Xiaomi's own chip beat every Snapdragon phone on AnTuTu, and Qualcomm still powers its global flagships
A China-only foldable running Xiaomi's in-house Xring O3 topped AnTuTu's September flagship chart, clear of every Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 phone. The flagships Xiaomi sells outside China still run on Qualcomm, whose handset revenue is already falling.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
A China-only foldable just outscored Qualcomm's best
The Xiaomi+9.72% — Xiaomi, up 9.72 percent today 18 Fold, the first phone to run Xiaomi's in-house Xring O3 processor, finished first on AnTuTu's September Android flagship ranking with an average of 4,620,886 points, ahead of every phone on Qualcomm's−0.35% — Qualcomm, down 0.35 percent today new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 1. The best Snapdragon device, the iQOO 16, trailed by 170,961 points 1. Xiaomi claimed 5,228,014 points at the August 24, 2026, launch, on the older V11 build of the test; the Fold's month-long V12 average came in about 12% under the claim 12.
Xiaomi's in-house chip beat every Snapdragon phone on AnTuTu's September chart
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Xiaomi 18 Fold (Xring O3) | 4.62M |
| iQOO 16 (SD 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6) | 4.45M |
| Honor Magic9 Pro Max (SD 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6) | 4.44M |
| Xiaomi 18 Pro Max (SD 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6) | 4.4M |
| Oppo Find X10 Pro Max (Dimensity 9600 Pro) | 4.39M |
| RedMagic 11S Pro+ (SD 8 Elite Gen 5) | 4.34M |
| iQOO 15 Ultra (SD 8 Elite Gen 5) | 4.32M |
| Honor WIN | 4.1M |
| Xiaomi 18 Pro (SD 8 Elite Gen 6) | 4.1M |
| Realme GT8 Pro | 4.09M |
The smartphone leg is the shrinking one
The same week, Qualcomm staged Xiaomi's 18 Pro at India Mobile Congress as one of three coming Snapdragon flagships 3, and it counts Xiaomi, Motorola and ZTE among brands planning to use its two new processors 4. In an interview at Snapdragon Summit in Maui, CFO Akash Palkhiwala framed the future as "three legs of the stool", data centers, smartphones and auto IoT, each "almost equal in size" 4. The handset leg is giving way: revenue fell 20% year over year to $5.1 billion in the June quarter, while data centers, the intended replacement, sit "in the $300 million range" against a $15 billion fiscal 2029 target 4.
The handset leg of Qualcomm's stool still outweighs the other two combined
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Handsets | $5.1B |
| Automotive | $1.59B |
| Data center | $0.3B |
Xiaomi's lineup splits against itself
The Xring phone does not merely beat rivals; it beats Xiaomi. The Snapdragon-powered 18 Pro Max sits fourth on the same list, about 225,000 points behind 1. The Fold is also China-only, priced from 10,999 yuan, with the tested 16GB/1TB model at 14,999 yuan, roughly $2,235 1.
Outside China, every confirmed flagship runs Snapdragon
European certification filings exist for the Xiaomi 18 and 18 Pro Max, none for the Fold 5. The global 18 Pro Max has already benchmarked on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 6. India's 18 Pro is confirmed for a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series chip, expected at Rs 95,000 to 1,00,000 7. AnTuTu's global list, which excludes China and still carries August data, is topped by a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phone, with no Xring device anywhere in it 8. Xiaomi built the chip that beat Qualcomm's best, then shipped it to exactly one market.
Xiaomi goes premium while the volume falls
Xiaomi's stated aim for Xring is to "reduce reliance on chip suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek", on more than 20 billion yuan (about $2.9 billion) of investment 5. The chip is real: TSMC's−1.02% — TSMC, down 1.02 percent today N3P 3nm node, ten CPU cores, the first phone processor to support LPDDR6 25.
But volume is falling by design. Memory costs pushed entry-level phones toward 2,000 yuan, so Xiaomi "proactively optimized" its mix: 31.2 million phones shipped in the second quarter, down 26.5%, at a record-high average price, with premium models a record 32.1% of China sales 910. First-half global shipments fell 23% 11.
The next socket signal is a filing, not a score
Apple−1.28% — Apple, down 1.28 percent today has already walked this path once: only the U.S. version of the iPhone 18 Pro Max still uses a Qualcomm modem 4. Whether Chinese flagship makers follow at the processor level is the question, and certifications answer it before benchmarks do. The next readings are the October AnTuTu list, Qualcomm's fiscal Q4 results on November 4, 2026 12, and the 2nm generation Qualcomm and MediaTek are expected to ship in 2027 5.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
