The market has taken a new turn? The price hike of the large-storage version of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series has far outpaced that of the iPhone 18 Pro series.

Following the huge success of the Xiaomi 17 series, Xiaomi launched the Xiaomi 18 Pro series last night. The new devices are equipped with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 6 Leading Edition processor, with imaging system upgraded to Leica 200MP large-sensor main camera and 200MP large-sensor telephoto camera. The screen adopts a hardware-level intelligent privacy-protection display, and the back screen design is retained. The Pro Max variant is even equipped with a large 8500mAh battery.

Although Xiaomi claimed that this time it "pushed out far more incremental improvements than usual", public discussions about the Xiaomi 18 series in the market seem to focus more on its pricing rather than these hardware upgrades.

In terms of product pricing, the Xiaomi 18 Pro is priced from 5999 yuan to 8999 yuan, while the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max is priced from 6999 yuan to 9999 yuan. A new transparent special edition is also added, with corresponding prices of 9999 yuan and 10999 yuan respectively.

Frankly speaking, against the backdrop of the rising prices of upstream memory chips and several previous price adjustments, the industry has long expected price increases for new mobile phone products this year, and what users are waiting for is just the result of how much the manufacturers will raise the prices.

However, the reason why the price of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series has aroused widespread discussion among users is that: the price increase of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series for the two large-capacity storage versions of 512GB and 1TB has actually exceeded the price increase of the iPhone 18 Pro series at the same storage tiers!

For comparison:

For the two most popular storage versions of 256GB and 512GB that users mostly choose, the corresponding versions of the iPhone 18 Pro series are both increased by 1000 yuan compared with the iPhone 17 Pro series this year; the 1TB version, which is chosen by relatively fewer people, has a price increase of 2500 yuan, and the price increase of the Pro Max 2TB version has reached 3500 yuan.

As for the Xiaomi 18 Pro series:

The official guide price of the Xiaomi 18 Pro 256GB version is 1000 yuan higher than that of the Xiaomi 17 Pro with the same configuration, which is the same as the price increase of the 256G version of the iPhone 18 Pro series;

However, the price of the Xiaomi 18 Pro 12GB+512GB version is 1700 yuan higher than that of the previous generation;

The price of the 16GB+512GB version is even 2400 yuan higher than that of the previous generation;

The price of the 16G+1TB version is 3000 yuan higher than that of the previous generation.

The price increase of the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max is further increased.

This year, the base model Xiaomi 18 Pro Max 12GB+256GB is priced at 6999 yuan, but the base model of last year's Xiaomi 17 Pro Max was 12+512G, priced at 5999 yuan; while the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max with the same storage specification is priced at 7999 yuan.

This also means that the price of the base model Xiaomi 18 Pro Max with 12GB RAM has increased by 2000 yuan compared with the previous generation of the same storage capacity (12GB+512GB);

And for the 16G+512G and 16G+1TB versions, the price increase of the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max is even higher:

The price of its 16GB+512GB version is 2700 yuan higher than that of the previous generation;

The price of the 16G+1TB version is 3000 yuan higher than that of the previous generation.

The price increase of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series is quite high, so it is inevitable that the market will have heated discussions.

In fact, before Xiaomi, the new phones released by vivo and OPPO also raised prices, which also sparked quite heated market discussions, but the price increase of the new vivo and OPPO phones is relatively slightly lower than the price increase of the Xiaomi 18 series this time.

Of course, Xiaomi can raise prices sharply for the Xiaomi 18 series this time, and Lu Weibing could say "It's all settled" on Weibo before the press conference, which is backed by sufficient confidence -- the great success of the Xiaomi 17 series has allowed Xiaomi to blaze a path to high-end branding to some extent.

According to data released by RD Observation: as of the 37th week of 2026, the sales volume of the Xiaomi 17 series has exceeded 6.2 million units, ranking second among the top 5 domestic manufacturers, second only to the Huawei Mate 80 series.

The successful sales of the Xiaomi 17 series, superimposed on the real cost pressure from rising upstream components such as memory chips, may be the confidence and reason behind the pricing of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series this time.

So we will wait and see whether the Xiaomi 18 Pro series can achieve further growth in sales!

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Linzhang" (ID: TMT317), the author is Linzhang, and it is authorized to be released by 36Kr.