Taiwanese computer company Asus has been making smartphones for years, but despite a few innovative designs over the years, they haven’t really done much to stand out in a crowded market.

This year the company launched its most distinctive (and expensive) phone yet: the ROG Phone with an emphasis on gaming. And it looks like we can expect to see more Asus phones in this vein in the future.

Asus has announced a major restructuring that involves the resignation of Asus CEO Jerry Shen and a shift in strategy.

Rather than continue trying to grab a significant share of the mainstream smartphone market, Asus plans to focus on smartphones for gamers and power users.

While smartphone gaming is incredibly popular, there are only a handful of phones designed explicitly for gaming in one way or another. There’s the Razer Phone line of devices with high screen refresh rates and big batteries. There’s Xiaomi’s Black Shark Gaming phones with a detachable controller. And there’s the ROG Phone with… a whole bunch of special features.

It’s unclear at this point just how much demand there is for these sorts of phones, but it sounds like Asus is banking on the idea that e-sports on phones will become a thing in the coming years.

As for Shen, he’s heading to a new company called iFast which is focused on the AI/IoT space.

via GizmoChina and Engadget

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6 replies on “Asus shifts its smartphone strategy to gamers and power users”

  1. I had a bad experience with a recent ZenFone Max M1 which turned out to be defective. I was lucky that the retailer let me return it. Many reviews online confirmed the same issues I had experienced including spontaneous reboots, cyclical reboots, and an SD card tray that refused to seat properly. So apparently it wasn’t just mine. This is a widespread issue.

    I would not buy another ASUS phone.

    1. I have many stories with ASUS smartphones that I will refrain from sharing but I will say there have been issues. Different model(s) than yours however. Shen said recently that without quality, you don’t have anything. Right. They (executives) certainly needed to spend more time with some of their products to gleam some insight into their product “quality” and “reliability”. Regarding the Max M1, maybe it was luck of the draw or bad luck. Sometimes a batch come out bad, but later manufacturing dated units won’t have those issue. I’ve seen that with other ZenFone models.

  2. Further to this discussion, it was quite literally a downhill slide from the ZenFone 3 line-up. They chased trends. They could have kept removable batteries. They didn’t have to notch. They didn’t have to jack up their prices. They didn’t need 10 models per year. They could have filled a void left vacant but they decided not too. Based on what I read, inventory levels may be high. This mobile departure could get ugly. How do they keep support of products that they are no longer going to be making?

  3. Well, I for one hope they look at Xiaomi’s new BlackShark and JoyCon’s.
    They need to steal that idea, of a POCKETABLE gamepad.

  4. This is step one. Step two… dedicated gaming systems with their own Steam-like ecosystem (compatible with their gaming phones). After this fails (and if they survive)… they’ll be back to building affordable devices for the mass market. (It was fun making up this scenario:)

    I have a soft spot for ASUS – used a their netbook (Eee PC 1000HE) for a few years (XP and super Linux compatible too). Was even able to resell it because it held up so well.

  5. This is a significant indicator of the ASUS recent failures. I wrote about this weeks ago. If you like the idea of ASUS, the budget friendly brand, it would seems that “power user” doesn’t jive with “budget” or “affordable”. They have wanted to be high margin for a while and it’s pretty clear their cheaper options are dwindling. They are focused on offering more colorful notebooks for example. On a side note, start shopping for a bargain price ZenFone in the near future. Think HP TouchPad folks. I exaggerate on that type of fire sale, but future Android updates at this point might be wishful thinking. For the ultra budget I don’t see how you could go wrong with a ZenFone 3 Zoom. You have a bevy of recent updates for that model although take what you can get in this case. Yes, I know it’s 2018 and almost 2019!

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