Chinese smartphone brand Honor has increased its use of the U.S. chips and components in its latest model X30

Chinese article by 武守哲

English Editor 张未名

04-27 19:17

By Kate Yuan

Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand spun off from Huawei, has increased the U.S. companies’ chips and parts in its latest smartphone model X30. They include the processor and 5G chipsets supplied by Qualcomm, rather than Huawei's chip design arm HiSilicon. These revelations come from a teardown report by Nikkei Asia and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a Tokyo-based research specialist.

Source:Nikkei Asia

Huawei divested its budget brand Honor in November 2020 to avoid sanctions by the U.S. government.

The Nikkei Asia reported on April 25 that Honor model X30’s estimated production cost is $217. The U.S. components accounted for the lion’s share of costs, accounting for 39% of total costs. This is a strong 29 percentage point increase from the 30S that Huawei launched in the spring of 2020 under the Honor brand. American components have replaced Chinese components in most essential areas, including main processors and 5G chipsets.

Source:Nikkei Asia

Meanwhile, the share of Chinese components fell by 27 percentage points to around 10%. HiSilicon provided a system-on-chip (SoC), 5G chipset, and power management chips for the 2020 models. Other non-Chinese manufacturers and Japanese suppliers, including Murata, Taiyo Yuden, and TDK, were also involved in communication chips for the 2020 model 30S.

But HiSilicon is no longer one of the suppliers of these components for the X30. All communications chips in the latest model, except for Japanese components, are supplied by Qualcomm and Qorvo, another major U.S. component maker. The only Chinese communication chip components used are communication signal amplifiers based on mature technology.