Xiaomi hastens flagship smartphone release to take on iPhone 17

Xiaomi Corp. will release its next flagship smartphone this month and update its branding in a measure to go head-to-head with Apple Inc. for a share of the premium smartphone market.

The Beijing-based company is moving up its usual launch timeline and jumping directly from the Xiaomi 15 generation to the new 17 series, matching Apple’s iPhone nomenclature with new Xiaomi 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max models incoming. Founder and Chief Executive Officer Lei Jun said on Monday that his company wants to be measured against Apple’s smartphones, long considered the standard bearers at the high end of the market.

Apple’s iPhone 17 goes on sale globally this Friday, with the new Pro editions bringing a refreshed design. The Cupertino, California-based company controls 62% of sales in the premium segment — handsets priced at $600 and above — according to Counterpoint Research data. Xiaomi has only a sliver of that segment globally, though it grew such sales by 55% in the first half of this year and stands a better chance to compete domestically in China, where Apple’s iPhone Air has been delayed.


“We started our premiumization strategy five years ago to learn from our greatest competitor, benchmarking ourselves against the iPhone,” Xiaomi President Lu Weibing said in a post on Weibo. “Apple is still outstanding. But we are highly confident we can face the challenge with the same generation of product.”

Long known for its value-for-money proposition spanning everything from smartphones and laptops to kitchen appliances and luggage, Xiaomi made a bold foray into electric vehicles that’s begun to pay off over the past year, almost tripling its Hong Kong-traded shares. Succeeding in an emerging field that Apple abandoned, Xiaomi appears newly emboldened to take on the US smartphone leader.

“Jumping to the 17 series sounds like Xiaomi is confident enough to say that it can be as good as Apple, which is still held in high regard in China,” said IDC analyst Bryan Ma. “For Xiaomi, 10% of its China smartphone shipments were above $600 in the first half of this year, which is up from nearly nothing in 2019.”