Chinese smartphones increasingly turn to native CXMT memory – Samsung and SK Hynix are losing customers

South Korean memory makers still dominate the global market, but shortages have forced many electronics manufacturers to rethink their supply chains. In addition, Chinese memory manufacturers are not only actively narrowing the gap with Korean memory manufacturers, but also increasing supply at a faster rate.

Image source: Changxin Storage

All this has led Chinese smartphone manufacturers to increasingly choose Changxin storage memory chips to equip their flagship new products. For example, the Nubia NaviX Ultra smartphone launched on Wednesday, use LPDDR5X chips produced by Changxin Storage. In this version, the memory chip operates in LPDDR5X-10667 mode, although 8533 and 9600 MB/s speed options have been available in the CXMT product line since late last year. Nubia’s new flagship is priced at $885 and comes with support for AI agents.

LPDDR5X produced by Changxin Storage is also used in smartphones by Chinese companies Xiaomi and Transsion. In addition, Changxin Storage was able to bring LPDDR6 chips to the market faster than its competitors, and the chips have begun to be installed in the recently launched Xiaomi 18 Fold folding screen smartphone. The maximum capacity of LPDDR6-12800 working mode combination is 16GB. According to data from the second quarter of this year, in the global DRAM market, China Changxin Memory currently accounts for 9.5% of revenue. Its share did not exceed 7.6% in the first quarter.

According to a Wall Street Journal report last month, even Apple is considering the possibility of equipping its iPhones and MacBooks for the Chinese domestic market with CXMT memory. Apple’s use of Chinese memory in products for the U.S. market has been hampered by U.S. restrictions. The recent stock listing made Changxin Storage the most valuable listed company in China, and it plans to use a large portion of the IPO proceeds to expand production capacity. Judging from the dynamics of the company’s profit growth, its products are not particularly cheap compared to competitors, but the expansion of production allows customers to at least count on getting some quotas, because competitors in South Korea and the United States (Micron) have received orders at least a year in advance and are not in a hurry to commission large new companies in the near future.