Huawei may begin licensing smartphone designs to other companies

According to the latest Bloomberg report, Huawei is said to license out its smartphone designs to third-party companies. The main agenda is to relate the chips and other components that Huawei currently cannot. Xnova, a unit of the Chinese Postal and Telecommunications Appliances Co, is selling branded versions of Huawei’s Nova devices. TD Tech Ltd is also selling phones using Huawei’s designs.

It will allow you licensing smartphone designs out to other companies as US sanctions continue to decimate the Chinese giant’s smartphone business. With these efforts, Huawei is apparently in the process of redesigning the internal components of its designs to use off-the-shelf chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek in place of Huawei’s Kirin chips. Huawei reportedly expects these efforts to boost smartphone shipments to over 30 million units in 2022.

Engineers at Huawei have already begun redesigning the circuits of some marquee smartphones previously powered by the company’s in-house HiSilicon chips so they can adapt to Qualcomm or MediaTek Inc. processors, said one of the people. Huawei expects the partnerships could bring smartphone shipments — including inhouse models and those sold by partners — to more than 30 million units next year, the person added.

The company sold its Honor sub-brand to a consortium led by a state-owned company in Shenzhen about a year ago, freeing the business from U.S. sanctions. Honor is now able to buy components from suppliers including Qualcomm, Chief Executive Officer George Zhao has said.