ASUS refutes the closure of ZenFone smartphone lineup (updated)
This article was first published on 28 August 2023.
29 August 2023 update: ASUS has refuted claims about its ZenFone lineup meeting an early end. We've updated with the new information at the top of the article and kept the original reporting at the bottom.
29 August 2023 update: ASUS told9To5Googlethat the rumours about ZenFone's closure are not true, and also uploaded a new statement to follow up.
"We would like to address the rumor that ASUS Zenfone 10 will be the last generation of the series and the ASUS Zenfone product line will be shut down. This is not true. We will continue our two main phone business product lines, the ROG Phone and the Zenfone. ASUS has a strong commitment to our smartphone business and customers. Please reference our Q2 earnings call for more information. Please stay tuned for our 2024 product lineups," said the official statement published on 29 August 2023.
It's quite a turn of events. While the reply indeed shuts down any notion of ZenFone going away soon (with a possible 2024 lineup on its way), it's also true that ASUS's statement did not refute the change in headcount inside its ZenFone department.
Regardless, we're still waiting for the ZenFone 10 to get a turn here in Singapore.
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Reported on 28 August 2023:
It appears that theZenFone 10 will be the last ZenFone of its lineup.
According to TechNews Taiwan, the ASUS mobile phone department will see its ZenFone series personnel merged into the ROG series department as a part of a more extensiveorganisational restructuring from June to July 2023.
ZenFone teams within ASUS being moved around or let go is only one part of the restructuring. The same source for TechNews Taiwan also said that ASUS’s PC department staff in Taiwan and Suzhou (China) were laid off earlier, on top of a late-August afternoon call that saw ASUS’s management cut its engineers and procurement teams headcount by half.
It’s unsurprising since the writing was already on the wall — at least for Singapore. A quick check on ASUS Singapore’s official portal shows that the brand only displays its ROG Phone series. There’s another placeholder that’s supposed to show you all of ASUS’s available phones in Singapore, but it brings you back to the same page.
Added to that was the launch of ZenFone 10 with no mention of bringing the handset officially to the Singapore market, despite its tantalising specs (which typically fare well among Singaporean phone buyers who like flagship-grade Android handsets).
On a related note, the last major blow to the smartphone industry and ecosystem was the cessation of LG's smartphone business in 2021.
Source: TechNews Taiwan via 9To5Google(1, 2)
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