On October 15, it was reported that Kirin chips were given priority to supply Huawei instead of Honor, and Honor is facing a situation of being sold.

Since September 15 this year, Huawei has temporarily been unable to obtain the Kirin 9000 processor with advanced manufacturing process, and not only core mobile phone chips, such as memory chips, etc., as long as it contains American technology, all shipments to Huawei are prohibited, and a license needs to be applied for. .

Under the current ban on Huawei from the United States, the situation of lack of cores will continue, especially chips with advanced processes below 7nm. Therefore, whether it is Huawei mobile phones or Honor mobile phones, there will be no cores available.

It is reported that the next-generation flagship chip Kirin 9000, which will be launched by Huawei HiSilicon, will only be close to 10 million. Yu Chengdong said earlier that the Kirin 9000 will no longer be manufactured after September 15. The industry generally expects that it can only For about half a year, it will give priority to the shipment of Huawei Mate 40 series mobile phones.

There is only a mere 10 million in stock, and the demand for Huawei Mate 40 series may not be met. It is reported that Huawei will reduce the use of Kirin 9000 on the standard version of Mate 40 to fully guarantee the shipment of Mate40Pro/Mate40Pro+.

This means that in the case of giving priority to the Huawei Mate 40 series, the mid-to-high-end flagship mobile phones planned by Honor will inevitably be “coreless available”. The most direct impact is that the new V-series products released by Honor at the end of each year all use the same latest chips as Huawei’s Mate series. This year, due to sanctions, it is almost impossible for Honor V-series phones to use Kirin 9000 chips.

On the 14th, it was revealed that Huawei was negotiating with Digital China and other bidders to discuss the sale of part of the Honor smartphone business for a transaction amount of up to 25 billion yuan (about 3.7 billion US dollars). Other potential buyers include TCL and Xiaomi.

With TSMC unable to manufacture Kirin chips for Huawei, Qualcomm and MediaTek have not successfully applied for a shipment license to Huawei, and Huawei’s stockpiling of mobile phone chips is only enough for 3-6 months at most, the Honor brand no matter what. It seems reasonable to sell, split or retain.

Relevant people familiar with the matter said in the report that the transaction may be a cash transaction, and the assets planned to be sold have not yet been determined, but may include Honor’s brand, research and development capabilities and related supply chain management businesses.

Up to now, TCL has responded that it is false rumors. Companies including Honor, Huawei, Digital China and Xiaomi declined to comment on the report. After the news came out, Digital China’s stock rose more than 10% on Wednesday. On the Huawei side, a number of insiders have expressed that the news is untrue, but the group official has not released a public statement.

The Honor product line was born in September 2011 and began to operate independently in December 2013. The Honor brand was born to benchmark Xiaomi’s Internet phone model, and its appearance complemented the online market that Huawei was missing at that time. Honor is not humiliating its mission. In the Chinese mobile phone market in 2018, the sales of most brands continued to decline. Among the TOP10 brands, only vivo, Honor and Huawei were on the rise, while Honor surpassed Xiaomi and ranked third. At the same time, in addition to the mobile phone product line, Honor has also launched IoT products such as TVs.

It can be seen that Honor has huge competitiveness and brand value. However, the rise of Honor is inseparable from Huawei’s support. Honor and Huawei are from the same family, and can share the research results of Huawei Group in chips, algorithms, operating systems, and even communications, materials, and terminal applications.

Some analysts believe that selling Glory and letting it break away from the Huawei system so that it may get rid of the ban may not be a self-help way, at least the Glory brand can be preserved. The production ceiling of Huawei’s mobile phones has been limited. Instead of letting Honor stay inside and wait for it to shrink, it is better to stop losses in time and give it a go, maybe it will survive.

However, the current situation is complicated, and there are still many variables in the “sell or not” of Honor. Even if it is sold, “how to sell” is also a problem. What’s more, there are still greater risks behind it, for example, whether the United States will recognize the complete independence of glory and not regulate it, etc., these are still a mystery.