The source of the rumour,  Technews Taiwan, claimed that the reason was due to "internal restructuring." Zenfone employees are being moved to the ROG Phone team and other parts of the business.  The details were pretty specific, saying that the Zenfone 10 will be the last phone in the Zenfone series. Since the team no longer exists, there is unlikely to be a successor to this phone.

Earlier in the month, ASUS stopped allowing bootloader unlocks for Zenfone owners. The company maintained that they are not stopping the possibility of unlocking, just that the tool is currently unavailable.

A few weeks ago, community members also spotted that ASUS had removed older Zenfone firmwares from its website. Community moderators responded that ASUS no longer provides previous firmware versions or downgrade packages to ensure users remain on up-to-date firmware. Both of these incidents do not directly point to the shutdown of the Zenfone division. But they add the value of hindsight to the report, and we can't help but wonder if the writing was on the wall all this time.

However, the company moved to shut down the rumours.

“We would like to address the rumor that ASUS Zenfone 10 will be the last generation of the series and the ASUS Zenfone product line will be shut down. This is not true,” ASUS stated.

“We will continue our two main phone business product lines, the ROG Phone and the Zenfone. ASUS has a strong commitment to our smartphone business and customers. Please reference our Q2 earnings call for more information. Please stay tuned for our 2024 product lineups,” the company said.

The company’s Q2 earnings report showed its phones accounted for two per cent of the total revenue in the quarter, up from under one per cent in the same quarter last year