Huawei is emulating Apple in developing the processors that power its latest smartphone, a breakthrough that will help the Chinese company to reduce its reliance on foreign technology as it confronts US sanctions. Analysis of the main chip inside the Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which launched at the end of last month and immediately sold out, reveals that Huawei has joined the elite group of Big Tech companies capable of designing their own semiconductors.

Four of the eight central processing units in the Mate 60 Pro’s “system on a chip” (SoC) rely purely on a design by Arm, the British company whose chip architecture powers 99 per cent of smartphones.

The other four CPUs are Arm-based but feature Huawei’s own designs and adaptations, according to three people familiar with the Mate’s development and Geekerwan, a Chinese technology testing company that took a closer look at the main chip.