched with a Snapdragon 888 version which had only 4G support. The tipster hinted that the company will use the next-gen Snapdragon 898 chip on the Mate 50 but it will only support 4G until the second quarter of 2022 when the 5G version will be available.
The Weibo rumor could indicate a greater business relationship between Huawei and Qualcomm in pursuit of chip sufficiency. It is also reported that Huawei is gradually shifting to Qualcomm, as models sporting the Snapdragon 888 chipset will become the mainstream offerings of Huawei in the shortest time. This also means that the new generation Qualcomm Snapdragon premium chipsets will be available for purchase and deployment into Huawei’s flagship models.
The move continues to reflect the intensive drive of Huawei to regain lost ground from the challenges of the previous years that led to significant losses of its market edge across several countries including China. The Huawei P50 series was announced to come with a Snapdragon processor, which ultimately did not happen, possibly due to supply hitches. It rather came with the Kirin 9000 processor. But there is also the possibility of a shortage of Kirin chips, helping to drive the demand for Qualcomm Snapdragon chips by the company.
In line with the improved partnership with Qualcomm, the Huawei Mate 50 series and the incoming Huawei foldable smartphones will be powered by the new Snapdragon processor. Additionally, these new Snapdragon chipsets are understood to have already adopted Huawei’s HarmonyOS operating system, thus significantly expanding the reach of Huawei in pursuit of global relevance. The new chipset is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 898, which could be released before the end of 2021, according to rumors. It is not clear, however, whether Qualcomm will immediately debut the premium 5G version of the new chip or go with the lower 4G version.
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