Another one less: Asus discontinues smartphone production

Jan Johannsen

23.1.2026

Translation: machine translated

Asus is no longer launching new smartphones on the market. Officially, it is just a break and the company's smartphone division continues to exist, but the focus is shifting to PCs and AI hardware.

Officially, it's just a break, but the likelihood of Asus returning to the smartphone market is very low. There will still be customer service and updates for previously sold ROG Phones and Zenfones. For the time being, however, the PC manufacturer from Taiwan prefers to invest its research and development resources in other areas.

Successful PC manufacturer gives up smartphone division

In the sales statistics for smartphones, Asus has always been one of the «Other». Nevertheless, the Taiwanese company has regularly launched new models in two smartphone series. The ROG Phone as a gaming smartphone, matching the PC gaming brand «Republic of Gamers», and the Zenfone as a conventional smartphone. The [Zenfone 10](Asus Zenfone 10 tested: Good smartphones can be small"Asus Zenfone 10 tested: Good smartphones can be small") was one of the last top smartphones with a display smaller than six inches. With the Zenfone 11, however, Asus also increased the screen size. In turn, the ROG Phone was less and less able to explain the usefulness of gaming smartphones.

At a company event on 16 January 2026 Asus CEO Jonney Shih took stock for the year 2025. He also spoke about the company's strategic direction and confirmed what had already been indicated: Asus will no longer manufacture smartphones for the time being. Instead, the resources of the research and development department will be channelled into commercial PCs - where Asus is much more successful than with smartphones - and physical AI. This does not mean AI data centres, but hardware that uses AI. Robots and data glasses were cited as examples.

With its exit from the smartphone business, Asus is following in the footsteps of its Taiwanese PC competitor Acer. Acer sold its smartphone division to Google in 2018 and only allowed another manufacturer to put its name on a smartphone for the Indian market in 2024. In 2021, another long-standing manufacturer, LG, discontinued its smartphone division.

In the end, we can only hope that the current owners of Zenfones and ROG Phones will continue to be reliably supplied with updates for the next few years.

Jan Johannsen

Senior Editor

Jan.Johannsen@galaxus.de

As a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus. more

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