Lenovo is reportedly shutting down ZUK Mobile in the coming weeks

Lenovo is reportedly shutting down its online only smartphone sub-brand ZUK, which it introduced back in June, 2015 to compete against the likes of Xiaomi. The information comes from China's social networking website Weibo. 

A Weibo user @Old Cool posted that there will be no ZUK Z3, to which a noted analyst Pan Jiutang replied that the entire Zuk hardware business will be shut down in a few weeks.

If true, ZUK will shutdown its operations after 23 months of its existence, and the ZUK Edge will remain the last smartphone from the brand. Moreover, Lenovo is most likely to combine  ZUK with Moto and Lenovo's smartphone business. 

Previously Lenovo said that it was planning to combine all its smartphone brands under a single brand, Lenovo Moto. The Moto brand has been performing well in countries like India, Brazil, USA and Mexico, and with the merger, Lenovo will look forward to turn its struggling smartphone business into profit. The recently launched Moto G5 line up has the Lenovo Moto branding.

Speaking of ZUK, the Lenovo sub-brand has so far launched five smartphones: the ZUK Z1, ZUK Z2, ZUK Z2 Pro, and the ZUK Edge, all of them offering flagship-grade specs at a budget. Out of the lot, two of them were launched in India namely ZUK Z1 and ZUK Z2, but under Lenovo branding and marketed as Lenovo ZUK Z1 and Lenovo Z2 Plus. Earlier this month a leaked image of a new ZUK device, ZUK Edge II Special Edition with dual-cameras surfaced, but now it appears that it will never hit the market, or may launch under the Lenovo Moto brand in the future.

Though Lenovo is shutting down ZUK, the sole survivor of the brand will be the Andoid based skin ZUI, which according to Lenovo VP Alex Chen Yu will be integrated into the upcoming Moto phones, a move that will upset many Moto fans, as one of the unique selling point of Motorola device was the clean and almost stock Android version. However, it can be expected that Moto's China variants will ship with ZUI.