Asus is focusing on premium and gaming models to turn its smartphone business around.
Asus is reportedly planning to launch a successor to its ROG gaming smartphone later this year. According to a report, the company is also planning to partner with Tencent in China to promote the phone. Asus was among the first smartphone makers to bring a dedicated gaming smartphone to India in the form of the original ROG phone. The Taiwanese smartphone maker had used speed-binned Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC as well as liquid cooling to ensure the phone remained cool even under intensive gaming. The ROG phone could play almost every game out there without breaking into a sweat, hopefully that will be the case with the upcoming ROG phone successor.
To recall, the original Asus ROG phone was launched in India for Rs. 69,999 and had dedicated hardware for gaming. When we reviewed this smartphone, we found the Air Triggers to be useful for gaming and the 90Hz display was faster compared to other smartphones in the market. Now, it seems that Asus is working on a successor to this ROG Phone and is planning to launch it in the third quarter of 2019 as reported by Digitimes.
The publication also notes that Asus is likely to team-up with Tencent to promote this smartphone in China. If the company does manage to team-up with Tencent, the partnership will provide a good boost to the ROG line-up which hasn't generated significant profits, as per the Digitimes report.
Asus had adopted a new strategy back in December aiming to turnaround its loss-making smartphone business by focusing on gaming and premium smartphones instead of mid-range and entry-level models.
Just like the ROG phone, we can expect its successor to be powered by top of the line hardware for gaming. While Asus plans to focus on the Chinese market, it could launch the upcoming smartphone in other regions as well. But we'll have to wait till Q3 2019 for more details.
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