Xiaomi To Ditch Snapdragon And Dimensity Chips For New In-House Xring O3

With the start of the week, Xiaomi has premiered a brand-new chipset—the Xring O3. This is a big deal, since a chipset acts as your phone's brain and it's a bigger deal still since not every company can make its own chips. Many—including Xiaomi for most of its existence—just install third-party chipsets (like Qualcomm's Snapdragon or MediaTek's Dimensity variants).

Xiaomi's New Chipset: The Xring O3

Per Reuters' latest report, the 3nm chipset (advanced, but not quite as advanced as the newer 2nm chipsets like Samsung's Exynos 2600) will give Xiaomi greater control over the hardware and software integration in its upcoming phones. The Xring O3 is meant to arrive in the near future and it would be initially made in quantities of 200,000 to 300,000 units, people familiar with the matter say.

Avid PhoneArena readers (and sworn Xiaomi fans) will most likely recall that last year, Xiaomi launched the Xring O1. This one probably went under the radar for virtually all Samsung/Apple/Google users, but the Xring O1 could be found in about 150,000 smartphones today. If we throw in tablets and watches that are also equipped with the Xring O1, the number of Xiaomi devices sold surpasses 1 million. The Xring O3 will probably account for similar numbers, but if the 2027 smartphone market contracts by ~15% (the current forecasts), things could look different.

Xiaomi's Return to the Foldable Market

In-house chipsets aren't the only new thing that Xiaomi is preoccupied with these days. After skipping 2025, the company is rumored to rejoin the foldables race with a rival for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and whatever Apple's foldable iPhone turns out to be. The upcoming Xiaomi foldable(s?) will most likely feature the Xring O3, too. Xiaomi will have a tough time dominating the foldable market in its home country, where Huawei (which is also the global leader) has a 68% market share, followed by Honor with ~14% and Oppo with under 10%.