Huawei launched the Mate 70 series of phones at an event held in Shenzhen on November 26, 2024. These phones are the first capable of running Huawei's new operating system called HarmonyOS NEXT.
Huawei
Huawei on Tuesday launched the Mate 70 series of smartphones that can run on the company's latest self-developed operating system, as the Chinese giant continues its quest for technological independence in the wake of US sanctions.
The Mate 70 is the successor to the Mate 60, which was released last year and sent shockwaves through the worlds of technology and politics. They contained semiconductors that many thought Huawei and China would find difficult to produce, given the spread of US restrictions that sought to cut off the world's second-largest economy from leading chips. Huawei was separated from Google's Android operating system in 2019, forcing the Chinese tech giant to develop its own software.
Huawei did not say which chipset the phone was running on, but Richard Yu, president of Huawei's consumer and automotive division, said the Mate 70 could run on HarmonyOS NEXT – the company's first entirely self-developed mobile operating system.
Huawei hopes the operating system will become a viable alternative to Apple's Android and iOS operating systems in China. The company's first versions of HarmonyOS were built using open source Android code.
However, HarmonyOS NEXT is said to no longer use this code, marking a significant update in Huawei's software development.
“HarmonyOS Next has good potential as an alternative in China,” Will Wong, senior research director at IDC, told CNBC. “This is not only because of Huawei's brand name, but also because it has made an effort to attract developers to join its ecosystem.”
The company's consumer business was crippled after various White House restrictions blocked its access to key technology from chips to software. But with the launch of the Mate 60 last year, Huawei's business in China picked up, putting pressure on Apple.
Huawei started taking reservations for the device earlier this month, and has racked up more than 3 million reservations for the device on a Chinese e-commerce site. This may not necessarily translate into sales.
The company talked about the artificial intelligence features of its device, including photo editing tools. This comes at a time when smartphone makers are looking to woo customers with new AI tools. In China, the race is on among local players to make a good impression with their AI tools before the launch of Apple Intelligence in the country.
The Mate 70 series comes in three variants – Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro and Mate 70 Pro+. The Mate 70 starts at CNY 5,499 ($759), while the Mate 70 Pro+ starts at CNY 8,499.
On Tuesday, Huawei also unveiled its latest foldable smartphone called the Mate X6, which starts at 12,999 yuan.
New operating system in focus
Over the past year, Huawei appears to have been buoyed by the success of its devices in China, achieving growth that has put it back in the top five smartphone operators in the country.
The company is looking to publicly showcase its technological capabilities from the tri-fold smartphone launched in September to the HarmonyOS NEXT in a bid to show that it is not hampered by US sanctions.
In addition to the foldable Mate 70 and Mate X6 series being able to run the new operating system, Huawei said some of its older devices will receive the software upgrade in the coming months.
The success of operating systems often depends on the range of applications available to them. During the launch event, Yu demonstrated how AI, as part of HarmonyOS NEXT, can interact with popular apps such as Alipay, one of China's largest mobile payment services.
For now, Huawei's latest phones alongside HarmonyOS NEXT are largely focused on the Chinese market, as the company still faces increasing challenges abroad.
