Meizu set to layoff %5 of staff


meizu metal

Despite seeing a surge in sales by as much as %350 last year, Meizu are planning to slash its work force by %5.

Meizu have been growing fast over the past 2 years, in fact in 2015 the company saw growth of 350%. This growth is partly down to their larger product range (in the past they launched just one phone a year) but mostly due to their sub 1000 Yuan device that made up %50 of their total sales last year.

Gizchina News of the week


With such huge increases in sales the company looks set to thrive, so why then are they planing to layoff %5 of its workforce? Are the brand growing too big too fast or are they becoming a victim of their own success? We’re not sure on the official reason but source close to Meizu suggest that the cut in work force is a restructuring exercise aimed to help Meizu increase sales by another %25 this year.

Interestingly I had heard a similar rumour earlier in the month that suggested a cut of %10.

Chances are Meizu will continue to focus on 1000 Yuan phones as their core business as it worked so well for them last year.

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23 Comments

  1. rimakus
    January 26, 2016

    it is called greed

  2. Achilles
    January 26, 2016

    if slashing 5% equals 4000 it means that they have around 80.000 employees.
    not possible.
    Lenovo in contrast has 60.000

    • Roger
      January 27, 2016

      No, you misread it. They currently have 4,000 employess.

      • Achilles
        January 27, 2016

        the article has been edited. I commented the first version where it was stated about 4000 positions slashed.

  3. realjjj
    January 26, 2016

    No lol , the total is 4000 and they are getting rid of a small %.

    • balcobomber25
      January 26, 2016

      Yea most of them probably are in their retail stores and I agree with you on the IPO. Although I think a full takeover by the Ali group could be in the works as well.

      • realjjj
        January 26, 2016

        It’s not in Alibaba’s interest to do so as they want their OS to see wider adoption and fully owning Meizu would be counterproductive. They are better off taking small stakes in a number of phone makers, just like Qualcomm does to make sure they get what they want.

        • balcobomber25
          January 26, 2016

          I disagree with you on that one. The best way for YunOS to make a serious impact in the market is by having a brand with a strong portfolio and a growing audience running it on all their phones.

          • realjjj
            January 26, 2016

            and instead of having a billion devices every year,they have a small fraction of that at best while paying a huge sum to buy Meizu.

            • balcobomber25
              January 26, 2016

              They will never get a billion devices. They can settle for having 20+ million from Meizu every year or having a few million from various brands selling one device running Yun, like the Meizu Metal. The only way it becomes a widespread OS is they have their own brand running it on all their devices.

    • Angry Mobile Nerd
      January 26, 2016

      Never been to China, yeah?

  4. balcobomber25
    January 26, 2016

    The numbers are off on this. Their total number of employees is around 4,000 they are laying off about 200 employees. This happens with every business, departments restructure and some jobs become redundant.

    • MaxPower
      January 26, 2016

      First thing i thought when I saw that number was:
      ” holy shoot!! I didn’t think Meizu was that huge!!! ”

      Now that make sense

      • balcobomber25
        January 26, 2016

        Even 4000 is a large amount for one of these companies, most of their employees work in their retail stores.

    • January 27, 2016

      Yes, I fault. I was pretty shocked too when reading it.

  5. Angry Mobile Nerd
    January 26, 2016

    Speaking from experience IMHO most Chinese companies are overstaffed. I think the the actual efficiency figure is in China there are 2.5 people hired to do what 1 person in America would be hired to do. It seems every Chinese company must hire a group of “managers” who all they do is sit on tacky wood carved furniture, drink tea and smoke all day so it’s my hunch this 5% we’re probably of this variety. It’s a sign they’re maturing and probably streamlining their operation and removing the redundancies.

    • MattD
      January 26, 2016

      That happen because of shelves: they’re so high it needs 2 or 3 chineses to get over there, climbing one on the other… No wonder companies need to hire a lot of people!
      Now, due to technology improvement, a computer calculated that all they need is lower shelves… Thus all of the people not needed anymore! 🙁

      • Angry Mobile Nerd
        January 26, 2016

        It happened because 10 years ago the economy was growing 10%+ year over year and salaries were half of what they are now. Now the economy is slowing down below double digit growth and salaries have doubled and companies just can’t afford to pay people to do nothing anymore. Chinese people, especially in office/corporate situations, are masters of trying to see how little they can do and still get paid because before they were very independent and many did their own business (and still do) but if you didn’t work you wouldn’t make money. Fast forward to now and many Chinese are working for companies and they’ve quickly figured out regardless of how much work they do (or don’t do) they still get a paycheque every month so many come to the office every day with the “do as little as possible” attitude. Some even go out of their way just to create the illusion of productivity.

        5% is just the icing on the cake, they could probably cut 10-15% and still get by just fine.

        • MattD
          January 26, 2016

          What you wrote is actually interesting (i could imagine something like that, but i did not knew it for sure), but just for the sake of being sure: you know i wasn’t actually serious on my previous comment, right? 🙂

          • balcobomber25
            January 27, 2016

            Yea that wen’t completely over his head….

    • balcobomber25
      January 27, 2016

      I have experienced this first hand and with some companies it’s even higher than 2.5. I had a contract for a fairly small tech company there where they had about 100 Vice Presidents, no one could really tell me what all of them did though.

      • Muhammad Yasir
        January 28, 2016

        WTF , 100 VPS ?!
        most companies have 2 or 3 …
        Damn !

  6. Aeonia
    January 27, 2016

    a 350% growth in a year?…Amazing. They must have done something right