Stefan Mileschin

A recent report from the Taiwanese news site Digitimes claims that Razer and Asustek are both in talks with the Chinese gaming giant Tencent over the release of a "gaming smartphone that supports Tencent's games." Asus's recently released ZenFone Max Pro is reportedly the last "consumer" smartphones the company will make, and that a higher end ZenFone "for power users" is expected to come mid 2019. In related news, Digitimes claims that TSMC is about to start manufacturing the 7nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processors that will likely power these higher end (and higher margin) smartphones. Asustek and Razer both declined to comment... Asustek is set to release a new ZenFone prior to mid-2019 for power users and is also looking to form partnership with Tencent for the ROG-brand gaming smartphone, the sources said. Asustek's new ROG smartphone is expected to come with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 processor and priced at CNY5,000 (US$741) for the smartphone itself and CNY12,000 for the whole set. The smartphone's high gross margin will have a chance of helping Asustek's handset business turn profitable, the sources noted. Razer reportedly also contacted Tencent with a similar plan for its gaming Razer Phone 2, but Tencent so far has not yet made a decision on which it will cooperate with.

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2019/02/...phone_tencent/