How Huawei has remained resilient in the face of US sanctions; Mizuho: about 700,000 units of Huawei's Ascend 910 series are expected to ship in 2025
South China Morning Post :
Context & Ripple Effects
Huawei’s resilience under US restrictions had already become a central theme in coverage, following its continued expansion despite harsher sanctions. Earlier reporting also described component stockpiling to support handset shipments, showing that supply continuity has been a recurring part of its response.
The projected Ascend 910-series volume shifts that resilience story from phones toward compute hardware. It matters because the reported 2025 shipments offer a concrete indicator of whether Huawei can sustain an alternative supply path under restrictions.
First-order effects
- Mizuho’s forecast of roughly 700,000 Ascend 910-series units in 2025 gives Huawei and prospective customers a planning signal for available domestic compute hardware.
- Huawei’s reported component localization progress—57% in the Mate 70 Pro and Pura 80 Pro versus 32% for comparable 2023 phones—suggests a broader effort to reduce exposure to restricted inputs.
Second-order effects
- Chinese buyers seeking compute capacity gain a potential second source, while Huawei must convert projected chip volume into dependable systems, software, and customer deployments.
- Higher Ascend output would increase demand across Huawei’s domestic supplier network and put greater pressure on rival compute vendors to compete where restricted technology is harder to obtain.
Third-order effects
- If Ascend shipments can scale consistently, export controls may reshape supply chains toward more regionally self-sufficient compute stacks rather than simply reducing demand for advanced hardware.
- The key constraint will increasingly be the reliability and completeness of the surrounding hardware and software ecosystem, not chip availability alone.
The trend: Huawei’s Ascend forecast is part of the shift toward second-source compute ecosystems built to operate amid technology-trade restrictions.