The smartphone camera competition is about get more interesting this year, as Xiaomi has announced its partnership with Leica for its upcoming camera flagship phone, which we should be seeing the Leica branding showing up on its Xiaomi 12 Ultra, and this also means that Leica’s technology is no longer exclusive to Huawei.
Prior to the partnership, Leica has actually dabbled into the smartphone scene with its Leitz Phone 1, which was only sold exclusively in the Japanese market and there isn’t a successor of the phone ever since.
With its long time partnership with Huawei previously, it would definitely make sense for the imaging company to continue expand its expertise on smartphone photography, given that Huawei is no longer the top smartphone company due to US sanctions, the time for a new smartphone partner can’t arrive at a better time.
Partial credit will have to go to Leica for elevating Huawei’s brand status back then, and Xiaomi definitely needs the brand uplift as the company begins to go premium with the Xiaomi 12 series, both Xiaomi and Leica have given statements that they will be continuously explore the optical performance and photographic experience in the mobile imaging era, while sharing the equal ideas on how mobile imaging should be.
Can Xiaomi repeat the same success of Huawei through this partnership? Only time will tell and how the Xiaomi 12 Ultra turns out to be.