This week, Meizu announced a new line of smartphones in the “Pro” series. Which is essentially replacing the MX4 Pro launched last year. So we have three lines now. The M line which consists of the M2 and M2 Note. Both of which sell for a little under $200 USD. Then there’s the MX line which is a bit pricier at around $350 USD and now the Pro line which is around $450 USD. The Pro 5 is a pretty spectacular device and one of the questions we had for Meizu’s VP Li Nan is, will the Pro 5 be coming to North America? And more importantly, will any of Meizu’s devices make it to North America anytime soon?
While Li Nan didn’t explicitly say yes or no to the question, he did say that the company is paying close attention to the market in the US. With it moving more towards unlocked devices and away from subsidies, we may see Meizu sooner than expected. The VP stated that they want to sell directly to the customer instead of through the carriers. And to show their customers that they have something to offer. Now this isn’t much of a surprise really. We’ve seen Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra say the same thing in a recent interview with Bloomberg, but it’s interesting that the biggest hurdle in coming to the US isn’t regulatory issues or Google Mobile Services (GMS) certification, but it’s the market and the way phones are sold in the US.
We’ve reviewed a number of Meizu’s recent smartphones and they have come along way in the past year. The Pro 5 is one the best looking and feeling smartphones around. While I do like the glass back of the Galaxy S6 Edge+, the metal on the Pro 5 is not slippery and doesn’t hold onto fingerprints. We’ll have our full review of the Pro 5 soon, so keep your eyes out for that. Meizu is growing like crazy, and just to throw some numbers out there, in 2014 the company sold 5 million smartphones. For most companies, that’s a decent year. But in August 2015, the company sold 2.89 million devices alone. Just in that single month. Representing over a 400% increase in sales in just a year. Talk about a fast-growing smartphone maker.