CXMT appears ready to start mass production of LPDDR6, giving Xiaomi’s XRING 03 a memory headline to flog.
According to Weibo, Xiaomi’s XRING 03 was tipped as the first smartphone chipset to support LPDDR6 RAM, thanks to the outfit’s tie-up with CXMT.
Now the Chinese memory maker looks set to start mass production next month, putting it ahead of Samsung, SK hynix and Micron for once.
That sounds impressive, but CXMT’s problem will be volume. The Xiaomi 18 Fold is not expected to ship in huge numbers. The XRING 03 is reportedly unlikely to reach 300,000 units, suggesting a limited partnership. Based on CXMT’s teaser, LPDDR6 will be reserved for the Xiaomi 18 Fold, a wide-folding handset expected to chase the iPhone Fold and Galaxy Z Fold8.
That low figure suggests Xiaomi is not planning massive batches, probably because foldables remain awkward to build and CXMT may not have LPDDR6 yields sorted. The XRING 03 itself uses TSMC’s older 3nm N3P process, so Xiaomi should not struggle to order silicon. The tricky bit is likely the LPDDR6 memory.
CXMT is stuck working around US trade restrictions, relying on legacy deep-ultraviolet machinery and complex multi-patterning to keep production moving. That means higher costs and lower yields.
Beating the big three to next-generation DRAM is a decent brag for CXMT, but Samsung, SK hynix and Micron will be watching the yield numbers, not the teaser poster.
