Asus has reiterated that it will “no longer” be making “new” Android smartphones with its focus shifting towards the market built up by AI.
During its “2025 Year-End Gala” earlier this month, Inside reports that Asus chairman Jonney Shih directly confirmed that the company will exit the Android smartphone market.
When asked about the move, he said (translated) that “Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future,” further adding that the company will “continue to take care of the brand’s mobile phone users.” This could be taken in one of two ways, with Asus either exiting the smartphone market altogether or just ending the development of new smartphone models beyond existing lineups, but in context, it’s clearly the former.
Further comments from the chairman revealed that Asus is shifting its resources away from smartphones in order to align with the “paradigm shift” that is… AI. Of course.
The company is apparently using the resources previously spent on mobile phones to bolster “commercial PCs and physical AI devices,” including “AI Robot & Robotics” and “AI Glasses.”
I had no idea Asus made Android phones.
Mostly gaming focused ones. They were not very good for their price anyway.
They seem good on paper - every time I look for a phone on gsmarena’s phone finder I get a few of their rog phones in the results. But then I look at the price tag and the gamer aesthetic, and I ignore them.
They made Asus Zenfone and ROG phone.
Asus has always just chased after the short term goals. This reminds me when they suddenly made android tablets, and mini pcs, and every stupid tech fad. They’re always after the latest fad, they release a subpar product, and then it fizzles.
On the other hand they seem to be the only one alongside lenovo that tries to do something different with laptops. Like dual monitor laptops. They’ve been at that for years and keep improving.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding what a fad is, and I’m just easily fooled by gimmicks lol
Asus also had a smartphone that you could dock to a tablet screen and transform your phone into a tablet. That was like 10+ years ago.
Oh yeah I remember that. Along with Motorola back then
they release a subpar product, and then it fizzles.
I’m disappointed they’re jumping on AI bullshit. But I have to wholeheartedly disagree with you about the “sub par product”.
- My Asus desktop has been chugging along for a decade.
- My Asus Chromebook Flip has been going with no issues for at least four or five (though it’s long since been flipped to Linux)
- The Asus laptop I had before THAT is older than the desktop and quite happily living it’s retirement as a home-theatre PC connected to my television.
I have quite literally never had Asus hardware break down on me.
Tech companies are now superfluous and a dime a dozen. This AI bubble should wipe out enough of them and leave us with a manageable level of dystopic tech goons. Then we can work on tightening up the foundation with planning that is beneficial to society, not filling up pockets of a few to finally end up in an enshittification vacuum.
Then we can work on tightening up the foundation with planning that is beneficial to society, not filling up pockets of a few to finally end up in an enshittification vacuum.
And how do you propose we do that? More protests?
Asus driving slow and still missing the warning signs.
What in the Devil’s name are “A.I. glasses”?
A means to collect even more personal information for sale to data brokers.
While the snark is very much deserved, it’s most likely augmented reality glasses. Either providing virtual screens like say XReal or Viture, thus smaller and less cumbersome than Apple Vision. Or something a lot more wearable like the Meta Rayban sunglasses with POV camera and speakers.
They can cram any kind of AI fluff in there.
Uhg. Just die, AI. It’s so anti-consumer at this point.
It’s such a humbling moment, to see the company that revolutionized PCs with their EEE netbooks come to a slow end, becoming the lemming follower (and seeing that from Lemmy, no less).
If I’m thankful for one thing in the IT sphere, it’s the end of the netbook era. Those machines should never have been made in the first place.
While the form factor was great in theory, the performance was lacking, and the cooling was inadequate.
True, true - but they shocked the marked into drastically lowering prices for small form factor laptops. Until the EEE came out, anything under 3 lbs was thousands of dollars and considered premium hardware. ASUS showed there is a market for cheap, small, lightweight laptops.
Yeah, my first laptop was an Eee PC and it was pretty terrible. I have a soft spot for it but it couldn’t do much. I played Baldur’s Gate I and II on it, though. Very fond memories of staying up in bed late at night traversing those worlds on the tiny screen.
come to a slow end
In what way? Their laptops are still pretty good and even though they are overpriced, their PC components seem to be doing well despite that.
It’s not about the current state, it’s about deciding on an AI-first approach. And even there, it’s not that in itself, but the fact the erstwhile innovator is now just a bandwagon follower unable to see the signs the bandwagon is going down the hill.
