04-02: Half of Huawei’s flagship offerings could sport foldable displays by 2021; Transsion Holdings has reportedly applied for listing on The Shanghai Stock Exchange; etc.
Chipsets
Huawei’s IC design subsidiary HiSilicon may unseat MediaTek as the largest IC design house in Asia in 2019, as the China-based company is set to roll out diverse new chipset solutions to support its parent firm’s aggressive deployments in 5G, AI and IoT applications and even to explore global demand from these sectors, according to Digitimes. (GizChina, My Drivers, Digitimes, press, Digitimes, press)
Touch Display
Huawei consumer business group CEO, Richard Yu, has revealed that in just 2 years’ time, Huawei’s foldable flagships should cost no more than regular smartphones. This gradual drop in price will also result in Huawei bringing more devices to the market and, by 2021, half of Huawei’s flagship offerings could sport foldable displays. (Phone Arena, GSM Arena, Huanqiu)
With better synchronization between smartwatches and smartphones, smartwatch display shipments increased by 42%, year on year, to reach 149M units in 2018, according to IHS Markit. Since the Samsung Galaxy Gear was released in 2013 and the Apple Watch debuted in 2014, smartwatch display shipments have increased sharply, growing more than 15 times over the past four years from 9.4M units in 2014. (IHS Markit, press, CN Beta)
Battery
TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo confirms that Apple’s 2019 phones is that they could gain a two-way wireless charging feature. The newly design wireless charging module suppliers are Luxshare and Sunway, of which the cost is slightly drops to USD2.1~2.3.Battery capacities of new 6.5” OLED, 5.8” OLED and 6.1” LCD significantly increase by 10%-15%, 20%-25%, and 0%-5% compared to 2018 new models. The new battery module suppliers are Sunwoda, Desay and Simplo. (CN Beta, TF Securities, CNBC, Business Insider)
Phone
Xiaomi Mi 9 has shipped more than 1M units worldwide. The phone launched in late Feb 2019, so it hit this milestone in about a month. Adding the Mi 9 SE shipments, the total raises to over 1.5M units (presumably this includes the Explorer version too). Note that the SE is not available globally yet. (GizChina, GSM Arena, My Drivers)
Huawei reportedly uses Zhengzhou Foxconn, which is responsible for many iPhones to mass produce its latest series. The first batch of this series has up to 5M units. In the follow-up, Huawei has prepared 16M orders, which implies that the P30 series will have an estimated sales volume of 21M units or even more during the entire sale cycle. (GizChina, My Drivers)
Transsion Holdings has reportedly applied for listing on The Shanghai Stock Exchange. It was established in Shenzhen in 2013 with a registered capital of CNY720M. Its main market is on the African continent and Nigeria is perhaps its largest single market on the continent. Transsion Holdings is the parent company of the Tecno, Infinix, iTel and Spice brands. (Gizmo China, My Drivers)
Wearables
Bragi, creator of the Dash wireless earbuds, has made an exit from the consumer market. The company has confirmed that it sold its product business to “a third-party buyer” in Mar 2019. Bragi will continue to license its IP and AI, but it will no longer be creating new devices, company CEO Nikolaj Hviid confirmed. (Engadget, TechCrunch, Wearable, CN Beta)
The size of the global market for true wireless hearables stood 12.5M units in 4Q18, according to Counterpoint Research. North America was the largest market, accounting for 24% of the volumes, followed closely by the Asia Pacific region excluding China and Europe. In terms of brands, Apple was the clear leader with a 60% market share. (Counterpoint Research, blog, CN Beta)
