Huawei piece by piece: P30 Pro’s most important part relies on US tech
Much of the P30 Pro’s hardware is made in China, but processors are another story
It looks like things aren’t getting better for Huawei. After Google said it would pull access to Google apps from future Huawei smartphones, now it seems Huawei’s own Kirin chipsets are facing an uncertain future -- because they’re based on technology from British chip giant Arm.
It’s all down to the US decision to put Huawei on a blacklist that restricts exports to the Chinese company. To illustrate the scale of the problem facing Huawei, we’ve broken down some of the major components of its latest flagship, the P30 Pro, to show where they’re from.
Display and cover glass
For the P30 phones, Huawei sources displays from both Chinese and South Korean companies. According to research firm IHS Markit, the curved edge display on the P30 Pro uses flexible OLED panels made by Chinese company BOE and South Korea’s LG Display. The standard P30 uses Samsung’s OLED panels.
Cameras
For a few years now, Huawei has famously partnered with German camera giant Leica, which helps Huawei design and fine tune its camera performance. But the quad camera setup on the rear of the P30 Pro uses Sony sensors, according to IHS Markit. The lenses, including the periscope lens used for the 5x zoom, are made by Chinese and Taiwanese companies, including China’s Sunny Optical and Taiwan’s Himax, IHS data also shows.
