The story
Founded by Jack Wong in 2003, in Zhuhai.1
Jack Wong (Chinese: 黄章; pinyin: Huáng Zhāng) established Meizu in 2003. Initially a manufacturer of MP3 players, Meizu released their first MP4 player in 2006. Their most notable MP4 player was the M6 Mini Player, which was also marketed by Dane-Elec outside China.
In January 2007, Meizu announced their first smartphone, Meizu M8, which was fully released in April 2007. The Meizu M8 ran on the Mymobile operating system, based on Microsoft Windows CE 6.0. The design of the M8 was based on existing smartphone technology, such as Apple's iPhone. Meizu was subsequently sued by Apple due to theft of Apple's intellectual property of the original iPhone. An upgraded version of the Meizu M8, the Meizu M8SE, was released on 2 October 2009.
On 1 January 2011, the company released the Meizu M9, their first smartphone based on the Android operating system. This device was considered to be a large commercial success in China.
Meizu opened their first branch office outside mainland China in Hong Kong in 2011. Later that year, they also opened a branch office in Russia.
The Meizu MX was released on 1 January 2012, exactly one year after the M9. It was the first smartphone to feature Meizu's Flyme OS, a deeply customized version of Android. It was the first Meizu phone officially released outside mainland China, being released in Hong Kong at the same time. A quad-core version of the Meizu MX was released in June 2012.
In December 2012, the Meizu MX2 was released. It runs on Flyme OS 2.0 based on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The phone was produced by Foxconn and went on sale in mainland China, Hong Kong, Russia and Israel.
The Meizu MX3 was released in October 2013 and was the first smartphone to have 128GB of internal storage. On 6 March 2014, Meizu held a product launch of the Meizu MX3 in France, announcing that it would go on sale there soon. Meizu also expanded to Italy and Eastern Europe in 2014.
Meizu announced the Meizu MX4 on 2 September 2014. It was the first Meizu smartphone to feature a MediaTek processor and LTE support. The Meizu MX4 was the first Meizu smartphone to also offer Alibaba's Yun OS aside from Meizu's Flyme OS for the mainland Chinese market. Later that year, the Meizu MX4 Pro was announced, featuring a Samsung Exynos octa-core processor and a 2K+ screen.
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In December 2014, Meizu announced the M series of products, with the first product being the Meizu M1 Note. The M-series of Meizu devices focus on bringing powerful features for a relatively low price. In January 2015, Meizu released the second installment in the M series of products, the Meizu M1.
On 2 June 2015, Meizu announced the successor to the Meizu M1 Note, the Meizu M2 Note. It features a physical home button and a new MediaTek octa-core processor, among some other upgraded features. After the Meizu M2 Note, is announced the Meizu M2. It features the same physical home button, and a MediaTek 6753 Octa-Core processor. It comes with Flyme OS 4.5 preinstalled.
The successor to the Meizu MX4 was announced on 30 June 2015, during a large launch event in Beijing and is called the Meizu MX5. During that event, Meizu also announced their first powerbank and virtual reality headset.
Meizu launched the new flagship series named PRO series in September 2015 by announcing the Meizu PRO 5. This device was also later showcased at MWC 2016 and eventually commercially released in February 2016 as an alternative edition named Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition running the Ubuntu Touch operating system.
The Meizu PRO 6, the successor to the PRO 5, was unveiled on 13 April 2016. It features a 10-core Helio X25 SoC, 4 GB of RAM and a 5.2-inch screen.
Meizu further extended its portfolio of M series products by releasing the Meizu M3S, Meizu M3 Note, Meizu M3E and Meizu M3 Max in 2016. The current device of the MX series is the Meizu MX6, which was released on 19 July 2016.
Recently, Meizu seems to be geared up for a new smartphone called Meizu M4. Although the company has not put a word about this mobile, the alleged upcoming smartphone has been spotted on TENAA certification.
On 22 April 2018, Meizu released Meizu 15 series to celebrate their 15th anniversary.
In April 2019, the Meizu 16s was announced with Snapdragon 855 SoC and in-display fingerprint scanner.
On 8 May 2020, Meizu released Meizu 17 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 mobile platform, supplemented by the highest LPDDR5 specification high-speed memory as well as UFS3.1 flash memory.
On 8 July 2020 Meizu changed its theme color from #00b3ff (0, 180, 255) to #008cff (0, 140, 255).
On 13 June 2022, China's market regulatory authorities announced that Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. was acquired by Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd., which is affiliated to Geely Holding Group, with a 79.09% stake, making the latter the largest shareholder and actual controller of Meizu.
In December 2022, the shareholders of Zhuhai Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. changed. Meizu Technology founder Huang Zhang and other shareholders withdrew from Meizu Technology. Wuhan Xingji Meizu Technology Co., Ltd., controlled by Geely Group Chairman Li Shufu, became the sole shareholder.
On 30 November 2023, Meizu announced their venture into electric vehicles (EVs) with the DreamCar MX. On the same day, Meizu shared a brief Weibo post teasing the Dreamcar MX as well as the launch of a new DreamCar co-creation programme arriving in Q1 2024, allowing users to express many customisation aspects such as exterior paint, interior colour matching and Flyme Auto themes.
On 18 February 2024, Meizu announced their decision to exit the traditional smartphone industry in an effort to move towards an "All in AI" centric focus over the next 3 years. Meizu's android flavour "FlymeOS" will also transition to focus on terminal devices such as vehicle infotainment systems for Geely. Meizu Announcement.
In May 2024, DreamSmart Group will fully upgrade its smart ecosystem and launch the Flyme AIOS operating system with deep AI capabilities. It will also release flagship models, smart noise-cancelling headphones, AR glasses and trendy accessories.
From Wikipedia’s article on Meizu, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4