The rumors were true as it turns out. Xiaomi has just informed us that it is in fact embarking on a strategic partnership with Leica and the first flagship imaging smartphone jointly developed by the two companies will be launched in July this year. Since the rumors were right about the Xiaomi – Leica partnership, we think it is safe to believe that it was also right that the device in question was the Xiaomi 12 Ultra, but we’ll see.
As you may know, this is far from Leica’s first rodeo in the mobile world. The camera company’s best known and arguably most successful partnership so far has been with Huawei, but as that company is still affected by various US government bans, it makes sense that Leica would want to try other things.
According to their joint press release, “Xiaomi and Leica share the same ideas on mobile imaging,” and both are eager to take mobile photography to the next level. Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, said: “Xiaomi focuses on creating the ultimate user experience and has always hoped to explore the capabilities of smartphone photography to the extreme. Xiaomi and Leica agree with each other’s activities and ideas” and the their cooperation also involves optical design as a “tuning of aesthetic orientations”.
Matthias Harsch, CEO of Leica Camera AG, said that “it is an honor to announce the long-term strategic cooperation with Xiaomi” and spoke of an “unprecedented deep cooperation process”, adding that Leica and Xiaomi are “convinced that the first jointly developed imaging flagship smartphone makes the pioneering advances of both companies visible. ” He promises “exceptional image quality, classic Leica aesthetics” and “unlimited creativity”.
As usual with such cooperation announcements, only time (and the launch of the Xiaomi 12 Ultra) will tell where this is on the depth scale – where basically one end only has the mobile phone manufacturer using the brand of the camera company and some filters in the camera app and the other end would actually be co-developed hardware and software. Leica did the latter with Huawei, let’s see if this time it does the same with Xiaomi. July can’t come soon enough.
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