Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the manufacturer behind many chips powering modern smartphones, from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 to Apple’s A12 Bionic or Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC. A recent report citing unnamed industry sources claims that TSMC’s orders for chips to be used in Android smartphones are ramping up, as clients like HiSilicon, MediaTek and Qualcomm are placing more and more orders.

More specifically, HiSilicon had a spike in orders, as the Kirin 980 chip is powering both the current Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro devices, as well as the upcoming Huawei P30 and P30 Pro smartphones. “HiSilicon is expected to provide as high as 70% of total smartphone chips demanded by Huawei”, the report clarifies, mentioning that “orders placed by HiSilicon for the second quarter outpace those placed by its other mobile SoC customers”.

Some Huawei smartphones also use MediaTek and Qualcomm chips, but sources expect these to slow down as the Chinese phone-maker is relying more and more on its own HiSilicon application processor.

TSMC may see total orders placed for Huawei’s devices exceed those for Apple’s iPhones in the first three quarters of 2019, the sources indicated. Apple remains TSMC’s biggest client — DigiTimes

However, a recent Commercial Times report cited by DigiTimes predicts Huawei and its HiSilicon chip orders to increase significantly, with HiSilicon becoming TSMC’s largest 7nm customer in 2019.