Asus ZenFone 3 family to land in June with mid-range specs, according to CEO

Recently speaking with Taiwanese publication DigiTimes, Shen said that the next-generation ZenFone family will continue to cater to the mid-range segment of the market.

As some of you may already know, most models in the Asus ZenFone 2 smartphone family came with Intel chipsets. However, as Intel has recently announced that it is halting its smartphone chipset efforts for the time being, the ZenFone 3 series will make use of Qualcomm and MediaTek SoCs. Shen said that more than 90% of all ZenFone 3 models will be powered by Qualcomm silicon while the remainder 10% will make use of MediaTek chips.

Although the Asus CEO did not reveal any of the hardware specs for the upcoming ZenFone 3 smartphones, Shen did make an interesting mention. According to the company's predictions, the ZenFone 3 Max will account for about two-thirds of the global ZenFone 3 family shipments, with the standard ZenFone 3 and the ZenFone 3 Deluxe estimated to account for the remaining one-third of shipments.

In the report, Shen is also quoted stating that the transition to Qualcomm as its main chipset provider for ZenFone 3 handsets will not affect the company's production capacity. Furthermore, Shen also reassured investors that using Qualcomm and MediaTek chips will not affect the gross margin of the company.

The DigiTimes report also quotes Shen noting that he expects Asus smartphone sales to stay flat in the second quarter of the year compared to the same period last year. In the first quarter of 2016, the company's smartphone revenue jumped 40% YoY, but sales are now slowing down as the company is about to transition to new smartphone models.