Huawei took the world by surprise when it launched the Mate 60 and Mate 60 Pro last year. Despite sanctions that prevent the company from sourcing advanced chips, including 5G modems, the device's China-made Kirin 9000s SoC provided 5G and satellite network connectivity. Naturally, the Mate 60 series ended up being one of Huawei's most popular phones in China last year.
Even as the Mate 60 series has retained its popular since a successor isn't due until some time, Huawei is making an interesting gamble by cutting the device's production. It's doing that to manufacture more of its Ascend 910B artificial intelligence chips.
Huawei to make fewer Kirin SoCs, more Ascend AI chips
Reuters is reporting that Huawei is focused on increasing production of its AI chip. It has retasked the plant where the Mate 60 series' Kirin SoC is produced to make more of the AI chips instead. The report mentions that Kirin production at the plant is now low with more resources being dedicated to the production of the Ascend 910B.
The Ascend chips are used for training AI models and China, much like the rest of the world, is seeing an AI goldrush. There's growing domestic demand for AI chips and Huawei is trying to capitalize on that. There's significant demand in China for AI chips as companies there are finding it difficult to source leading AI chips like the H100 from NVIDIA due to US sanctions on chip experts.
Therefore, Chinese AI developers are now looking to use domestically produced alternatives like the Ascend 910B from Huawei. Therefore, the conglomerate is well positioned to cash in on the hype by feeding the insatiable appetite for AI chips that companies in China have right now.
