A series of rumors dating back to May suggested that Meizu will split into two or three entities, including the parent company Meizu itself as well as a new low/mid-range smartphone division Blue Charm. In the meantime, it appears that the Blue Charm brand may have been renamed to MBlu. This is according to a recent series of screenshots depicting an ‘MBlu’ website in a mobile format, though it should be noted that the website itself is not accessible at the time of this writing so the validity of the screenshots cannot be confirmed.
The alleged MBlu website is evidently focused on Meizu-branded devices and appears to contain pages for at least a couple of smartphones including the Meizu M6 Note and the Meizu E2. The website doesn’t seem to be restricted only to handsets, and instead, it appears to offer accessories as well, at least judging by the inclusion of a page dedicated to the Meizu Flow earphones. These screenshots seem to suggest that Meizu is making the necessary preparations for the final split but it’s not entirely clear what this strategic move will actually entail. Some rumors have suggested that Meizu will remain focused on distributing high-end smartphones whereas the Blue Charm/MBlu sub-brand will be its own division reserved for budget-friendlier smartphones, similar to how Huawei’s sub-brand Honor operates. Other rumors claimed that Meizu will only manufacture smartphones powered by MediaTek chipsets in the future, whereas MBlu-branded devices will rely on Snapdragon silicon from Qualcomm. Then again, this doesn’t seem to be the case given that the Meizu M6 Note is powered by the Snapdragon 625 while the Meizu E2 relies on the MediaTek Helio P20 chipset, and both devices seem to have been spotted on the alleged MBlu website.
Also worth reminding is that although the initial reports claimed that Meizu will split into two divisions, other past reports suggested that the company could end up dividing its operations into three main entities, namely Meizu, Blue Charm/MBlu, and Flyme, the latter of which would focus solely on developing software as given away by the name itself. As a reminder, the Meizu M6 Note, E2, and indeed nearly every Meizu smartphone launched this year – save for the Meizu M5s – run Flyme OS 6.0 based on Android Nougat.