Track Hyper | Xiaomi MIX Flip sells explosively: more than half of the additional orders have been sold

Author: Zhou Yuan / Wall Street Insight

Xiaomi's first small foldable (vertical fold) smartphone—referred to as a "beautiful little waste" by Xiaomi Group founder, chairman, and CEO Lei Jun—the Xiaomi MIX Flip, has been in high demand since its launch.

Many netizens have come up with various creative uses for the large external screen of the MIX Flip, including a widely circulated spoof of Lei Jun's "laser eyes."

On November 13, Wall Street Insight learned exclusively from the supply chain that this highly popular foldable device had its stock increased by about 42% to 500,000 units two months ago; additionally, a set of data obtained exclusively from the supply chain shows that the actual sales of the Xiaomi MIX Flip as of November 12 have already exceeded more than half of the total amount after the stock increase.

During the Xiaomi earnings call on August 21, Xiaomi Group partner, president, and president of the mobile phone division Lu Weibing revealed that "32% of users of the small foldable phone (Xiaomi MIX Flip) are switching from iPhone users, and 55% are female users. This is related to our continuous technological investment in the mobile phone business and the deepening of user insights in recent years, which also supports our high-end strategy very well."

Lu Weibing stated, "(Due to the explosive sales,) so far, the delivery cycle after ordering (for the Xiaomi MIX Flip) has been relatively long."

In fact, the small foldable models have not shown good market prospects based on market practices over the past two years.

According to IDC's statistical report, in 2023, the market share of small foldable phones in China's foldable screen market was 32%, a decrease of 10 percentage points compared to 2022.

How can the market demand issue for small foldable devices be resolved?

Honor CEO Zhao Ming believes that at least three issues need to be addressed: first, the battery life issue; second, whether the external screen can be used as the main screen; third, the coordination between apps on the internal and external screens.

In terms of product features, the MIX Flip is Xiaomi's first small foldable screen device, with an external screen size of 4.01 inches, a thickness of only 7.88mm when unfolded (glass version), a thickness of 15.99mm when folded, and a weight of 192g, providing a very good grip experience; it uses the same Xiaomi Dragon Armor structure as the Xiaomi large foldable device (horizontal inward fold) MIX Fold 4, with the hinge material made of 1800MPa high-strength steel and ultra-wear-resistant carbon ceramic steel, passing SGS high reliability fold quality gold standard certification and ergonomic fold design gold standard certification.

The imaging configuration of this small foldable device is not compromised due to size limitations, featuring a 50-megapixel main camera (Light Shadow Hunter 800 sensor, 1/1.55, f/1.7) + 50-megapixel Leica floating telephoto combination scheme, equipped with the high-end "Leica Optical Summilux large aperture lens" since the Xiaomi 12S, and the main chip is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is the first to be used in domestic small foldables, along with a 4780mAh Jinsha River battery, significantly enhancing battery life The Xiaomi MIX Flip has a very high aesthetic value, with a different size strategy for its outer screen compared to the Huawei nova Flip. The outer screen size of the Xiaomi MIX Flip is 4.01 inches, nearly twice the size of the 2.14 inches of the nova Flip, thus providing an excellent experience when using apps in the folded state, achieving the goal of having the outer screen as the main display.

In terms of software, the Xiaomi MIX Flip uses the HyperOS (Pengpai OS) system; a highlight of its AI features is the pre-installed "Xiao Ai Translation" app, which can provide real-time subtitles, screen translation, photo translation, and simultaneous interpretation functions.

When using "Xiao Ai Translation," for example, when speaking English, the page will quickly translate into the corresponding Chinese, eliminating communication barriers caused by language differences.

In the folded state, the Xiaomi MIX Flip can also make phone calls, which is significantly different from most similar products in the domestic market.

On August 30, there were reports in the market that two codes for the Xiaomi MIX Flip 2 were recently found in the GSMA IMEI database, namely 2505APX7BC and 2505APX7BG, representing the domestic version and the international version; the model codes indicate that the Xiaomi MIX Flip 2 may be released in May 2025.

Wall Street News noted that since the Xiaomi MIX Flip was launched for sale on July 19 until November 13, there have been over 140,000 reviews for this model on the Xiaomi official mall; the Xiaomi self-operated flagship store on JD.com has over 20,000 reviews for this model, and more than 40,000 people have purchased this model on Tmall, bringing the total to over 200,000.

The Xiaomi MIX Flip currently has an increased stock order of 500,000 units, still some distance from the breakeven point.

Zhao Ming stated when launching Honor's first small foldable device, the Magic V Flip, in June this year, that "the starting price of 4,999 yuan for the Honor Magic V Flip is sold at a loss; to reach breakeven, the shipment volume of the Honor Magic V Flip needs to exceed one million units."

The starting price of the Xiaomi MIX Flip is 5,999 yuan (12GB+256GB), which is 1,000 yuan more expensive than the starting price of the Honor Magic V Flip. A sales volume of 500,000 units may still not cover costs. However, as a first attempt, achieving actual sales of 500,000 units is already quite remarkable