Launched last spring in Europe, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra has carved out a space for itself in the cameraphone niche.
Xiaomi also developed it Xiaomi 18 Ultra but, as new rumors confirm, he chose to cancel the project. The reason is related to the cost of the device.
Would the price have been too high?
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra has arrived on the European market with a list price of 1,499 euros. In recent months, however, the memory crisis has led to a rapid increase in the cost of smartphones.
The Xiaomi 18 Ultra, in the Chinese company’s plans, should have been a upgrade from different points of viewfrom the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 SoC to an improvement in the photographic sector.
Rumors speak of three 200 MP cameras (main with 1/1.12″ LOFIC sensor, ultra-wide angle with 1/1.56″ sensor and a periscope telephoto with 1/1.28″ LOFIC sensor and continuous optical zoom).
Due to the rising cost of memory, however, the price would have been out of reach. In China, in fact, the smartphone would have been marketed at a price price of 9,999 yuan, with an rprice equal to approximately 3,000 yuan.
In Europetherefore, the price would probably have exceeded the 2,000 euro mark (or would have come very close). For Xiaomi, the risk of selling too few units was real.
From these evaluations emerged the decision to delete the projectto concentrate efforts on other models, with the Xiaomi 18 series which can also count on the Fold version, with a design very similar to that of the iPhone Duo.
The cancellation of the project does not mean the end of the Ultra series. Xiaomi, in fact, could remain on the sidelines, waiting for better times to create a new cameraphone, with all the right elements to meet user needs.
In the meantime, the Xiaomi 18 series already offers several very interesting models and should soon be enriched with other variants. The series should arrive on the European market by the end of this year. More details should emerge shortly.
