Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 90 smartphone series, leveraging a proprietary operating system and a novel three-dimensional chip architecture called “LogicFolding” to maintain performance despite ongoing U.S. restrictions on advanced semiconductor imports.
Engineering Around Sanctions With Three-Dimensional LogicFolding
The top-tier Mate 90 Pro Max runs on the Kirin 9050 Pro, a system-on-chip manufactured using the company’s proprietary “LogicFolding” technique. Instead of relying on a conventional two-dimensional plane, this method reorganizes the internal wiring of the chip in three dimensions. The result is denser and faster data processing, though it demands a higher consumption of wafers during production.
Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group, acknowledged during a press briefing ahead of the launch that supply constraints remain a reality. Advanced semiconductor fabrication capacity inside mainland China is restricted, forcing Huawei to share limited output between its smartphone processors and its Ascend artificial intelligence hardware. Manufacturing relies heavily on deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines. While extreme ultraviolet (EUV) tech is considered “valuable,” domestic suppliers are still struggling to master it.
Although Huawei has not specified who manufactured the Kirin 9050 Pro, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) is widely considered the manufacturer of the Kirin and Ascend processors. SMIC has not responded to a request for comment.
HarmonyOS 7 and the Pricing Pressures of Memory Inflation
The Mate 90 lineup runs on HarmonyOS 7, a proprietary operating system that does not feature Android. Huawei reports that the ecosystem supports more than 450,000 applications and services.
The flagship Mate 90 Pro Max, equipped with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage, debuts at 9,999 yuan (approximately $1,491 USD). That represents a 2,000-yuan jump over its predecessor’s launch price. Standard and Pro models start at 5,999 yuan and 6,999 yuan respectively.
Richard Yu pointed directly to soaring memory component costs as the driver behind these price increases. Component inflation has injected an average of $200 in extra cost into every handset, compressing manufacturer margins. While broader smartphone shipments across China fell by 7% year-over-year from January to August, Huawei’s domestic shipments surged by 13% over the same period, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).
Navigating the Foldable Face-Off With Apple
Apple announced last month its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, entering a market dominated by Samsung Electronics and domestic competitors like Huawei.
Huawei currently commands roughly 75% of China’s folding phone market. Following Apple’s announcement, weekly sales of Huawei’s Pura X Max foldable jumped 76%. The Pura X Max has already surpassed 1.2 million shipped units in China since its April release.
Counterpoint Research projects that Apple will ship 6 million units of the iPhone Duo in 2026, with the Chinese market expected to absorb nearly a quarter of that total. As Huawei rolls out the Mate 90 series with a claimed 31% overall performance gain over the previous generation, the company continues to test whether localized manufacturing and architectural innovation can sustain its market share.
