The Huawei Mate 40 5G may have been delayed after all due to US restrictions

Sources familiar with the situation told the publication that Huawei has asked suppliers to halt the production of certain components originally intended for the flagship smartphones. It has also trimmed component orders for the coming quarters.

The company is taking time to assess the impact that recent measures implemented by the United States will have on its massive smartphone business. The latter is consistently the second largest by volume in the world and temporarily took the crown from Samsung in April.

Huawei is reportedly uncertain about HiSilicon’s ability to supply chipsets and other related components for devices moving forward. The reason being that US equipment can no longer be used to manufacture products from the subsidiary.

That recent development forced TSMC, a company responsible for manufacturing around 95% of HiSilicon Kirin chipsets, to stop accepting orders and effectively drop Huawei as a customer. The latter has stockpiled chips, but that inventory won’t last forever.

Huawei is now said to have delayed mass production for the Mate 40 series by at least one or two months, which means the flagship lineup may not hit shelves across the globe until November or December.

Senior analyst at Mizuho Securities Yasuo Nakane recently announced that he expects Huawei to ship around 180 million smartphones in 2020. That number seems rather pessimistic but would represent a massive drop from the record 270 million shipped last year.