Earlier today, there were multiple reports which said that Meizu was undergoing management changes after a new round of funding. Now, the Chinese smartphone maker has officially confirmed to us that it has indeed received new funding from the Zhuhai Municipal Fund. However, it adds that there hasn’t been any significant changes in the company’s management.
Jack Wong, founder, and CEO of Meizu will remain the largest shareholder and controller of the company. Zhuhai Fund will get a seat on the company’s board after this investment. Unfortunately, Meizu hasn’t revealed the exact amount invested by the Municipality. But earlier reports gave a figure of more than 100 million yuan, which comes to around US$14.5 million.
It’s no surprise that Meizu is getting this new funding from Zhuhai municipality. The company is based out of Zhuhai and the city has been quite supportive of its technology industry. According to earlier reports, Zhuhai plans to invest around 70 million yuan annually for the next three years in order to expand and strengthen existing as well as emerging industries such as AI, 5G, information security and so on.
Also, this isn’t the first case of a municipal fund bailing out a smartphone company. Back in 2017, the Chengdu Municipal Fund invested around US$135 million in the ailing smartphone company, Smartisan. While that did help the company to keep its operations, it’s still struggling. Most of its smartphones were listed as out of stock on various retailers in China in the past few months.
Coming back to Meizu, Alibaba is also an investor in this Zhuhai based company. The Chinese e-commerce giant invested US$590 million in Meizu back in 2015.
