Huawei Kirin will re-launch with 5G in the second half of this year: Counterpoint

Counterpoint has predicted that Huawei will bring back the Kirin chip with 5G in the second half of 2023. However, we’re quite suspicious of this report and this prediction.

It’s suggested that Huawei HiSilicon will re-launch the Kirin chipset, which supports 5G second half of this year. It will use SMIC’s N+1 manufacturing processing technology. Interestingly, the process node is said to be comparable to Taiwan TSMC’s 7nm node.

However, the yield rate of China’s SMIC N+1 process is less than 50%, Huawei 5G chip shipments will not be much in the short term and it is expected to be only 2-4 million in 2023.

Also, the report mentioned that the 5G chipset won’t be used in flagship models – Mate and P series devices. Therefore, the chip will only be utilized in mid-range devices. These may be Nova and Enjoy smartphones.

Huawei:

Currently, this statement remained as a word of mouth and Huawei has not aligned itself with such reports via official channels.

Suspicious:

For now, the processing node of SMIC and other Chinese chipmakers is not mature to produce 7nm or advanced chipsets. Therefore, the return of Kirin via a domestic company is very suspicious.

” As per our checks and sell-thru data, Huawei is close to the end of the inventory for the HiSilcon chipsets. Huawei is using chipsets from Qualcomm in its new smartphones, and these have been capped at 4G. Because of the US ban, Huawei cannot manufacture new chipsets from TSMC, Samsung Foundry.” wrote Counterpoint.

Also, the report only mentions the market share of the application processors including the current status of HiSilicon. We’ve not found such a statement or prediction of Huawei relaunching Kirin 5G in the second half of this year.

5G:

The past report mentions that Huawei could return to 5G using a different solution instead of Kirin.

It’s possible that Huawei will keep on using Snapdragon chips for upcoming phones coupled with a separate 5G baseband developed by a Chinese company.

Misunderstood:

For now, we don’t have any specific details on this matter but the reports surging on Chinese media portals believe that Counterpoint has made such predictions. However, the report actually doesn’t consist of such a forecast.

We will wait for more information on this matter to clear the clouds of doubt.

(source)