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Once Xiaomi invests in Leadcore, LTE Red Mi prices could drop to $65

AndiNovember 7, 2014

It has been revealed today that Xiaomi’s Redmi range could get an all new entry-level price once the company invests in SoC maker Leadcore.

Xiaomi are currently in talks with Chinese chip maker Leadcore, for a deal which would see the Beijing based phone maker take a 51% controlling stake in the semiconductor company.

As Qualcomm are one of Xiaomi’s investors it won’t be likely that we see flagship Mi phones equipped with Leadcore Mi chips, but their RedMi range would certainly be getting them.

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In a report today it has been suggested that once Leadcore ARM 7 processors are built in to Redmi phones we will see prices drop to the 399 – 599 Yuan price range, with high-end Xiaomi Red Mi phones costing around 799 Yuan.

Current the flagship Leadcore LC1860 chip is believed to be in testing for the Redmi range. This processor was announced in May of this year and boasts support for GSM/TD-SCDMA/TDD-LTE/WCDMA and FDD-LTE, 5 mode, 13 frequency and can be updated to 17 frequency. This would make it a perfect chip for an international Red Mi entry-level Android smartphone!

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About the author
Andi

yes please… cheaper quality devices.

david
November 7, 2014
Im not sure about it as typical SoC costs about $20, they may drop it to $10, but that wont have such effect.
Konstantinos Natsios
November 7, 2014
never heard of leadcore soc’s ,i have a hard time trusting even mediatek even with their new chipset, i sure as hell wont trust leadcore till i see some positive feedback
- Airyl
  November 7, 2014
  Specification wise, the LC1860 processor seems to be the perfect mid range processor, with a good GPU, 6 A7 cores, a wide range of LTE bands and a relative cheap price tag. I’m excited.
- iANDROID8.1
  November 7, 2014
  I am a mediatek user ever since my first Android device MTK is a reputable soc maker IMHO they are even better than Broadcomm I just don’t know why Samsung doesn’t invest with MTK soc’s
  - Damien Xenos
    November 7, 2014
    MTK needs to provide access to kernal and source. That way updates to source and/or fixes to ROMs can be made.
    It bemuses me how they are not leveraging free expertise to complete.
    If they did this then I agree. Till then no chance.

realjjj
November 7, 2014
oh come on the SoC is less than 8$ and with the transition to 20nm a quad A53 will be quite a bit less soon. And even if they make it ,it’s not free and they need a certain volume to not lose money so that report is insane.
However, component prices are dropping and a phone with those kind of specs at that pricing is not out of the question in the next 1-2 years. Ofc they might not make something that low end again, the next Redmi could be 1080p and the 1S won’t live long enough to reach such low prices.
EDIT: The news actually seems to be about patents not making chips.
bbc
November 9, 2014
if they are ready to release proper documentation and kernel sources for soc . this will be a milestone in xiaomis history