With the release of the Xiaomi 12S series in early July, Xiaomi has further expanded its flagship portfolio in its home market. The new series is also being seen as an extension of the Xiaomi 12 series, aimed at consolidating the brand’s presence in the $600 and above wholesale price band through the second half of 2022.

Xiaomi 12 Series Failed to Strengthen its Share in Premium Segments (>$600)

Thanks to promotions during the 2022 Xiaomi Fans Festival, Xiaomi managed to improve its sales share in the flagship battlefield in April. However, the brand desperately needs new flagship models to replace the Xiaomi 12 and 12 Pro, whose performance has been far less than expected. Against this backdrop, Xiaomi has introduced the new Xiaomi 12S line-up with optimized user experiences.

Sitting at the top of the new series, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra is a successor of the Xiaomi 11 Ultra. The latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus platform, the all-new Samsung E5 LTPO 2.0 OLED display and the industry-leading 1-inch 50MP main camera, as well as a tie-up with Leica, represent the major areas of upgrades.

According to Counterpoint Research’s BoM Analysis Practice, producing a Xiaomi 12S Ultra equipped with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage costs around $516. The market price of the model is RMB 5,999 or around $899. The processing, display and image sub-systems, along with memory, contribute nearly 67% of the total manufacturing cost. Below is the functional cost structure of the ultra-premium model.

Xiaomi 12S Ultra BoM Cost Increases to $516

In terms of suppliers, Qualcomm, Samsung and Sony are among the beneficiaries. Qualcomm has a wide range of design wins, from the SoC and paired power management and RF transceiver to RF front-end components, connectivity IC and audio codec. The latter two vendors provide the display panel and LPDDR5 RAM, and image sensors respectively.

Xiaomi has shipped more than 2 million Xiaomi 11 Ultra smartphones so far at the same starting price of RMB 5,999 or around $899. The Xiaomi 12 Ultra is expected to take the baton from here and help improve Xiaomi’s profitability in the ultra-premium segment.