SHENZHEN — Three numbers tell you where China’s tech story is this week.
One. Huawei’s Mate 80 series hit a million single-unit activations before the end of 2025, according to leaker Digital Chat Station (数码闲聊站). Three models crossed that threshold: the Mate 80, the Mate 80 Pro, and the Mate 80 Pro Max. That puts the launch trajectory ahead of Mate 70, which shipped about 8.5 million total through Q3 2024 per Omdia.
The Mate 80 launched November 25 at 4,699 RMB for the base model, 800 RMB less than the Mate 70. It runs the Kirin 9030, a 7nm chip confirmed by analysts at BOCI and Dongwu Securities. The Pro Max starts at 7,999 RMB. The naming change — Pro+ is now Pro Max — is a small thing, but it signals Huawei is matching the iPhone tier structure head-on.
The question is supply. The Kirin 9030 is fabbed by SMIC, and SMIC is running near capacity.
Two. SMIC posted 2025 revenue of $9.327 billion, up 16.2% year-on-year, a record. Net profit hit $685 million, up 39%. Monthly wafer capacity broke 1 million (8-inch equivalent) for the first time, hitting 1.058 million. Utilization rate: 93.5%. China revenue share rose to 85.6% as local fabless clients shift from TSMC.
Thats the good news. The bad news is in the margins. Gross margin is 21%. Net margin is 7.3%. SMIC spent $8.4 billion on capex in 2025 and carries $12.6 billion in debt. Depreciation alone ate $3.81 billion. SMIC is getting bigger, not necessarily more profitable. The valuation game in A-shares is pricing in a TSMC catch-up story. I don’t buy the margin trajectory — not until 7nm yields improve significantly.
Three. BYD sold 4.602 million new energy vehicles in 2025. More striking: pure EV sales hit 2.257 million, finally passing Tesla’s 1.636 million. BYD has won the global EV crown that everyone has been predicting since 2023. Overseas sales crossed 1 million for the first time. BYD now operates 8 owned car-carrier ships.
The gap between BYD and Tesla is now real. But the low-end EV market in China is getting brutal. BYD’s Han and Tang carry margins, while the Seagull sells for 69,800 RMB. Volume is the strategy, and it is working.
Four. China is racing to build 8-inch silicon carbide (SiC) fabs. 2025 is being called the first year of 8-inch SiC (8英寸碳化硅元年). Silan Jihong and ST’s Chongqing joint venture both target production lines going live by Q4 2025. Hunan Sanan is spending 16 billion RMB to convert to an 8-inch SiC IDM, targeting 480,000 8-inch wafers per year at full capacity.
This matters because 8-inch SiC cuts die cost by roughly 30% compared to 6-inch. China’s EV makers need every percent of efficiency gain they can get. The SiC module price premium over IGBT is shrinking, which is how you get SiC into 150,000 RMB EVs.
Five. Counterpoint says 2025 is the inflection year for advanced mobile chips. 5nm and below will hit 51% of smartphone SoC shipments, crossing the halfway mark for the first time. Those chips will capture 80% of revenue. Qualcomm leads with 39% of advanced-node volume. MediaTek’s advanced-node shipments grew 69%, though half of its mix is still 4G.
The takeaway for China: domestic phone brands are buying more advanced chips than ever, but almost all of them come from TSMC or Samsung. SMIC’s 7nm capacity is allocated to Kirin and a few crypto-mining ASIC clients. The rest of China’s phone industry — Xiaomi, Oppo, vivo, Honor — still depends on non-Chinese fabs.
If the next round of US export controls targets 3nm access, those brands have no domestic Plan B. (No, 7nm is not the same as 3nm, not for power efficiency, not for AI inference on device.)
So there it is. Huawei is back in volume. SMIC is growing fast but burning cash. BYD has the crown. SiC is scaling. And China’s phone supply chain still has a gap it hasnt closed.
[[Featured image: Huawei Mate 80. Credit: GSMArena.]]