Huawei's HiSilicon chip unit shows stunning year-over-year growth in Q3
Research firm Canalys has released its third quarter 2024 global smartphone chipmaker rankings. Despite U.S. export rules that ban foundries using American technology from producing semiconductors for Huawei, the latter's HiSilicon chip design unit had a strong Q3. HiSilicon's Kirin chip showed the best growth performance among its rivals during the third quarter which ran from July through September.
In Q3, HiSilicon enjoyed a 178% year-over-year revenue hike to lead its rivals and this improvement came from the successful quarter achieved by mid-range Kirin chipsets. Huawei has recently released several smartphones that are powered by mid-range Kirin silicon such as the Nova Flip clamshell foldable and the newly launched Nova 13 series. The Kirin 8000 chipset also powered the Nova 12 series and these phones achieved good sales this year. The Kirin 8000 features eight CPU cores with a 1+3+4 configuration that looks like this:
- One large CPU core running at a peak clock speed of 2.40GHz.
- Three medium CPU cores running at a clock speed peaking at 2.19GHz.
- Four small CPU cores running at a clock speed of up to 1.84GHz.
By smartphone shipments, MediaTek was the top chip designer for Q3 worldwide followed by Qualcomm, Apple, UNISOC, Samsung, HiSilicon, and Google. 119 million phones packed with a MediaTek Dimensity application processor (AP) shipped during the quarter compared to 76 million handsets delivered with a Qualcomm AP under the hood. Apple shipped 54 million iPhone units globally in Q3. As for HiSilicon, Huawei shipped 8 million phones during the quarter which was slightly less than half the 17 million Samsung delivered.
By revenue, Apple was your Q3 global leader thanks to the high prices for iPhone models worldwide. Behind Apple was Qualcomm followed by MediaTek, HiSilicon, UNISOC, and Google. With its top-ranked finish based on revenue for the third quarter, Apple owned 41% of the global chip market from July through September, up 2 percentage points compared with last year's Q3 market share.
Based on revenue generated by phone sales, Apple's A-series chips were ranked at the top during Q3. | Image credit-MyDrivers
MediaTek's third place finish in revenue generation during Q3 was helped by big sales of the Dimensity 9300 and Dimensity 9400 processors. MediaTek earned a 17% slice of the worldwide chip market.
All eyes are on Huawei as it is expected to unveil its second flagship series of the year with the Mate 70 line. The latest rumor has the series running on a 6nm Kirin 9100 AP that will be produced by SMIC, China's largest foundry, using past-generation Deep Ultraviolet lithography machines. China is banned from receiving shipments of Extreme Ultraviolet lithography machines and the latest cutting-edge High-NA EUV technology.
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