Asus has effectively shoved its phone dreams in a drawer and walked away.
An unconfirmed report earlier this month said Asus was pulling back on smartphones, and now Asus chairman Jonney Shih has confirmed the wind-down at an event in Taiwan.
Asus chairman Jonney Shih said, “Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future.”
That puts a big question mark over the Zenfone and ROG Phone lines in 2026, and the few people still tracking them can probably stand down.
Shih did not say Asus will never ship another handset, but the plan is an “indefinite wait-and-see” approach, with the usual caveats about translation.
Instead of chasing slabs of glass, Asus says it will focus on AI products like robots and smart glasses, which is where the hype and budgets have been piling up.
The Zenfone range was never exactly a must-have, leaning on being a bit smaller and cheaper than rivals while lagging badly on support and updates.
The ROG Phone series at least had a proper niche, with active cooling, multiple USB-C ports, gamepad accessories, flashing lights, and even a headphone jack.
It also got pricey enough to make people wince, with the ROG Phone 9 Pro starting at $1,200, which is a lot to ask for a gaming flex.
Asus devices should still receive updates, but nobody is confusing Asus with the companies that treat long-term software support as something more than a checkbox.
The ROG Phone 9 Pro is only guaranteed two OS updates and five years of security patches, while recent Zenfones get two Android version updates and four years of security support.
Shih’s comments suggest Asus will not jump back into phones unless the market shifts, and the market is not exactly in the mood to do favours for niche players.
Asus is hardly the first OEM to bail, and the slow upgrade cycle has been squeezing the life out of mid-tier phone experiments for years.
It is a far cry from the late 2000s and early 2010s when Android was a chaotic playground of sliders, odd hybrids and gimmicks that occasionally worked.
Now that smartphones are mature, year-to-year gains are thinner, prices are up, and people hang on to devices longer because the next one is rarely exciting.
More competition from Chinese brands like Vivo, Xiaomi and Huawei make the squeeze worse, especially for firms trying to make money outside the US.
Asus does not look sentimental about it, with Shih pointing to a 26.1 per cent revenue increase for 2025 and saying AI server business has doubled.
Phones are out, AI servers are in, and the next “innovation” from Asus might be a robot with a logo instead of a handset with a pulse.
