Asus chairman Jonney Shih revealed quite a lot about what the company is up to and what consumers should expect from it in the future. The company is hardly an underdog in the tech world, but outside of personal computers, it has a small footprint.
The company has proven it can be a force to reckon with in the mobile arena due to the small success of the ZenFone 2 — a weird name for a smartphone but that didn't stop quite a good number of consumers throwing money at the device.
From what Shih had to say in an interview with Trusted Reviews, observers can tell that Asus is planning to take the smartphone industry by storm.
According to Shih, Asus must step up its mobile game initiatives to remain relevant. This makes a lot of sense because the PC market share is falling, while mobile continues to be a tremendous success story. Being the number 5 PC manufacturer in the world doesn't mean much today unless consumers gravitate toward Windows 10.
Still, the smartphone market is saturated right now, so Asus will have no choice but to innovate in order to grab attention.
A great way to catch some attention is to partner with Google again on a Nexus device. The company did this with the Nexus 7 tablet back in 2012, and again with the 2013 variant a year after. These devices were well received by both critics and consumers, though Asus failed to take advantage of its position to break big into the market.
The company is indeed making plans to partner with Google again, according to Shih, when asked about it.
"Actually, we have a lot of projects ongoing," said Shih. "Please just stay tuned, you know, stay tuned."
"I think we do have quite a good development partnership with Google. We are still doing a lot of projects with them together."
Another important thing Asus is working on right now is a VR product. We're not exactly certain when we might get to see the device, but we do know Asus is not doing it alone. The company is working with a partner, though Shih did not reveal who this partner could be.
Asus making big inroads into the VR market is a good decision since it could take off. However, the company should be careful because VR has failed in the past already, and it could do so again.
What about smartwatches? Almost every tech company is working on a smartwatch.
Asus has already ventured down this path with the ZenWatch called Man, another weird name for a gadget. The ZenWatch received a lot of praise for its easy-on-the-eyes design and is still one of the better Android Wear devices to date. However, it did not perform at similar levels to the Apple Watch, but no one expected it to.
The success the company has experienced with the ZenWatch is largely down to the fact that the device is not attempting to replace your smartphone, Shih claims.
"The best strategy so far, I still believe, is [the watch] as a companion of the phone," explained Shih. "We believe we took the right strategy from the very beginning with the design, replacing your watch."
No doubt Asus is working on a next-generation smartwatch, and we can't wait to see what it looks like.
