Huawei launched the Mate 70 series in an event in Shenzhen on November 26, 2024. The phones are the first capable of running Huawei’s new operating system called HarmonyOS NEXT.
Huawei
Huawei on Tuesday launched the Mate 70 series of smartphones that can run on the company’s latest self-developed operating system, as the Chinese giant continues its push toward technological independence in the wake of U.S. sanctions.
Huawei did not mention what chip the phone was running, but Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer and auto businesses, said that the Mate 70 can operate on HarmonyOS NEXT — the company’s first fully self-developed mobile operating system.
Huawei is hoping that the OS can become a viable alternative to Android and Apple’s iOS in China. The company’s early versions of HarmonyOS were built using open-source Android code.
However, HarmonyOS NEXT reportedly no longer uses that code, marking a siginficant update in Huawei’s software development.
“HarmonyOS Next has good potential as an alternative in China,” Will Wong, senior research manager at IDC, told CNBC. “This is not only because of Huawei’s brand name but also because it has been putting effort into attracting developers to join its ecosystem.”
Huawei started taking reservations for the device earlier this month and has racked up more than 3 million reservations for the device on one Chinese e-commerce website. This may not necessarily translate into sales.
The company talked up the artificial intelligence features of its device, including photo editing tools. It comes at a time when smartphone makers are looking to lure customers in with new AI tools. In China, the race is on among domestic players to make an impression with their AI tools before the launch of Apple Intelligence in the country.
The Mate 70 series comes in three varieties — the Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro and Mate 70 Pro+. The Mate 70 starts at 5,499 ($759) Chinese yuan, while the Mate 70 Pro+ starts at 8,499 yuan.
On Tuesday, Huawei also took the wraps off its latest foldable smartphone called the Mate X6 which starts at 12,999 yuan.
New OS in focus
Over the past year, Huawei appears to be bolstered by the success of its devices in China and, posting growth that has propelled it back into the list of top five smartphone players in the country.
The company has looked to display its technological capabilities publicly from the trifold smartphone launched in September to HarmonyOS NEXT in a bid to show it is not being held back by U.S. sacntions.
In addition to the Mate 70 series and Mate X6 foldable being capable of running the new OS, Huawei said some of its older devices will receive the software upgrade over the coming months.
The success of operating systems is often predicated on the suite of its available apps. During the launch event, Yu showed how, as part of HarmonyOS NEXT, the AI can interact with popular apps such as Alipay, one of China’s biggest mobile payment services.
For now, Huawei’s latest phones alongside HarmonyOS NEXT are very much focused on the Chinese market, as the company still faces mounting challenges abroad.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks during the company’s annual general meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 27, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment in the embattled chipmaker.
SoftBank will pay $23 per share for Intel’s common stock, which closed on Monday at $23.66. The shares rose about 6% in extended trading to $25.
The investment makes SoftBank the fifth-biggest Intel shareholder, according to FactSet. It’s a vote of support for Intel, which hasn’t been able to take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom in advanced semiconductors and has spent heavily to stand up a manufacturing business that’s yet to secure a significant customer.
“Masa and I have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement, referring to SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, their worst performance in the company’s more than half-century on the public market. The stock is up 18% in 2025 as of Monday’s close.
Tan took over as Intel CEO in March after his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, was ousted in December.
Intel has been a major topic of discussion in Washington of late, due to the company’s role as the only American company capable of manufacturing the most advanced chips.
However, Intel’s foundry business, which is designed to manufacture chips for other companies, has yet to secure a major customer, a critical step towards stabilization and expansion. Last month, Intel said it would wait to secure orders before committing to certain future investment in its foundry.
Tan met with President Donald Trump last week after the president had called for the CEO’s resignation. The U.S. government is considering taking an equity stake in Intel, according to reports.
SoftBank, meanwhile, has become an increasingly large player in the global chip and AI markets.
In 2016, SoftBank acquired chip designer Arm in a deal worth about $32 billion at the time. Today the company is worth almost $150 billion. Arm-based chips are part of Nvidia’s systems that go into data centers.
SoftBank was also part of President Trump’s Stargate announcement in January, along with OpenAI and Oracle.
The three companies committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the AI infrastructure project. Two months later, SoftBank led a $40 billion investment into OpenAI, the largest private tech deal on record.
“This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role,” Son said in a statement.
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, looks on during the closing bell at the Nasdaq Market in New York City on March 25, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued upbeat guidance for the current period. The cybersecurity software vendor said Nir Zuk, who founded the company in 2005, is retiring from his role as chief technology officer.
The stock rose about 6% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:
Earnings: 95 cents adjusted vs. 88 cents expected
Revenue: $2.54 billion vs. $2.5 billion expected.
Revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter rose 16% from about $2.2 billion last year, the company said in a statement. Net income fell to about $254 million, or 36 cents per share, from about $358 million, or 51 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
The company also issued upbeat guidance for the fiscal first quarter. Earnings per share will be between 88 cents and 90 cents, Palo Alto said, topping an 85-cents estimate from StreetAccount.
For the full year, Palo Alto said revenue will range from $10.48 billion to $10.53 billion on adjusted earnings of $3.75 to $3.85 per share. Both estimates exceeded Wall Street’s projections.
Palo Alto said that for the fiscal first quarter, remaining purchase obligations, which tracks backlog, will range between $15.4 billion and $15.5 billion, surpassing a $15.07 billion estimate.
Last month, the company announced plans to buy Israeli identity security provider CyberArk for $25 billion. It’s the largest deal Palo Alto has made since its founding, and most ambitious in an acquiring spree that ramped up after CEO Nikesh Arora took the helm of the company in 2018.
Shares sold off sharply after the news broke and have yet to recover previous highs. The stock is down about 3% this year as of Monday’s close.
“We look for great products, a team that can execute in the product, and we let them run it,” Arora told CNBC following the announcement. “This is going to be a different challenge, but we’ve done well 24 times, so I’m pretty confident that our team can handle this.”
Lee Klarich, the company’s product chief, will replace Zuk as CTO and fill his position on the board.
Satellite internet service Starlink, which is owned and operated by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, appeared to suffer a brief network outage on Monday, with thousands of reports of service interruptions on Downdetector, a site that logs tech issues.
The outage marked the second in two weeks for Starlink. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The network’s July 24 outage lasted for several hours, with SpaceX Vice President of Starlink Engineering Michael Nicolls blaming the matter on “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network” behind Starlink.
That outage followed the launch of T-Mobile‘s Starlink-powered satellite service, a direct-to-cell-phone service created to keep smartphone users connected “in places no carrier towers can reach,” according to T-Mobile’s website.
SpaceX provides Starlink internet service to more than six million users across 140 countries, according to the company’s website, though churn and subscriber rates are not publicly reported by the company.
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The SpaceX Starlink constellation is far larger than any competitor. It currently features over 7,000 operational broadband satellites, according to research by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
On Monday, Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched another group of satellites to add to its Starlink constellation from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California.
SpaceX is currently aiming to increase the number of launches and landings from Vandenberg from 50 to about 100 annually.
On Thursday last week, the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to oppose the U.S. Space Force application to conduct that higher volume of SpaceX launches there.
The Commission has said that SpaceX and Space Force officials have failed to properly evaluate and report on potential impacts of increased launches on neighboring towns, and local wildlife, among other issues.
President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order seeking to ease environmental regulations seen by Musk, and others, as hampering commercial space operations.