ASUS says the ZenFone 5 series of smartphones will arrive in March of next year according to a report from Digitimes, which mentions that the statement comes from ASUS’ own CEO Jerry Shen. March of 2018 would put the ZenFone 5 at just six months away, and just six months after ASUS started launching its current generation smartphone lineup, the ZenFone 4 series. This sort of turnaround isn’t exactly uncommon, and those familiar with Sony’s production in the smartphone market in recent years will remember that Sony used to come out with a new smartphone in the Xperia Z series about every six months.
That said, ASUS isn’t necessarily saying that the ZenFone 5 will launch in March, just that ASUS will be holding an event where it announces the new device, or family of devices. Taking that into consideration and remembering when ASUS announced its ZenFone 4 lineup, it’s likely that the ZenFone 5 could reach the hands of consumers around at least a month later, which might mean in April or May. The timing of the announcement for the company’s next phone is the only thing that Shen reportedly shared in regards to that device, as nothing was mentioned about specs, features, or possible price points and launch regions, which is to be expected this far out as ASUS, like any brand, would probably want to keep things under wraps as much as possible.
What mentioning the announcement date seeks to do, though, or at least what it might be doing even if Shen hadn’t designed it this way, is that announcing when the company plans to announce the ZenFone 5 could have the effect of building up excitement for the phone’s arrival and gaining more momentum, as six months is still sort of a long ways away. For those that do get excited about phones from ASUS, knowing the time frame which the company plans to announce its next flagship but knowing nothing else about it would potentially build up anticipation, and perhaps that is what ASUS wants. Though Shen didn’t share any details about the device itself, he did apparently make a point to highlight that with continued success of the ZenFone 4 series, ASUS could be one of the seven profitable smartphone businesses by sometime in the third quarter of next year.