BETTING on its in-house operating system and redesigned chip architecture to boost its performance in the face of curbs on shipments of advanced semiconductors, China’s Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 90 smartphone series to maintain its overall market.
According to Huawei consumer business chief Richard Yu, with the company still facing constraints in the supply of advanced chips, “advanced semiconductor capacity remains very limited in China and Huawei’s Ascend AI chips also draw on the same capacity.”
Yu cited that the capacity for smartphone chips remains tight, even though rising smartphone prices have curbed shipment volumes (for handsets).
He added that the launch will test whether Huawei can keep advancing its smartphone lineup despite United States restrictions that have limited its access to cutting-edge chipmaking tools, forcing the company to develop alternative ways to boost processor performance.
“The Mate 90 series succeeds the Mate 80 line launched in November 2025. Premium models, including the Mate 90 Pro Max, are powered by Huawei’s Kirin 9050 Pro, a system-on-chip built with a technique Huawei calls ‘Logic Folding’,” he disclosed.
This technique, Yu explained, restructures a chip’s internal wiring in three dimensions rather than the conventional flat, two-dimensional layout, allowing for denser, faster processing—though it requires more wafers to produce.
