14 DAY TRIAL // A post on China’s biggest social network Weibo revealed an interesting reason why the ZUK Z3 smartphone won’t be launched. Apparently, Lenovo plans to shut down the ZUK Mobile division, which was launched in 2015.
Analyst Pan Jiutang has revealed that Lenovo intends to shut down the division in the coming weeks and focus on competition in China, according to GizChina. And in fact, earlier this year, Lenovo did say that it encountered issues with turning Motorola’s business around and recording profits.
Now, Lenovo wants to start branding all new smartphones Lenovo Moto, despite the fact that the initial plan was to unite Moto and Lenovo divisions under the same brand name, and it seems that ZUK Mobile won’t be joining them. The ZUK Mobile division is focused on offering affordable smartphones with lower-end specs.
ZUI to be featured on Moto phones sold in China
ZUK Mobile was founded on May 28, 2015, and the division managed to produce four smartphones during its 2-year existence. ZUK Z1, ZUK Z2, ZUK Z2 Pro and ZUK Edge were the only phones that the division launched. There was also talk of a fifth smartphone, called ZUK Edge II Special Edition, but this device won’t hit the market.
Recently, Lenovo’s VP Alex Chen Yu has announced that the ZUI interface featured on ZUK smartphones will make its way to Motorola devices, at least in China. This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard about such a move, as a number of Moto Z and Moto Z Play smartphones in China received an update to ZUI 2.5 in the beta test program in January.
ZUI will be featured on Moto smartphones sold in China, which means that the upcoming Moto Z2 devices won’t come with ZUK’s UI in other countries. Lenovo will most likely unite its divisions under the same brand name before the Moto Z2, Moto Z2 Force and Moto Z2 Play launch later this year.