HomeChinaHiSilicon Doubles Revenue, Reaches 12% Market Share

HiSilicon Doubles Revenue, Reaches 12% Market Share

HiSilicon Doubles Revenue, Reaches 12% Market Share

HiSilicon, the chip-making part of Huawei, made twice as much money last year. This happened because Huawei started selling more high-end smartphones again. However, experts at Counterpoint Research say that despite things looking better now, HiSilicon may still face problems growing in the long run.

According to a report last week, HiSilicon’s revenue doubled in 2024, thanks to strong support from loyal customers in China. Its share of the market also grew because its Pura 70 and Mate 70 smartphones became very popular, said Counterpoint analyst Akash Jatwala.

Last year, HiSilicon took 12% of the global market for premium Android phone chips, up from 8% in 2023, according to Counterpoint. The market is mostly controlled by U.S. company Qualcomm, which had 59%, followed by South Korea’s Samsung, which had 13%.

According to Counterpoint, Huawei’s chip unit will likely retain its third-place position this year.

Amid Huawei’s success in designing its chips, other Chinese tech firms, including rival Xiaomi, have sought to do the same. The Beijing-based company is launching its smartphone chipset Xring O1 later this month, founder and CEO Lei Jun said in a post on Weibo on Thursday, without sharing any details.

HiSilicon’s growth shows that Huawei is still progressing, even though it faces intense pressure from the U.S. In May 2019, when Donald Trump was president, the U.S. government put Huawei on a trade blacklist. This meant Huawei couldn’t work with American companies without special permission. In 2020, the U.S. made the rules even stricter, cutting off Huawei’s access to important chips.

Huawei came back in 2023 with its Mate 60 phones, which used a Kirin 9000s chip that was reportedly made entirely in China by a company called SMIC. In 2024, Huawei released its Pura 70 phones using a similar chip called the Kirin 9010. Later that year, the Mate 70 phones came out with an upgraded Kirin 9020 chip.

The Kirin 9020 wasn’t a big change from the earlier versions, according to Canadian chip research company TechInsights in a report from December.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump introduced new rules saying that using Huawei’s Ascend AI chips anywhere in the world breaks U.S. export laws. This is another setback for Huawei’s chip-making plans.

According to Counterpoint, U.S. restrictions will keep making things difficult for Huawei’s chip business. Analyst Akash Jatwala said HiSilicon’s future growth is still unclear because it faces supply chain problems and isn’t widely available outside China, mainly because its phones don’t have Google apps and services.

Huawei is also facing more competition in the high-end smartphone chip market. According to Counterpoint, Taiwanese chip company MediaTek is becoming more popular in China as local brands like Vivo, Oppo, and Xiaomi are starting to use its chips.

Read more- Hong Kong’s Economy Grows 3.1% in First Quarter

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