(Yicai) Sept. 14 -- Chinese handset giant Xiaomi will release its latest flagship smartphone series early November to challenge Apple's iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, which were launched yesterday, according to a media report.

Two models in the Xiaomi 14 series began mass production days ago, The Paper said yesterday. The Xiaomi 13 series reached its annual sales goal a quarter in advance, and the stockings for the new series soared 60 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, a source in Xiaomi’s supply chain was cited as saying.

Xiaomi will benchmark the iPhone, founder and Chief Executive Lei Jun said last month. “Only by benchmarking itself against the iPhone can Xiaomi have a chance to catch up with it, so I will compare our products against the iPhone in each of my speeches at new product launch events,” he said.

At the Xiaomi 12’s release in 2021, Li noted for the first time that Xiaomi would benchmark the iPhone and overtake its US rival step by step. Xiaomi will continue to tap into the high-end market and fully benchmark Apple’s phone, he pointed out again during the launch of the Xiaomi 13 last year.

Xiaomi's adjusted net profit surged 147 percent to CNY5.1 billion (USD701.5 million) in the second quarter from a year ago, its earning report showed on Aug. 29. The figure jumped 70 percent to CNY8.4 billion in the first half, almost matching the Beijing-based firm’s adjusted profit for the whole of last year.

The company’s strategy is to go high-end, President Lu Weibing said on its earnings conference call, adding that Xiaomi is transitioning to attach equal importance to profit and scale.

Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi inked a deal to use each other's patents globally, including those for fifth-generation wireless technologies, the pair announced yesterday. Xiaomi has 29,000 patents worldwide, and over 10,200 of them are global, while Huawei held more than 120,000 authorized patents globally as of last December.

Shares of Xiaomi [HKG: 1810] jumped 2.7 percent to close at HKD12.24 (USD1.56) apiece in Hong Kong today, after rising by as much as 3.7 percent in the morning trading session.

Editor: Martin Kadiev