On Thursday, Huawei became China’s fastest-growing smartphone maker amid the success of Mate 60 Pro, as if ridiculing US sanctions.
Counterpoint Research reported a 37.00% year-over-year (YoY) increase in the tech giant’s smartphone sales in China in the third quarter. Moreover, its market share in the Chinese Mainland grew by over a third, from 9.10% to a 12.90% annualized rate.
In comparison, Honor, China’s largest smartphone manufacturer by market share, only had a 3.00% sales growth year-on-year. Meanwhile, Huawei competitors Vivo, Oppo, and Apple suffered double-digit declines in smartphone sales.
The Shenzhen-headquartered tech giant sparked its comeback in September with the release of the Mate 60 Pro flagship. Surprisingly, the new phone came with the domestically made advanced 7-nanometer chip Kirin 9000s and 5G technology.
Kirin 9000s utilizes four Cortex-A78 cores, four Cortex-A510 cores, and a Maleoon 910 graphics processing unit (GPU). It embodies everything the US sanctions were designed to prevent Huawei from acquiring.
In addition, the Mate 60 Pro boasts a 6.82-inch LTPO OLED display with a 2720p x 1260p resolution. It has a variable refresh rate of 1.00 to 120.00 Hz and up to 1.00 TB of expandable internal storage.
Furthermore, it sports a 5000mAh battery, 88W wired charging, 50W wireless charging, IP68 water-resistance rating, and Kunlun glass protection. 1.60 million units of Mate 60 Pro were sold in the first six weeks of the smartphone’s release.
US Sanctions Fail to Stop Huawei
Huawei controlled 39.00% of the Chinese smartphone market in 2019 before it crumbled under pressure from US sanctions. The US stopped the Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC from supplying Huawei with its patented Kirin chips.
Additionally, the US federal government banned all its employees from using Chinese smartphones, citing security concerns. It also required all US-based companies to get an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) license before dealing with Huawei.
In October 2022, America banned US companies from shipping advanced computing chips and semiconductors to China. A year later, the regulations were expanded to include offshore subsidiaries to patch up a loophole.
Despite numerous US sanctions, Huawei proved it could keep pace with competitors with the launch of the Mate 60 Pro.
