Earlier this year, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing admitted in an interview that turning Motorola around proved to be a harder task than initially predicted. Despite the Moto brand remaining fairy popular with consumers, two years after the acquisition, Lenovo had was forced to axe more than 2,000 jobs in the US and fell to eight place in the global smartphone market.
Lenovo already announced that its strategy for the future includes rebranding all its upcoming phones under the Motorola brand, but now it seems ZUK will also be part of this joint endeavor. According to well-known analyst Pan Jiutang, Lenovo plans to shut down the ZUK Mobile in the near future – which is unexpected given the brand’s independent status.
ZUK Mobile is the most recent addition to the Lenovo Group, but as it appears at this point its existence will be cut short after only 23 months of life. ZUK won’t completely cease to exist – right now it seems the merger’s sole survivor will be the company’s ZUI custom interface which according to a now-deleted post by Lenovo’s VP Alex Chen Yu will make an appearance on future Moto products, but probably only in China.
Analyst Pan Jiutang calls ZUK Mobile a successful brand that managed to attract a lot of fans during its brief time as a phone manufacturer. The company introduced a total of five devices including the Z1, Z2, Z2 Pro, Z2 Rio Edition and ZUK Edge, which were fairly well received in Lenovo’s home country. Now it seems ZUK will be absorbed into Lenovo.
In the meanwhile, Motorola and Lenovo are preparing an entire slew of new Moto smartphones which are expected to arrive in the following months including the Moto C/Moto C Plus, Moto E4/Moto E4 Plus, Moto X (2017) and Moto Z2 and related devices.
