Xiaomi Takes Another Shot at the SoC Market, Facing Formidable Foes

Last year, Xiaomi once again decided to try its hand in the smartphone SoC market, releasing the Xring O1 platform. Building on it, the Xiaomi 15S Pro model came out. The new Xring O2 SoC reportedly won’t compete with Qualcomm and MediaTek flagships because it will be produced with a not-so-advanced process. More precisely, the process will indeed be quite modern: TSMC’s 3 nm N3P. However, this year both Qualcomm and MediaTek are expected to launch new flagship SoCs on 2 nm standards, and Samsung has already done so with the Exynos 2600.

Thus, likely, the Xring O2 will not compete with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 or Dimensity 9600. On the other hand, it will be cheaper, and if it can rival the current top SoCs of competitors, it will be very good for Xiaomi. Whether the new platform will become more widespread is yet to be seen. But at the very least, the very fact of releasing the second generation indicates that Xiaomi is more serious this time than during its first attempt to create its platform.