📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: Asus bids goodbye to smartphones indefinitely, ending ROG

Asus has confirmed it is stepping away from the smartphone business, ending a long but increasingly fragile chapter in its consumer electronics portfolio. The company will not launch new phones in 2026 and has no fixed plans to return.

Chairman Jonney Shih disclosed the decision during Asus’ 2026 kickoff event in Taiwan.

He said the company would stop adding new smartphone models and redirect resources toward emerging AI-driven products.

Asus declined to comment earlier this month when reports first hinted at a pullback.

Shih’s remarks now remove any ambiguity. While he did not rule out phones forever, he framed the decision as an open-ended pause rather than a temporary reset.

A strategic retreat

Shih told attendees that Asus would shift focus toward artificial intelligence products, including robots and smart glasses. He emphasized long-term growth over maintaining an unprofitable category.

“Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future,” Shih said, according to a report cited by Ars Technica. He added that the company would reassess only if market conditions changed.

That change appears unlikely. Smartphone demand has slowed worldwide. Buyers upgrade less often. Prices continue to rise. Competition keeps intensifying.

Asus once thrived by serving niche users. Over time, that strategy lost momentum. The company struggled to keep pace with larger rivals on software support, marketing scale, and pricing.

Zenfone and ROG fade

Asus maintained two distinct smartphone lines. Neither proved sustainable.

The Zenfone series targeted users who wanted smaller and more affordable phones. The devices delivered solid hardware but fell short on long-term software support. Update policies lagged far behind industry leaders.

The ROG Phone line aimed at mobile gamers. These phones packed top-tier chips, active cooling, gaming accessories, and legacy features like headphone jacks. They also carried premium prices.

The latest ROG Phone 9 Pro launched at $1,200. That price undercut its appeal. Many gamers preferred flagship iPhones or Samsung Galaxy devices instead.

Asus guaranteed only two operating system updates for the ROG Phone 9 Pro, alongside five years of security patches. Recent Zenfone models fared worse.

They received four years of security updates and the same two-version OS limit.

These policies made Asus phones harder to justify in a crowded market.

Asus follows a familiar pattern. Smartphone manufacturing has become unforgiving. Margins remain thin. Development costs keep rising.

Chinese manufacturers now dominate global Android sales. Brands like Vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei release faster cycles and offer stronger regional support. Smaller players struggle to compete outside core markets.

Asus once benefited from a more experimental era. The late 2000s and early 2010s welcomed bold designs. Keyboard sliders, projector phones, and hybrid devices found buyers. That era has ended.

Smartphones now evolve incrementally. Annual upgrades deliver fewer visible gains. Consumers hold onto devices longer.

History offers little optimism for a comeback.

No Android brand has successfully returned after halting phone releases. LG provides a cautionary example. It scaled back launches, promised patience, then exited entirely.

Asus may follow a similar path. The company appears comfortable with that outcome. It plans to invest where growth still exists.

For phone buyers, the decision narrows an already shrinking field. For Asus, it reflects a business reality shaped by maturity, consolidation, and changing priorities.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Eksklusif ai: Young Tech Bros Are Embracing Celibacy in Favor of t

The future moguls of corporate America aren’t living like the new money princes in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” Instead, today’s aspiring tycoons are pursuing a different kind of luxury: a monastic purity through abstinence.

For Mahir Laul, founder of HR software startup Velric, the typically youthful whirlwind of sex and romance takes a backseat to Slack notifs and fundraising rounds. “There’s two things that I care about the most: the gym and my work,” Laul told Business Insider in an interview. “I am obsessed with work. My love life is in the gutters.”

With so much pressure on building the next tech unicorn, Laul says most of his fellow entrepreneurs are in the same boat — a lifestyle that doesn’t leave much room for romance, casual or otherwise.

“The opportunity cost is really high,” Annie Liao, founder of AI education company Build Club told BI. “Every night you spent out is time you could have spent building your startup.” She told the publication her San Francisco roommates are in the same boat. To the future new money of America, dating apps are a “big, big distraction,” the founder said.

Those who have paddled into the dating pool say they did so long before the days of building. Now that they’re founders, their long-standing relationships apparently come in handy in the business world.

“Being in a relationship is really helpful for building the company,” said Yang Fan Yun, cofounder of Composite, a company peddling in AI agents for web browsers. Yun told BI he met his current girlfriend early into his education at Stanford. Now that he’s in builder mode, he finds his girlfriend comes in handy by helping with things like product testing.

“You’ve always heard the mentality, ‘behind every successful man, there’s the right woman,’” Laul told BI. “Rather than looking for hookups, I tend to look for someone as a life partner. But it’s been difficult.”

Avaricious chastity isn’t the only thing separating tech founders from their generational peers. The same motivations fuel a thriving sober movement, as well as a clinical relationship to food.

All in all, it’s a strange bargain for the would-be Rockefellers of the 21st century. In a calculated pursuit of wealth and status, they’ve abandoned the very pleasures that once defined life on the top rung. It raises an obvious question for those of us further down: if this is what the good life looks like, then what’s the point?

More on tech bros: Tech Billionaires Are Starting Private Cities to Escape the United States

The post Young Tech Bros Are Embracing Celibacy in Favor of the All-Consuming Drive for Wealth appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com