Building on the success of P20 Pro which had the world's first triple camera set-up at the rear, Huawei is likely to bring five cameras at the back for its next phone in the Mate series -- the Mate 30 Pro, the media reported citing a new patent.

A patent filed by Huawei and submitted to the CNIPA (China National Intellectual Property Administration) has been published and shows a much larger cutout for a camera array on the back of the phone, Techradar.com reported on Thursday.

The patent was originally spotted by Mobielkopen.net.

The five sensors could be clubbed with an LED flash to form a rectangle at the back of the Mate 30 Pro.

The current flagship of the company, Mate 20 Pro comes with a triple camera system, a posh built and top-notch internals such as the 7-nm Kirin 980 chipset.

Riding on the success of the P20, Mate 20 and Nova series, Huawei in December said its smartphone shipments for 2018 exceeded 200 million units, a new all-time high for the Chinese phone maker.

Huawei surpassed Apple to become the world's second-largest smartphone seller in the world first in the second quarter of this year and then again in the third quarter with a global market share of 14.6 per cent, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Huawei's share in the global premium smartphone segment hit double digits for the first time in the third quarter of 2018, according to Counterpoint Research.

At a rate of over 19 per cent, the global, premium smartphone segment grew faster than the overall smartphone segment that declined five per cent in Q3 2018, according to Counterpoint Research's Market Monitor Q3 2018 report.