When Xiaomi and Meitu signed a partnership agreement late last year, the deal said Xiaomi will make and sell devices under the Meitu brand. It has been nearly a year since the partnership and the only Meizu-branded device released is the Xiaomi CC9 Meitu Edition.
Technically, the Xiaomi CC9 Meitu Edition isn’t a Meitu smartphone as it doesn’t have the Meitu design language and is just the regular CC9 with some special camera features for content creators. For die-hard Meitu fans, the company’s CEO revealed at a press conference today that a true Meitu smartphone will be announced next year.
Mi Xinhong shared a few details about the upcoming phone. First, it will be developed and sold by Xiaomi just as the partnership agreement states. It will also be the first of a new product line. Xiaomi’s own CEO, Lei Jun, had also revealed this info prior to today’s announcement.
There is no info on the features of the phone but we sure should expect something quite interesting. We definitely will love to see the flip-camera phone (pictured above) which was rumored to actually be Meitu’s first Xiaomi-developed phone.
Even though Meitu hasn’t released any smartphone this year, its other business arms have grown in the past year. Its online advertising revenue is reported to have increased by 27.2% year-on-year to ¥362.3 million. Meitu is also stated to have incorporated a new business model which includes a premium subscription service. The new business is said to have grown to more than 6 times since it was introduced. Meitu’s social media platforms’ active users is also reported to have increased to 308.1 million users, a 0.6% increase from December 2018. Average daily usage time has also increased from 5-6 minutes to over 12 minutes.
(Source)
