The Meizu brand has historically been known in the smartphone market for its very original and exceptional products. It couldn't compete with Xiaomi and Huawei. Now it is announcing the end of its smartphone activities.
Do you know Meizu? This Chinese smartphone brand has some credentials in France, but has never been able to reach the popularity of Xiaomi, Huawei or even OnePlus.
That's not because they've been short of brilliant coups over the years. We remember the Meizu Zero, the smartphone without holes and buttons, or the Meizu Pro 7, the smartphone with a screen on the back. Still different? Forget Android and look at the Meizu Pro 5, which comes with… Ubuntu Mobile, the system based on GNU/Linux. Finally, Meizu is one of the few manufacturers that equips some of its smartphones with Samsung Exynos chips instead of Qualcomm Snapdragon.
Now Meizu's story in the smartphone market is coming to an end. The brand announces the discontinuation of this activity to better focus on AI.
Preparing for the smartphone
On its official website in Chinese, Meizu announces this major change in strategy. The brand wants to go “all in” when it comes to AI and will therefore end its traditional smartphone projects. As 9To5Google noted, Meizu's interface, FlymeOS, should evolve to adapt to new types of devices and offer more features related to AI.
What does the future of Meizu look like? That's still pretty vague. Especially because several brands have announced products for AI, such as the Humane AI Pin or the Rabbit R1, which the head of Meizu mentioned in his announcement, it remains to be proven that the public wants devices for this technology.
The Meizu 20 is therefore likely to be the brand's latest smartphone. Meanwhile, the telephone market is still losing some of its originality.