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.
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.
Uhg. Just die, AI. It’s so anti-consumer at this point.
It’s funny how everyone is trying to shift towards AI when the most hyped smartphone atm is one with a physical keyboard by the blackberry designers
Is it? Because I work in mobile app development so I’m surrounded by phone nerds and I haven’t seen any hype about it at all.
Any other phones that are really hyped? They’re all the same
No. Like you said it’s all the same. Not much interesting going on at the moment.
When the new super thin iPhone launched there was a little bit of interest, as in: people had to check it out and see how thin it was, and then everyone was like ‘yeah, it’s super thin but so what?’.
So arguably, since the bar is low, the keyboard phones are by definition the most hyped smartphone?
No, those aren’t even on the radar. Not low hype but zero interest.
The only thing that has some people paying attention are foldables but even that is meh.
Nah, there is definitely more hype around the launch of a new iPhone. I think some of you guys are guilty of living in a bubble here, the Clicks Communicator received nowhere near the level of attention or interest of the iPhone 17 Pro. It’s like 22+ million views of the iPhone trailer vs 700+k for the Communicator.
The iPhone Air is actually surprisingly nice. The drawback of horrible speakers is a deal breaker though.
It feels nice in the hand but at the end of the day it’s just another iPhone.
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.
