Xiaomi and Leica announced long-term strategic partnership back in May 2022. The partnership is quickly bearing fruits and they launched their first co-branded flagship devices – Mi 12s series - yesterday in China. Xiaomi has moved one step forward to lifting imaging stories for premium line-ups.

Leica was Huawei’s exclusive partner on imaging technology from July 2016 to March 2022. The co-branding strategy was a key driver behind Huawei’s success in imaging story and in premium segments in the past years. Meanwhile, the collaboration has also made Leica a top-recognized mobile imaging brand in smartphone field. In that sense, partnering with Leica is a good win for Xiaomi.

Xiaomi however is not the first one to learn from Huawei’s co-branding strategy. In fact, OPPO and vivo have already established their co-branding partnership with leading camera manufacturers. vivo established the partnership with Zeiss in December 2020, while OPPO / OnePlus started the collaboration with Hasselblad in March 2021. After Xiaomi joining in the camp, the competition among top 3 Chinese vendors (by global shipments in 2021) in imaging are further intensified. We are looking forward to more innovation taking place in the area.