Asus ZenFone 3 Release Date Set In June, Confirms CEO

Anvinraj Sivanandan

A man looks at Asustek laptops inside an electronics store in Taipei in this Jan. 21, 2008, file photo. Photo: REUTERS

The CEO of Asus, Jerry Shen has confirmed that the company will be unveiling Asus ZenFone 3 in June. The Taiwanese company is pegged to unleash three smartphones from the ZenFone 3 series, namely ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Max and ZenFone 3 Deluxe.

According to Digitimes, the ZenFone 3 Max will account for two-thirds of the total shipments. The rest of the shipments will comprise of ZenFone 3 and ZenFone 3 Deluxe. Shen has confirmed that 90 percent of the ZenFone 3 series smartphones will be powered by Qualcomm chipset and the remaining 10 percent will be powered by MediaTek.

All the three smartphones will be launched by early summer and the company will be selling them in six countries by August. The ZenFone 3 will be a midrange smartphone and it will be launched to compete with smartphones that are priced around $260 to $300. However, in China, the company will be targeting above $300 market to compete against popular Chinese smartphone brands such as Oppo and Huawei.

In the first quarter of this year, Asus achieved a 40 percent growth in smartphone revenue and its major markets were Europe, Southeast Asia, Brazil and Russia. In the second quarter, the company is expecting sales to remain “flat” as the company will be releasing new smartphones to the market.

The recently leaked photos of ZenFone 3 and ZenFone 3 Deluxe have revealed that both the smartphones will be sporting aluminum chassis. Other rumors have suggested that the smartphones will be equipped with a metallic frame that will be sandwiched between glass panels on front and rear sides.

The ZenFone 3 is expected to feature a 5.5-inch display whereas the ZenFone 3 Deluxe will be a larger device with a 5.9-inch screen. Both the smartphones will be coming with common features such as Android Marshmallow OS, 3 GB of RAM, LED flash enabled frontal cameras and USB Type-C ports.