Xiaomi’s €999 17T Pro Launch Can’t Escape the Shadow of Soaring Chip Costs and a 26% Stock Rout
23.05.2026 - 11:41:45 | boerse-global.de
For a company that just posted 25% annual revenue growth and saw its electric?vehicle revenue surge 123% in the fourth quarter, the stock chart tells an entirely different story. Xiaomi shares closed at €3.32 on Friday, nursing a 26.16% loss since the start of the year and a staggering 45.68% decline over twelve months. The paper sits just 4.56% above its most recent low. That disconnect between operational momentum and market sentiment arrives at a critical juncture this week.
On Tuesday, Xiaomi will release its first?quarter earnings after the market close in Beijing (19:30 local time, followed by a webcast). Two days later, the company holds the global launch of its 17T and 17T Pro smartphones on May 28. And on June 2, shareholders gather in Peking for an annual general meeting that includes a vote on one of the largest buyback authorisations in the company’s history – up to 10% of outstanding shares, equivalent to 2.58 billion shares.
The product event is unusually early. The 17T series typically arrives around September, but this year Xiaomi has pulled the global launch to late May, roughly four months ahead of the previous cadence. Both models feature significant upgrades. The 17T Pro gets a 144 Hz OLED panel, MediaTek’s Dimensity?9500, a 7,000 mAh battery with 100W wired and 50W wireless charging, and a Leica?tuned camera with a 5?x optical zoom and digital zoom up to 120x. The standard 17T uses a 120 Hz AMOLED display, a Dimensity?8500 chip, a 6,500 mAh battery, and the same Leica Summilux optics – a first for the T?series.
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Pricing is equally aggressive. The 17T Pro will launch in Europe at €999 for the 12?GB/512?GB variant, €100 more than the 15T Pro but still undercutting Samsung and Apple’s top?tier models. The standard model starts at €749 with 12?GB/256?GB. In the UAE, the base price is set at 2,599 dirham, roughly $708. The move positions Xiaomi squarely between the mid?range and flagship segments, but it also signals a broader cost challenge.
CEO Lei Jun warned on May 22 that smartphone prices will keep rising. Speaking at the debut of the Xiaomi 17 Max, he advised users on an annual upgrade cycle to buy sooner rather than later. The culprit: soaring memory chip costs. Lei Jun expects chip prices to climb for at least two more years. President Lu Weibing went further, predicting several Chinese premium flagships will exceed 10,000 yuan (about $1,470) by year?end, with the current memory?price uptrend persisting at least until the end of 2027 and possibly into 2028. Counterpoint Research estimates that memory costs surged 80–90% in the first quarter alone, and since March many smartphone models in China have already risen by 200 to 400 yuan.
That inflation hits Xiaomi where it hurts most. The bulk of its smartphone volume comes from the mid?price band, where any price increase quickly chokes demand. Premium models can only partly offset that volume erosion, and the EV division – though growing fast – absorbs capital and management bandwidth. Xiaomi delivered over 30,000 vehicles in April, up from 21,440 in March, and is holding to its 2026 target of 550,000 units, a 34% increase from the roughly 410,000 delivered last year.
The earnings release on Tuesday will put the delicate balance between cost, price, and volume under the microscope. The high base from the prior year – 25% revenue growth to 457 billion yuan and a sharp rise in adjusted net profit – raises the bar. Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) sits at 75.8, signalling that the stock may be overbought after the recent slide, while the market waits for clues on margin trends. If the cost pressure persists, the path back to the 200?day moving average will remain steep, regardless of how quickly Xiaomi can ship new phones.
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