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Huawei’s flagship Pura 70 smartphone has highest ratio yet of China-made components as firm seeks tech self-sufficiency

  • An analysis from TechInsights has found 33 China-sourced components in the standard Pura 70 handset, compared with five sourced from overseas
  • Huawei’s success in having components produced locally suggests that recent restrictions from the US on Qualcomm and Intel are unlikely to have much impact

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A woman uses her cellphone while standing in front of a screen advertising the Huawei Pura 70 series smartphones outside Huawei’s flagship store in Shenzhen on April 26, 2024. Photo: Reuters
Che Panin Beijing
With its latest flagship smartphone, Huawei Technologies has pushed ahead in cramming in ever more China-made components, according to a recent tear-down analysis of the Pura 70 line, as the tech giant looks to overcome US sanctions and go head-to-head with Apple on its home turf.

The Pura 70, 70 Pro, 70 Pro Plus and top-of-the-line 70 Ultra have packed in a record number of locally sourced semiconductors, a sign that the Shenzhen-based tech giant is close to breaking free of the escalating US sanctions that hobbled its smartphone business five years ago. The vast majority of the electronics in the handsets were sourced in China, according to an analysis from TechInsights, a semiconductor and electronic components research company.

Being able to source components locally has become more imperative for Huawei after the US recently revoked more chip export licences from chip makers Qualcomm and Intel, preventing them from selling their products to Huawei. Given the advancements in China-made chips, analysts downplayed the impact of Washington’s latest move, as Huawei has already been producing 4G and 5G chipsets for both high-end and budget handsets.

“We don’t think revoking the chipset export licence will significantly impact Huawei’s smartphone business this year,” said Linda Sui, a senior smartphone analyst with TechInsights.

Components of a Huawei Pura 70 Pro smartphone laid out on a table during a teardown analysis by iFixit staff members for Reuters, in Shenzhen on April 19, 2024. Photo: Reuters
Components of a Huawei Pura 70 Pro smartphone laid out on a table during a teardown analysis by iFixit staff members for Reuters, in Shenzhen on April 19, 2024. Photo: Reuters
Foreign components still used in the phones include DDR5 memory from SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. SK Hynix’s memory chips appear in the standard Pura 70 and 70 Pro, whereas Samsung’s chips were found in the 70 Pro Plus and Ultra. On the standard model, 33 of 69 electronic components that TechInsights analysed were sourced from Chinese manufacturers, and only five sourced from non-Chinese suppliers. Other components are still under investigation.

The Pura 70 Ultra appears to only use memory from Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YMTC), China’s top NAND memory maker, which is also under US sanctions. By comparison, the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, which launched last year to intense interest because of its China-made 7-nanometre processor, used SK Hynix NAND chips, according to TechInsights.

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