Meizu in decline as company registers just 20 million smartphone shipments in 2017

Meizu has released a few major talking points on its business arm to the press. At a press briefing, ahead of a product launch, in Beijing, the company announced that it had sold a grand total of 20 million smartphones in 2017, a tally that shows a 10% year-on-year drop in shipments.

Meizu, over the past two years, looks to be on a decline. The smartphone manufacturers were major players in the market about four years ago but the rise of bang for buck brands like OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Honor has put paid to the company's growth of recent. 2017 may just have been the worst year in recent history for the Chinese OEM, as a dedication to partners MediaTek saw the company's flagship, the Meizu Pro 7 flop commercially.

The company released the M6 Note midway towards the end of the year to make amends for the Pro 7, though. We may be fans of the budget device—the first with the Meizu logo to run on a Snapdragon SoC, as we consider it to be one of the best value picks within its segment in 2017, but it's yet to be launched globally and hasn't made much of a splash in the market.

According to the company, total shipments tally up to just about 20 million, a slight decrease from 2016's 22 million figure. Revenue from those sales totalled about US$3.1 billion, which is decent. For some perspective, Xiaomi recorded about 100 million shipments in 2017, which shows a gulf in prowess between both companies at the moment. It's a shame, really, as Meizu remains one of the few top-quality Chinese brands. The lacklustre performance in sales is probably due to a combination of an almost bullish loyalty to MediaTek, and a refusal to expand outside China.

The company has stirred the waters with the M6 Note, though, and the upcoming M6S will feature an Exynos SoC, before another Snapdragon device, the 15 Plus (with the Snapdragon 835) is launched. 2018 may be a make or break year for Meizu and we definitely hope it leans towards the former.