• A new report indicates that layoffs at ASUS have led to its Zenfone lineup of smartphones being shut down.
• The final Zenfone to see a launch will be the Zenfone 10.
• ASUS will reportedly merge existing members of the Zenfone team into its ROG team, which works on ROG smartphones and the ROG Ally.

One of two smartphone series from Taiwan’s ASUS will be discontinued, according to reports. This will be the Zenfone series, of which the Zenfone 10 will be the final model in the series to see a launch.

The original report came from Taiwan’s TechNews (Chinese), which indicates that the ending of the Zenfone line is the result of layoffs across ASUS.

The publication cites “a person familiar with the matter” who told Science and Technology News that the company has cut departments like engineering and procurement directly in half.

Meanwhile, the Zenfone team is being merged into other departments or into the Republic of Gamers (ROG). The company division of hardware marketing to gamers.

ASUS has yet to make any official comments on the matter.

The news of the Zenfone 10 being the last in the lineup coincides with users finding that ASUS has removed the firmware for some older Zenfones in recent weeks, including the Zenfone 8.

However, community moderators replied that the company only wants users to stay up-to-date on their latest firmware for safety reasons.

Zenfone models were slated to head to South Africa first in 2014, but the devices performed poorly in the local market given the popularity of the likes of Apple, Samsung and Huawei among others. Nowadays you can’t even find them listed on the likes of Takealot.

Locally, ASUS has been focusing more on its notebooks, ROG smartphones and its latest ROG Ally in terms of marketing, with the Zenfone swept under the radar.

The ROG Ally in particular serves as the company’s answer to the Steam Deck, but we did find its battery capacity a bit underwhelming in our review. It is available now at the ASUS store for R15 999.

ASUS’ ROG smartphones, which will apparently be scooping up members of the former Zenbook team, are impressive gaming-oriented devices.

As for the Zenfone that marks the last in the line – the Zenfone 10 comes with the latest in Snapdragon chips, with the 8 Gen 2, as well as other performance-minded hardware.

The shuttering of the smartphone series and larger layoffs taking place at ASUS coincides with a consumer hesitance that has the PC parts market biting its nails. High inflation and record interest rates the world over have potential customers holding on to their PCs for longer, leading to companies like Intel taking steps to reduce costs.

[Image – ASUS]