华为9月7日发布第二代三折叠手机Mate XT2，搭载自研Kirin 9050 Pro（CPU/GPU/NPU/基带全自研），A股折叠屏链当日已两个涨停并在随后三日回吐

TAIPEI -- China's Huawei Technologies has unveiled its first triple-folding smartphone powered by chips that it says are free from U.S. supply restrictions, just days ahead of American rival Apple's annual launch of its flagship iPhones.
Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's consumer electronics business group, revealed the Mate XT2 at a launch event on Monday. It is the second generation of the company's tri-fold smartphone, which was first released in 2024, and is powered by the Kirin 9050 Pro chip designed by Huawei.
Huawei was cut off from accessing American technologies in May 2020, and this is the first time in six years that the company has announced that the core chipset of its smartphones are designed in-house.
Yu said the Kirin 9050 Pro chipset has a Linxi Core CPU (central processing unit), Maleoon GPU (graphics processing unit) and Da Vinci NPU (neural processing unit), all developed by Huawei. The handset also uses Huawei's Balong modem.
"We not only have strong CPUs and GPUs, we also have very strong NPU technologies that can support AI computing on the device," Yu said at the product launch event. "Super fast, super intelligent, super cool. The most powerful Kirin chip ever."
The latest chipset can handle 3-billion-parameter AI models on a device and its overall computing performance is 42% higher than the previous generation, according to Yu.
The new phone also uses multi-channel packaging technology to improve its thermal management capability when running mobile games. Semiconductors and thermal management are among the key technologies global tech titans are racing to improve.
Yu said Huawei has sold more than 1 million tri-fold smartphones so far. The Mate XT2 supports its Pangu 30B-A2B Mixture of Experts artificial intelligence model, as well as China's Tiantong satellite communication system and the Beidou Navigation Satellite System.
Huawei said in May that it had found a new approach, dubbed the Tau Scaling Law, to develop chips and related systems that could overcome most of the bottlenecks created by U.S. restrictions, which have barred the company from using American technologies or having foreign partners manufacture its advanced chips. The company said the Mate XT2 is its first smartphone that uses chips developed under the Tau Scaling Law.
Huawei, along with China's leading contract chipmakers Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. and Hua Hong Semiconductors are spearheading China's ambition to produce at least five times more advanced chips to feed the country's AI and self-sufficiency demand, which includes production on the 7-nanometer or even 5-nm performance level, Nikkei Asia first reported in February.
The world's smartphone industry is in the midst of an unprecedented supply crunch for memory and other electronics components. Global smartphone shipments are forecast to drop more than 14% year over year in 2026, with the downturn extending into 2027 as component costs and affordability pressures intensify, according to Counterpoint Research. Chinese handset makers Xiaomi, Oppo and others have cut shipment outlooks several times to reflect component challenges.
Apple and Samsung Electronics, with their greater focus on premium smartphones, are relatively less exposed to the component crunch. Huawei, meanwhile, is the only major Chinese smartphone maker still targeting shipment growth this year, Nikkei previously reported.
Huawei defied the supply headwinds, logging a 25% year-on-year growth in shipments in the April-June quarter, while its Chinese competitors like Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo all saw significant declines, Omedia's latest available data showed. Apple, competing head-to-head with Huawei in the Chinese market, saw its shipments increase 24% in China.
Huawei's tri-fold smartphone launch event comes just two days before Apple is set to unveil its first-ever foldable iPhone on Wednesday in the U.S. The California-based tech giant has high hopes that the new smartphone would energize sales, but initial production output for the product is very limited, mainly due to Apple's higher-than-industry manufacturing quality, Nikkei Asia exclusively reported last week. Huawei and Samsung were the first back in 2019 to introduce foldable-screen smartphones in bids to energize the maturing handset market.