Huawei managed to get the world’s attention with its new Mate 60 series of smartphones. Announced without a formal event, the Mate 60 and Mate 60 Pro bring a 5G Kirin 9000s chipset that seems to be manufactured by SMIC on its 7nm process node. While this is excellent news for consumers, competitors like Qualcomm may not be as thrilled. An analyst predicts that Huawei’s new chipset poses a great threat to Qualcomm’s dominance in the market.

Renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, known for his Apple-related predictions, said “Qualcomm is the main loser from Huawei’s adoption of Kirin9000S and new Kirin chips”. This is because Huawei is a major customer of Qualcomm, and if Huawei starts using its own chips, it will no longer need to buy chips from Qualcomm. In 2022, Huawei bought 23-25 million mobile phone SoCs from the US tech giant, and in 2023, it bought 40-42 million, according to Kuo.

HUAWEI-MATE-60-pro
Huawei Mate 60 Pro

Kuo predicts that Qualcomm may not only experience a decline in shipments to Huawei but also face the risk of reduced shipments to non-Huawei Chinese brand clients due to the competition posed by Huawei. “Qualcomm’s SoC shipments to Chinese smartphone brands in 2024 are expected to be at least 50–60 million units lower than in 2023 due to Huawei’s adoption of the new Kirin processors and will continue to decline year by year,” Kuo wrote in his blog post on Medium.

This may force Qualcomm to “start a price war as early as 4Q23 to maintain market share in the Chinese market, which will be detrimental to profits,” said Kuo.

That’s not it, Kuo believes Qualcomm faces two other potential risks. First, the market share of the Exynos 2400 in Samsung mobile phones could be higher than expected. This would reduce Qualcomm’s sales to Samsung. Second, Apple is expected to start using its own modem chip in 2025. This would be a major blow to Qualcomm, as Apple is a major customer.


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