Huawei is set to increase the proportion of smartphones powered by chips from its own HiSilicon unit, at the expense of Qualcomm and MediaTek, reports originating in China stated.

While Huawei already uses HiSilicon processors in many of its devices – citing Economic Daily News, DigiTimes said 70 million of the 153 million smartphones it shipped in 2017 used in-house chips – the company is looking to increase this to “toward 50 per cent or higher”.

HiSilicon will increase its foundry orders with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in order to support this.

For mainly its mass market models, Huawei has used chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek to make up the balance, and these companies would obviously be impacted by a shift.

Huawei is joined by rivals Apple and Samsung in developing its own processor technology in-house, although in Samsung’s case it also works with Qualcomm and (to a lesser extent) MediaTek. This enables the companies to go down their own paths with a core device technology, for example in Huawei’s case by bolstering its artificial intelligence capabilities.