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| Ultra camera flagships like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra shown here could soon face a pricing problem |
Rising component costs and a traditional price ceiling in the Chinese market are forcing Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo to make some very difficult decisions about the future of their top-tier camera phones. According to a series of leaks from industry insiders, the days of the sub-€1,500 "Ultra" flagship may be numbered.
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra currently costs a little over €1,400 on Amazon Germany and is therefore, hard as it may be to believe, one of the least expensive camera flagships with the word "Ultra" in its name. In the same storage configuration, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, which many now see as barely able to compete with the Chinese Ultra flagships, is hardly any cheaper. Vivo is expected to show before long what is possible at the high end of the smartphone market in 2026. Leaks put the European price of the Vivo X300 Ultra at nearly €2,000, though that would come with 1TB of storage.
It is still unclear how much Oppo plans to charge for the Find X9 Ultra when it launches in Europe, but in general, the lineup of top-end camera flagships from China appears to be facing major challenges. That is at least what leaker Ice Universe emphasized in a lengthy post on X, although it is not known what the original source of this information is. According to Ice, steadily rising component costs, especially for memory, could soon make Ultra flagships no longer financially viable for manufacturers, specifically in the Chinese market.
The €2,000 Smartphone is Coming
For those looking to snag a deal on current-gen hardware, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is currently available on Amazon DE for just over €1,400. You can check the current price and availability here.
The Memory Crisis Hits Home
The root cause of this impending price shock is a brutal surge in the cost of memory chips. A report from Counterpoint Research reveals that in the first quarter of 2026, DRAM prices rose by over 50%, while NAND flash prices skyrocketed by more than 90%. For a flagship phone with high-end specs like 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, this memory crunch is expected to add between $100 and $150 to the bill of materials (BOM) cost alone. Xiaomi's president, Lu Weibing, has publicly stated that memory prices have surged nearly fourfold compared to the first quarter of last year, with a 12GB/512GB configuration costing roughly 1,500 yuan more to produce.
This leaves Android manufacturers in a classic bind. There appears to be a price ceiling in the Chinese market of around 10,000 yuan (approximately €1,250), beyond which Android flagships have traditionally struggled to compete with Apple's iPhone flagships. Android OEMs are therefore reluctant to keep raising prices indefinitely, as sales could otherwise collapse. The alternative would be to scale back development costs, especially for the cameras, or to stop developing Ultra models altogether. Indian leaker Yogesh Brar also suggested in a recent post on X that the next flagship generation from Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo is facing financial challenges.
Development of the Next Ultra Flagships at Risk
For now, development of the Vivo X500 Ultra, Oppo Find X10 Ultra, and Xiaomi 18 Ultra is still on track, Yogesh emphasized, while any potential decision to cancel them will likely not be made until the third quarter of 2026. Kartikey Singh also stressed that development of the Xiaomi 18 Ultra has not been canceled at this point, but price increases next year should be expected in any case. Fans of China's top-tier camera flagships will therefore probably be seeing price levels of around €2,000 more often. Whether many buyers will still be willing to pay that remains to be seen.
Sources: Ice Universe, Yogesh Brar, Kartikey Singh
Worry not, the next generation Xiaomi Ultra is iterating normally. However what we should worry about is that it's gonna be even more expensive ~
— Kartikey Singh (@That_Kartikey) April 10, 2026
Next generation Ultra phones from Xiaomi, Vivo and OPPO are moving forward as expected.
— Yogesh Brar (@heyitsyogesh) April 11, 2026
Cost projections are high and will cause an issue.
If these products really get cancelled, it will be only after Q3 26
Time to focus on X9U & X300U global release...
BREAKING! Profit crisis hits, with more than one Chinese brand reportedly considering pausing the next-generation Ultra models.
— Ice Universe (@UniverseIce) April 10, 2026
In Chinese smartphones, the true mass-market top-tier flagships have never been the Ultra series—they are the numbered series and the Pro series. These…