KB News Desk
China’s CXMT has announced mass production of LPDDR6 memory for Xiaomi’s upcoming 18 Fold, moving ahead of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix in publicly confirming both production and a commercial handset deployment for the next-generation mobile DRAM.
CXMT said Saturday that its LPDDR6 had “officially entered mass production” and would debut in the 18 Fold in September.
Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun separately confirmed that the company’s new Xring O3 processor would support CXMT’s LPDDR6 and that the foldable would be the first phone to use it.
Samsung and SK hynix have already developed LPDDR6 products, but neither has publicly announced a comparable handset deployment tied to mass production.
A local semiconductor industry official said the Xiaomi-CXMT pairing also reflects Xiaomi’s broader push to reduce reliance on outside chip suppliers. The Chinese smartphone maker has long depended on application processors from Qualcomm and MediaTek, but is now increasing the use of its own processors while working more closely with a domestic memory supplier.
“Xiaomi is effectively serving as an early test bed for CXMT by putting its own processor together with LPDDR6 in a flagship device,” the official said.
The official cautioned, however, that CXMT’s mass-production announcement does not necessarily mean it has overtaken Samsung or SK hynix technologically. Reuters has reported that Xiaomi is targeting shipments of about 200,000 to 300,000 units for the 18 Fold, a relatively limited volume for a flagship smartphone.
“If CXMT is producing LPDDR6 mainly for that level of demand, its actual production capacity and yields could still be lower than the mass-production announcement might suggest,” the official said.
SK hynix said in March that it had completed development of a 16-gigabit LPDDR6 based on its latest 1c DRAM process and planned to begin supplying customers in the second half.
Korean media reported in July that Xiaomi was likely to be among its first customers, though SK hynix declined to confirm customer details.
Xiaomi has not said whether CXMT would be the sole LPDDR6 supplier for the 18 Fold.
Samsung unveiled its LPDDR6 before CES 2026 and said it had been working with major system-on-chip makers on early validation. It has not disclosed a specific mass-production timetable or named a handset customer.
The announcement comes just over a month after CXMT raised 57.9 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in its Shanghai IPO, with the company planning to use the proceeds partly to expand production and upgrade its technology.
CXMT subsequently reported first-half revenue of 150.3 billion yuan, up 874 percent on-year, and net profit of 77.6 billion yuan.
