Rumours began swirling in early January that Asus was planning on exiting the smartphone business amidst seriously dwindling sales across its Zenfone and ROG Phone lines – and we’ve now had confirmation that is indeed the case.
Asus Chairman Jonney Shih confirmed the exit from the smartphone industry at a special event at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Centre earlier this week, with the brand instead focusing its R&D on commercial PCs and what it calls ‘physical AI’ – i.e. robotics and smart glasses.
The brand will continue to offer maintenance, software updates and warranty services for current smartphones, but you won’t see much else from Asus phone-wise going forward.
It’s always a sad moment when a big brand like Asus pulls away from a market it has been a part of for years – a whopping 23 years in Asus’ case – but, I must admit, I’m not in the least bit surprised by the news.
For anyone watching Asus’ mobile releases closely enough, the signs have been there for the past couple of years and, in my mind, it was more a case of when, not if.
Let me explain.
The writing has been on the wall for the Zenfone for years
I’ve been writing about smartphones for over a decade, yet the Zenfone 6 still sticks in my mind vividly. I remember going along to the launch in Valencia back in 2019 and seeing it for the first time and being super impressed, not just with the general spec but the now-iconic rotating camera housing.
It was the midst of the ‘movable selfie camera’ craze, with brands trialling various ways to hide the selfie camera. Most went down the pop-up camera route, but Asus did something different; it flipped the entire rear camera module to the front.
In my mind, it was a game-changer, bringing high-res photography (with multiple lenses, might I add!) and OIS-enabled 4K@60fps video to the front of the phone for the first time, while also delivering a holepunch-free screen experience.
You could also control the rotation of the camera module manually, allowing you to get some pretty creative angles when shooting on the phone. It really was an impressive bit of hardware at the time, and I genuinely thought Asus stumbled onto something special.
That momentum continued for the next few years, with the Zenfone 7 and Zenfone 8 Flip also sporting the movable camera tech – but then Asus totally shifted focus, ditching the flippable camera module and big-screen dimensions to create something more compact and pocketable with the Zenfone 9.
That, for me, was the beginning of the end.
Sure, the Zenfone 9 and its follow-up, the Zenfone 10, offered something different – in a time where phones were getting bigger, the Zenfone focused on small-screen design with flagship performance – but it just didn’t have that same excitement that older Zenfones had. It began looking more generic, and there was a shift away from the camera tech that made the Zenfone line so popular.
Then, Asus did a complete U-turn with the Zenfone 11 Ultra. This was a return to the big-screen form factor, but once again it lacked any real personality; in fact, it looked a lot like the ROG Phone 8, suggesting that Asus was scaling back its smartphone efforts by essentially rebadging its gaming phone.
It’s also worth pointing out that there was no regular Zenfone 11 either; some assumed it’d be a small-screen counterpart to the Ultra that’d be launched later on, but it never materialised.
The same thing happened with the Zenfone 12 Ultra a year later; very similar to the ROG Phone, and no non-Ultra model to see. In fact, it wasn’t even that different to the Zenfone 11 Ultra, with only minor tweaks and a new processor. It was clear to see at that point that Asus’ heart just wasn’t in it anymore.
The ROG Phone was the ultimate gaming phone – but it was way too expensive
Back in 2017, it seemed like gaming phones were the next big thing. Manufacturers like Asus and even Razer released phones dedicated to mobile gaming, with better performance, more effective cooling and, of course, plenty of RGBs for that gamer feel.
While Razer dropped out of that race pretty quickly, the Asus sub-brand persevered – and, to be fair, it has dominated the gaming phone race for years as a result.
There’s no doubting the prowess of the ROG Phone, especially with recent models like the ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition. The phone undoubtedly delivers the best mobile gaming experience around, able to squeeze the very best out of the ultra-powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset to deliver chart-topping benchmark scores, and there were plenty of game-focused software features that really helped give mobile gamers the edge, especially in competitive online games like Call of Duty Mobile.
Then there’s the massive swathe of accessories available for the phone; everything from add-on controllers to turn the phone into something akin to a Nintendo Switch to massive external coolers that’d help sustain performance in the most demanding games.
The problem? The price. The ROG Phone was never a cheap phone, with the latest model, the 9 Pro Edition, coming in at a cool £1,299/$1,499 – that’s more expensive than phones like Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max, a challenging ask at the best of times. The ROG doesn’t exactly have the same reputation as stalwarts of the phone market like Samsung and Apple at the ultra-high end.
It’s an even harder pill to swallow when competing gaming phones from RedMagic tend to retail at less than half the price of Asus’ top-end option. The latest RedMagic 11 Pro, for example, costs just £629/$749. And, yes, while Asus undoubtedly offers a more high-end, polished mobile gaming experience than RedMagic offers, but it’s not hundreds of pounds better.
The RedMagic 11 Pro, for example, offers the latest in Snapdragon processing power, advanced cooling, an absolutely massive 7500mAh battery for extended gameplay sessions, plenty of software features and tweaks to boost gaming performance, and it even has touch-capacitive triggers built into the side of the phone, negating the need for a dedicated controller for FPS titles.
With competition like that in such a niche market, Asus was never going to dominate with the ROG Phone – and with a reluctance to drop price to compete, it was only ever going to go one way.
A smart move from Asus
With the Zenfone losing its identity and the ROG Phone pricing itself into a corner, Asus’ retreat from smartphones seems like a logical move. Of course, none of this means Asus has lost its appetite for experimentation – it’s just shifting its focus elsewhere.
Robotics, smart glasses and other ‘physical AI’ projects might not get the same level of excitement as a flashy new ROG Phone, but they’re arguably where the next decade of hardware battles will be fought.
For now, let’s pour one out to one of the stalwarts of the phone industry. Asus, we’ll miss you.
