Earthquake in Taiwan cripples Meizu: production of the PRO 5 mini postponed indefinitely

China-based Xiaomi may have just announced its impressive Mi 5 flagship and Mi 4s midranger at the MWC 2016, but its main landsman competitor — Meizu — has sad news for its fans.

The company has been rumored to be preparing a Meizu PRO 5 mini smartphone – a small variant of its latest flagship, the Meizu PRO 5. The compact handset was said to have a 4.7-inch display with a 1080 x 1920 resolution, 32 GB / 64 GB of memory, and MediaTek's deca-core MT6797 CPU. Unfortunately for Meizu fans, however, the smartphone will either be severely delayed, or cancelled.

A message on Chinese social media Weibo posted by the company's VP of technology Li Nan says that a recent earthquake in Taiwan severely damaged Meizu resources, a lot of which were, apparently, essential to the production of the yet unnanounced handset. So, in one post, the executive both confirmed that such a smartphone was, indeed, being worked on, and that it is postponed indefinitely / potentially cancelled.

Meizu is one of the larger companies hailing from the East. Just like its more popular competitor Xiaomi, it's known for selling smartphones with powerful specs at bargain price points. It's well known among smartphone aficionados worldwide for this fact and, unlike Xiaomi, it has been selling to international customers directly or via authorised retailers for a while now.

On a brighter note, the Meizu exec has reported a steady growth rate throughout 2015 with more than 20 million smartphones shipped. The company promises "more breakthroughs" in 2016.