Rumor | Tencent moves to acquire Black Shark from Xiaomi in a multi-billion-yuan deal

Tencent has worked with Asus ROG and RedMagic as well as Black Shark to sponsor the launch of dedicated gaming flagship Android devices in the past. Now, there are signs that the company might want to progress to smartphones of its very own, made thanks to a new brand acquisition.

The leaker Abhishek Yadav asserts that Tencent has reached out to Xiaomi with an offer for the Black Shark group. Should this deal actually go through, it is said to be worth up to 3 billion yuan (~US$470 million) to the electronics giant.

Accordingly, it is just possible that we may see Tencent-branded phones to challenge the likes of the word's next-gen ROG Phones or Lenovo Legion Y handhelds of the future. For one thing, the OS the 2 groups could come up with might prove interesting (if hopefully well-optimized) forms of Android. Black Shark phones tend to rule benchmarks such as AnTuTu on release even in their current form.

On the other hand, neither Xiaomi, Black Shark nor Tencent have responded publicly to this rumor to date. Then again, it would explain why the OEM has been working on 'gaming' variants of the high-end Redmi K series when it has an entire separate line for the purpose already.

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