The Nexus 6 isn’t even half a year old yet, but already the rumor mill has begun turning its attention to its successor. Sources in China claim that Google has chosen a local manufacturer to build one variant of its next smartphone, and it seems Huawei best fits the bill.

In previous years, each of Google’s hardware partners have produced two Nexus devices; LG built the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 5, Asus built both the first- and second-generation Nexus 7 tablets, and Samsung built the Nexus S and the Galaxy Nexus.

But Motorola, which manufacturers the Nexus 6, could build just one.

GizmoChina points to a source on Chinese social networking site Weibo who claims that there will be two Nexus smartphones announced this year — one of which will be a high-end device manufactured by LG, and the other will be a more affordable offering made by a local manufacturer, thought to be Huawei.

In addition, it’s claimed the latter could employ Huawei’s own HiSilcon Kirin processor — which has been used in Huawei’s own devices for some time now — as opposed to a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip.

It’s important to note that all of this is just speculation for now, and we cannot vouch for the credibility of the source behind these claims. But if Google is to continue offering two Nexus smartphones — a high-end model and a more affordable model — it could be a plausible scenario.

We still have a long time to wait until new Nexus smartphones are announced, so we’ll take this one with a pinch of salt for now.

• SourceWeibo
• ViaGizmoChina