Apple will give Huawei a clean pair of heels, but the iPhone will fail in China: here’s why

Huawei is off to the races! The Chinese behemoth has been battered by US-led sanctions for several years, but now, in the final rounds of this war, Huawei has managed to rise and prove its worth.

After all, they released the Mate Pro 60 last year, and US officials were sweating the night away. After all, Huawei is so heavily sanctioned by the US that this 5G-capable phone should never have materialized in the first place.

Huawei, however, will be behind Apple in the near future. Here’s why, in my humble opinion, this doesn’t bother Huawei at all!

Rumors are now suggesting that SMIC (the world’s third largest fab behind TSMC and Samsung) and Huawei could create 5nm chips using old UV lithography machines.

In order to better understand why this is essential for Huawei and what it means, we need to go back in time.

But first, let’s get a few things straight and explain these annoying tech-savvy terms! You’ll need them for this article!

In chips, chip foundries and UV machines

Smartphone chips, often called processors or SoC (System on a Chip), are the brains of a smartphone. They handle all tasks, from running applications to connecting to the Internet. These chips are incredibly small and complex, with billions of transistors (tiny electronic switches) packed into a tiny piece of silicon. The smaller the transistors, the more can fit on a chip, making it more powerful and efficient. This is why new smartphones often have better performance and battery life – they have newer chips with more transistors.

Chip foundries are specialized factories where these chips are manufactured. They use advanced machinery to etch these tiny transistors into silicon wafers. One of the main tools in a chip foundry is the ultraviolet (UV) lithography machine. These machines use UV light to etch patterns on silicon wafers. Think of using a stencil and a flashlight to draw tiny circles on silicon. The more precise the machine, the smaller the transistors it can create.

The term “nm node” refers to the size of the transistors on the chip, measured in nanometers (nm). A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, which is incredibly small. Many of today’s chips are at the 5nm node, meaning transistors are only 5 nanometers wide. This is an important achievement because smaller transistors mean more can fit on a chip, improving performance and power efficiency.

However, making these tiny transistors requires very advanced technology, which is why there is excitement when companies like SMIC and Huawei reach new milestones in chip manufacturing.

Okay, now let’s do an analysis!

Huawei’s success made people around the world smile

By 2020, Huawei had considerable success in the global smartphone market, positioning itself as a major player alongside Samsung and Apple. What I mean by this is: people enjoyed Huawei brand smartphones and what the brand had to offer in terms of innovative technology.

Huawei smartphones gained recognition mostly for their advanced cameras and powerful battery performance. The cameras are co-designed with Leica. My father, a professional photographer, used a P-series phone on many occasions for reports, taking front-page photos in a local newspaper.

The company’s aggressive expansion beyond China into markets such as Europe and Asia was supported by a diverse range of products that catered to all types of users: budget-conscious enthusiasts, mid-range enthusiasts and, of course, those after premium devices. .

You, the people are smiling, holding their Huawei phones all over the world!

And then…

Huawei wiped away the smiles of some US officials

In 2019, Huawei faced a significant setback. The United States said that Huawei phones constitute a thread (due to privacy issues) and imposed sanctions on the company. Those sanctions restricted US firms from doing business with Huawei, particularly in supplying key technologies and core software for its smartphones.

One of the most critical impacts was the loss of access to Google Mobile Services (GMS), which includes popular apps like Gmail, Google Maps and the Play Store, on new Huawei smartphones. This meant that Huawei phones released after the sanctions could no longer come pre-installed with these popular Google apps, affecting their appeal to international consumers who rely on these services.

The US government argued that Huawei’s close ties to the Chinese government posed a potential risk of espionage and unauthorized access to data, particularly through Huawei’s telecommunications equipment. As a result, the US imposed restrictions on US companies that supply Huawei with critical components and technology needed to build and expand 5G networks.

These sanctions significantly disrupted Huawei’s supply chain and international sales.

The dawn of the rise of the view of the revival of Huawei

Okay, this is a direct reference to the movies Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Enter August of 2023. The Huawei Mate 60 Pro it’s live.

That left some American officials full of voice and fury. They are angry because Huawei, after all the restrictions imposed by the US, was not supposed to have and use a 5G capable SoC?

The phone is a hit – reports claim that US-sanctioned Huawei has sold 1.6 million of its Mate 60 Pro phones in six weeks and calls it a “high-end smartphone renaissance”.

Consequences followed. In April 2024, the Biden administration sought to persuade the Netherlands to prevent ASML from servicing certain machinery in China, marking a step in US efforts to limit Beijing’s technological advances.

ASML Equipment of the Netherlands plays a crucial role in the semiconductor industry as it dominates the market for lithography tools, essential for creating circuits on chips. These machines are large, expensive and complex, performing a critical step in chip manufacturing.

The United States has concerns about maintaining the ASML equipment it has already sold, especially if it can support Chinese chip manufacturing facilities. ASML machines are highly specialized and difficult to replace, making them indispensable for chip manufacturing. Denial of spare parts and maintenance could effectively halt operations at a Chinese “fab” (chip manufacturing plant), preventing it from producing chips.

Huawei responded with the Pura 70 line, which materialized at the end of April. Pretty impressive stuff, if you ask me.

The future is uncertain for sure

So now that Huawei is producing a 5G-capable 5nm chip itself, what does that mean? Yes, the company will get there eventually, heck, they’ll squeeze in a 3nm, but that’s not the point.

For now, Huawei will lag behind Apple and Samsung, both of which are moving to the latest 2nm mode SoC technology. Huawei can’t catch up to them yet.

However… that’s not the point either.

As I see it, Huawei has no problems with this, because they have risen from the ashes in their homeland.

As things stand today, users in China will almost always prefer a 5nm Huawei phone over a 3nm iPhone (or other foreign phones).

Why? Because – you guessed it – Huawei is their thing.