Asus Confirms It's Pausing Its Smartphone Business Indefinitely

Asus has confirmed what months of quiet leaks pointed toward: the company is pausing its smartphone business indefinitely. Chairman Jonney Shih announced the move at a company event, describing it as an open-ended wind-down rather than a permanent shutdown — but with no ROG Phone 10 or Zenfone 13 ever having shipped, and no successor currently planned, the practical effect for now is the same. Asus is redirecting its mobile engineering resources toward AI hardware, robotics, and commercial PCs instead.

What Actually Happened

Unlike a headline-grabbing single announcement, this had been building for a while. Asus released only two phones in 2025 — the ROG Phone 9 FE in February and the Zenfone 12 Ultra, also in February — a marked slowdown from the company's usual release cadence. A ROG Phone 10 had reportedly been in development, with prototype leaks circulating through late 2025, before the project was quietly shelved as part of the broader decision.

Why Asus Is Stepping Back

Asus hasn't detailed exact figures, but the smartphone division has long been a small, low-margin part of the company's business compared to its PC, motherboard, and graphics card operations — and the ROG Phone line in particular occupied an increasingly crowded gaming-phone niche that never grew to the scale gaming laptops did for the company. With AI hardware and robotics both drawing significant new investment industry-wide, redirecting mobile engineering headcount toward those areas is a straightforward capital-allocation call, even if it's a disappointing one for the phones' loyal fanbase.

What This Means If You Own a ROG Phone or Zenfone

Asus has committed to continuing software updates and warranty support for existing devices — this isn't a case of phones being abandoned overnight. The ROG Phone 9 Pro, ROG Phone 9 FE, and Zenfone 12 Ultra all remain fully supported for now, with their existing OS-upgrade and security-patch commitments unaffected. What changes is simpler: there's no next model to look forward to, and resale value on current ROG Phones may soften as buyers factor in the end of the line.

A Gap in the Gaming Phone Market

Asus's exit leaves fewer dedicated gaming-phone options on the market, with rivals like RedMagic and iQOO's gaming-focused lines picking up whatever share Asus leaves behind. It also closes out one of the more distinctive corners of Android hardware — AirTrigger ultrasonic shoulder buttons and AniMe Vision LED back panels were never going to be everyone's idea of a phone, but they gave the ROG Phone line a genuine identity that few rivals matched.