The in-house development of hardware for Meizu smartphones has ended for the time being. But the story of Flyme continues.
On February 27, 2026, Xingji Meizu issued an announcement stating that Meizu will discontinue the project of self-developing new smartphone hardware products in the Chinese market and will actively engage with third-party hardware partnerships. In other words, the Meizu 22 will most likely be the “final work” of the Meizu smartphone series in the next few years.
Image source: Weibo
But as mentioned in the announcement, Meizu stopping its own development of new smartphones does not mean that the familiar names Meizu and Flyme will disappear from the consumer electronics industry. As a first step to “move easier” Meizu is collaborating with third-party brands to create its own “Flyme Universe” with Flyme AIOS as the core:
The day after Meizu’s announcement, popular Chinese tablet brand CubeTalk announced that its customization collaboration with Meizu’s Flyme AIOS is moving forward. Some internal users have even posted screenshots of the settings to prove that it is only a matter of time before Flyme AIOS is deployed on CubeTalk tablets.
Image source: Weibo
But the question is: Is Meizu’s strategy of stopping smartphone development and focusing on Flyme AIOS really promising?
This is not the first time that Flyme has acted “independently”.
First of all, something that may be unknown to new players in the smartphone and digital market who have only come into the business in the last few years: the collaboration with CubeTalk is not the first time that Flyme AIOS has gone “on its own.” Even Meizu’s understanding of the operating system has always not been limited to its own products.
In 2012, Meizu released Flyme 1.0, a customized version of Android based on Android 4.0.3. At a time when iPhones were jailbroken immediately after purchase and Android smartphones were reinstalled straight out of the box, Meizu, like Xiaomi, also offered firmware packages (ROM) from Flyme and MIUI for smartphones from third-party brands.
To promote its Flyme service, Meizu even created an internal customization team that acted as a “regular force” to provide official firmware for popular Android flagship models such as the Nexus 5, Galaxy S4, HTC One and Xiaomi 3. At a time when Android systems were generally immature and UI aesthetics were in a total mess, Flyme was the “white light” in the hearts of countless enthusiasts thanks to its minimalist wabi-sabi aesthetic and the predictive interaction logic of the Smart Bar dynamic navigation bar.
Image source: Flyme
From today’s perspective, Flyme was already trying to exist independently of the hardware and test the feasibility of a “software price premium”. It wasn’t until 2015, when smartphone manufacturers tightened bootloader permissions, that MIUI and Flyme stopped updating third-party smartphones.
But if you think about it, at that time Flyme not only had the tightening of other brands’ permissions as an external reason, but also its own considerations: in 2015, Meizu received capital investment from Alibaba, and the Flyme operating system briefly switched to Alibaba’s own YunOS base. Note that YunOS back then is different from today’s “self-developed OS”:
Thanks to its stronger development capabilities YunOS ditched Android’s default Dalvik virtual machine and switched to its own virtual machine and instruction set to achieve higher system performance; Later, YunOS even planned to “bypass” Android among foreign brands and create its own YunOS ecosystem. Apparently, this practice actually threatened Google, and Google also began issuing warnings to smartphone manufacturers interested in YunOS.
Image source: Flyme
Of course, under Google’s intense blockade, the YunOS-based Flyme ROM had become useless for third-party smartphones, and Flyme became Meizu’s exclusive operating system.
In 2021, Sony’s Xperia smartphone breathed out its last life on the Chinese market. In terms of hardware concept, Sony’s Xperia smartphone was quite forward-looking. But due to industry-leading hardware optimization capabilities, overly high product prices, and almost non-existent local system optimization, the Xperia has been left far behind by Chinese smartphone makers in terms of both user experience and sales.
To address the weaknesses of its operating system, Sony Xperia began working with Flyme. But unlike direct system ROM customization Sony only handed over some of the system components of its Chinese smartphone system Flyme OS (which had already been renamed Flyme at the time).
Image source: Sony China
Although Flyme’s system components solved the problem of localization of Sony smartphones from scratch for Xperia users at the time, even if the Xperia had been fully equipped with Flyme OS, Sony would not have been able to compete against Chinese smartphone manufacturers. In 2023, Sony released its last “Chinese Xperia”; In 2025, Sony Mobile China ended its operations in China, and the Flyme OS “modular collaboration” attempt also came to an end.
If Flyme AIOS’s external collaborations have always failed so far, why does CubeTalk still want to work with Flyme AIOS in 2026?
What are the advantages of Flyme AIOS in transforming from a smartphone brand to a system brand?
According to Lei Technology, CubeTalk is likely to have three main advantages in mind when working with Flyme AIOS: Interaction, AI and the connection of everything.
First, let’s talk about the interaction. Although the hardware performance of Meizu smartphones is not at the top of the industry, Flyme AIOS (including its predecessors Flyme OS and Flyme) really packs a punch when it comes to interaction design.
Chinese secondary brand tablets have long been derided as “MP4s with screens” because their software systems are extremely simple. Many so-called operating systems are nothing more than the standard Android interface with a different launcher and icon set. Flyme AIOS, on the other hand, brings with it an interaction system that Meizu has refined over more than a decade in the interaction industry:
The popular split-screen mode, message bubbles, mBack function and rock input are all precious treasures that Meizu has developed since its inception until today. For users it means that for just over a thousand yuan they get a smartphone with an interaction as smooth as Meizu. This psychological added value is enormous.
Image source: Flyme
Next comes AI. As one of the first systems in China to fully rely on AI, Flyme AIOS also supports AI functions at the system level. One-click image recognition, cross-app data transfer, deep thinking, multimodal interaction… Flyme AIOS can provide all the common AI capabilities that modern AI devices need in one fell swoop.
According to data from IDC, the growth in shipment volumes and year-on-year growth rates of the Chinese tablet market has begun to slow in 2025; The market has also split into two segments: small gaming tablets and large “productivity” tablets.
In a tablet market that is slowing and becoming increasingly competitive, there isn’t much room for Chinese secondary-brand tablet makers to compete with low prices. Secondary brand tablets must increase their overall competitiveness without significantly increasing costs: And working with Flyme AIOS is of course the most convenient and fastest way.
In addition, Flyme AIOS also has a competitiveness in connecting everything that can keep up with HyperOS and HarmonyOS. According to data from Xingji Meizu the number of vehicles equipped with FlymeAuto exceeded 2.26 million in 2025, becoming the intelligent cockpit system with the highest market share in China; By 2026, the number of vehicles equipped with FlymeAuto will even exceed an astonishing 3 million.
Image source: Flyme
In the wearable device industry, Xingji Meizu also covers multiple categories, such as headphones, smart glasses and smart rings. Access to Flyme AIOS means the brand can be perfectly integrated into the “car-home-person” ecosystem comparable to Xiaomi and Huawei, which is a huge attraction for second-brand smartphone and tablet manufacturers that are unable to build their own networking ecosystem.
AI hardware is key to revitalizing the Flyme ecosystem
According to Lei Technology, the interconnectivity between smartphones, tablets, wearable devices, AI hardware and smart cars is Flyme AIOS’s most valuable asset and the key to its “revival” in the AI era.
After all these years, the traditional smartphone industry has failed to break away from the logic that the smartphone is the center of the business. But since Meizu transformed, Flyme has become a true “decentralized” system. At a time when the price of RAM has skyrocketed, by stopping its own development of smartphones, Meizu can gain more resources for the development of Flyme AIOS and also be more open to other devices.
For example, the success of Flyme Auto has proven that Meizu has strong software development capabilities in various industries. Once users get used to using FlymeAuto in their car, they will also be more likely to choose products equipped with Flyme AI OS when choosing AI glasses or third-party brand tablets (or even smartphones).
Til today There are only three brands in China that can build such a complementary ecosystem, but two of these brands need to ensure that their own smartphones offer the best user experience; Only Flyme has managed to move easily and treat all devices equally.
Image source: Flyme
Of course, the “revival” expected here by Lei Technology does not refer to Me
