Lei Jun reflects on the failure of Pinecone: Only by making high-end products can we have a chance, both Apple and Huawei started with high-end chips.

At today's 2025 annual speech event by Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, he gave a speech. Regarding the self-developed chip business, he said that Xiaomi has always had a dream of chips. In 2014, it fully established Pinecone Electronics, and in 2017 Xiaomi released Surge S1. However, he is clear in his heart that Pinecone actually cannot continue. In 2018, they stopped self-developed SoC and only left the small chip team. Why did Pinecone fail? He believes that self-developed mobile SoC, only by focusing on the high-end, can there be a chance. Apple and Huawei both entered from the high-end chip market, Pinecone's direction was wrong; besides, self-developed mobile SoC also requires full support from the mobile team.