Finally, the answer to the appearance of SK Hynix’s mysterious RAM and NAND Flash chips on the Mate 60 Pro that Huawei just launched has been revealed.
According to PhoneArena, an in-depth study from TechInsights discovered that the RAM and NAND Flash chips on the Mate 60 Pro came from inventory that Huawei owned before US sanctions on this company took effect
Previously, a discovery showed that the Mate 60 Pro contains a 12 GB LPDDR5 RAM chip and 512 GB NAND Flash. This appears to violate US export rules, which prevent foundries from using US technology to ship chips to Huawei without a license. However, the new discovery means that memory chip suppliers SK Hynix and Huawei are not violating US sanctions.
In his reaction, SK Hynix Vice President Park Jung-ho affirmed: “We have absolutely no business relationship with Huawei. We are investigating the circumstances. Huawei’s new smartphone is a product that is well manufactured and we need to further examine what type of DRAM is being used in that phone.”
SK Hynix itself also said in a statement that it “no longer cooperates with Huawei since the US imposed restrictions and the company is also strictly complying with the US government’s export restrictions. When the ban started, Huawei accounted for 10% of SK Hynix’s revenue.”
The content of the report took place not long after US lawmakers and officials wanted to investigate how Huawei and SMIC were able to produce 7nm 5G SoCs before US sanctions. On the previous two flagship lines, Mate 50 (2022) and P60 (2023), Huawei was forced to apply for a license to import Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chips that have been tweaked to work with 4G networks but not 5G.
This also opens up the question of how much inventory Huawei has left of the said chips. The launch of the Mate 60 Pro has caused huge interest in China, and analysts believe that demand for the new phone will have a negative impact on sales of the new iPhone 15 series in China. – which is the largest smartphone market in the world.