News about the activities of the Chinese giant Huawei Technologies in the field of import substitution are emerging one after another. While the whole world is discussing where the 7nm processors in the Mate 60 series smartphones come from, Huawei is simultaneously resuming the supply of semiconductor components of its own design for video surveillance systems. At the same time, company representatives are calling for a more active transition to the domestic component base.
Image source: Huawei Technologies
Agency Reuters We learned through our own channels that Huawei Technologies’ special division has resumed shipments of semiconductor components own development for video surveillance cameras in the upper price segment, although US sanctions have previously prevented this since 2019. According to the main source, Huawei’s Chinese customers in this market segment have been receiving new batches of branded semiconductors for CCTV cameras since this year.
Of course, chips for CCTV cameras are much easier to develop and produce than chips for smartphones, but even in this area Huawei was forced to limit its market presence after the imposition of US sanctions in 2019. Chips for video cameras are developed by the HiSilicon division, which also developed the same 7nm Kirin 9000S processor, which became the reason for the investigation by the American authorities into the real situation in the Chinese semiconductor industry.
Before the sanctions against Huawei came into force, the HiSilicon division occupied up to 60% of the global market for chips for video surveillance cameras. In 2021, HiSilicon’s share no longer exceeded 3.9% due to US export restrictions, but the company all the time retained the ability to supply the market with a limited range of profile components. Now Chinese sources are ready to announce Huawei’s return to this market segment with new chips manufactured under sanctions.
At the same time, Huawei Technologies Vice Chairman Eric Xu Zhijun commented from the sides Chinese publications In general, calls on Chinese manufacturers to make more active use of the domestic component base, since without it no progress can be made in reducing the technological gap with foreign products. Now there is such a backlog, as the Huawei boss admitted. In his opinion, by using Chinese components on a large scale, one can achieve success in developing domestic technologies and products. According to Huawei management, the sanctions of the USA and its allies will not disappear in the future, so it makes no sense to count on receiving technology from abroad. Chinese companies should develop products that are wholly or largely independent of foreign technology. The race for foreign technology leaders will be long, Huawei’s vice chairman said.
The Huawei representative did not say anything about the origin of the HiSilicon Kirin 9000S processor in the infamous Mate 60 Pro smartphone, but called on Chinese manufacturers to more actively use processors from the Kunpeng and Ascend families of the same brand as part of products developed in China Cloud Artificial intelligence services and systems with large language models.
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