Huawei has taken a step back with its smartphone business as it sets its sights on capitalizing on the growing AI markets in China through its "Ascend" chips to tackle NVIDIA.
Huawei Puts Its Smartphone Business At The Backseat As The Firm Starts Exploiting The AI Potential in Chinese Markets With Its Ascend GPUs That Tackle NVIDIA's AI Chips
The tide seems to favor Huawei regarding market adoption from Chinese clients. With NVIDIA currently under fire due to harsh US regulations, Huawei has taken the step to increase its presence in the "regional" AI segment by not only offering its Ascend chips to the Chinese tech giants but by making them much more competitive in terms of performance and pricing from NVIDIA alternatives.
It was reported in the past that Chinese companies have reportedly refused to buy any of NVIDIA's new AI GPUs as they see Chinese alternatives as much better choices, at least for workloads that require low-to-mind inferencing power.
Reuters reports that Huawei is all set to come for NVIDIA's market share, which is why the firm is prioritizing the development of its Ascend AI chips over Kirin, which is designed for the smartphone segment. Since Huawei's production facilities exist at a confined level, they can only cater to the production of either one of the above-mentioned architectures, and as Huawei has realized the fact that it can make huge strides in the Chinese AI markets now, the decision seems like a worthy tradeoff.
However, not everything is rainbows for Huawei since it has been disclosed that the facility is facing poor yield rates, which might compromise the production of Huawei's Ascend 910B chips, at least periodically. This means that if the firm sees an increase in demand for its AI chips, it is going to be a hectic ride for them, but we will have to wait and see for now. However, displacing NVIDIA from its current position wouldn't be easy for Huawei, and it would probably require more than just economic resources.
News Source: Reuters
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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