[News] Samsung, CXMT Reportedly Supply LPDDR5X for Chinese AI Phone as Domestic Memory Enters Flagship Supply Chain

China’s CXMT is making further inroads into the high-end mobile memory market. According to Business Korea, Samsung Electronics is supplying LPDDR5X mobile DRAM and flash memory for the Nubia NaviX Ultra, jointly developed by Chinese telecommunications equipment maker ZTE and IT company ByteDance. Notably, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is also supplying LPDDR5X for the model, establishing a multi-vendor memory supply system.

The development marks a notable shift in China’s flagship smartphone supply chain. As the report highlights, high-end Chinese smartphones have historically relied heavily on Korean memory, but CXMT has rapidly improved its technology and is now pushing into the top-tier product supply chain.

CXMT LPDDR5X Closes Speed Gap With Korean Rivals

As the report notes, CXMT began mass production of LPDDR5X in May last year, when its maximum data transfer speeds stood at around 8.533Gbps and 9.6Gbps, still behind products from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. In just over a year, however, CXMT has raised the maximum speed to 10.667Gbps. Based on data transfer speed alone, its LPDDR5X has essentially reached the same level as the top-tier 10.7Gbps-class products from Samsung and SK hynix.

Still, the report cautions that mobile DRAM competitiveness depends on more than data transfer speed, with power efficiency, heat generation, and yield also playing important roles. These gaps have previously led Chinese smartphone makers to use CXMT memory mainly in low- to mid-range models while relying on Korean memory for their top-tier flagships.

That divide, however, is beginning to narrow as CXMT increasingly moves into flagship devices. CXMT announced on September 7 that its LPDDR6 has entered mass production and is being used in Xiaomi’s 18 Fold flagship foldable smartphone, marking what the company says is the world’s first commercial deployment of LPDDR6 in a flagship phone. The 16GB chip supports data rates of up to 12.8Gbps, or 10.667Gbps when operating with the SoC, while delivering 60% higher bandwidth and 20% lower power consumption than its LPDDR5X predecessor, according to CXMT.