Huawei’s flagship P50 to launch on July 29

Huawei’s next flagship phone, the P50, is expected to launch on July 29, the company said. Writing on his own Weibo page, Huawei consumer group CEO Richard Yu said (via Google Translate) that the phone would mark the start of a “new era of mobile imaging,” suggesting that Huawei could once again make cameras the center of its next flagship. .

The launch comes just over a year since Huawei announced its P40 series, but the launch of the P50 is far from certain. US sanctions imposed on the company for national security reasons have seriously affected Huawei’s ability to produce its own Kirin chipsets, creating doubts about its ability to launch new flagship devices. “For reasons you all know, no launch date has been set,” Yu said when he teased the design of the P50 at a launch event last month.

These chip-related challenges, combined with sanctions that mean Huawei can no longer preinstall Google’s apps and services on its devices, have eroded Huawei’s market share. Globally, it failed to rank among the top five smartphone vendors in the second quarter of this year (after being the largest in the same quarter the year before), and even in China, Oppo surpassed it to become the country’s most popular smartphone brand in January. .