Meizu cancels all its upcoming flagships, exits smartphone business

The competition in the smartphone business is so fierce that many big brands had to admit defeat and completely exit the market. Microsoft, Nokia, HTC, LG, and Sony are just some of the big names that no longer release phones or decided to shrink their mobile businesses to insignificant sizes.

Meizu is the latest company to join the list of high-profile names exiting the smartphone market. Once one of the biggest handset manufacturers in China, Meizu announced over the weekend that it will no longer make phones.

The Chinese company revealed plans to focus its entire attention on “tomorrow’s devices” driven by AI (via GizmoChina). In a 6-minute video, Shen Ziyu, Chairman and CEO of Xingji Meizu Group, explains that the shift in direction started about a year ago when the company switched from being a “smartphone company” to becoming an “ecological group.”

According to Shen, the smartphone market is no longer driven by innovation. Instead, key players are more focused on adding more memory, bigger cameras and batteries to their products.

Following the recent announcement, the development of Meizu’s upcoming flagships – Meizu 21 Pro, Meizu 22, and Meizu 23, has been canceled. That makes Meizu 21 the company’s last flagship.

If there’s one company that would continue to be successful even after such a major focus shift, that’s certainly Meizu. The Chinese giant dropped its very successful MP3 business to focus on the smartphone market.

After having huge success with its smartphones (mostly in China), Meizu has now decided to embrace the AI trend. Time will tell if the decision was just as visionary as the previous one.