Asus set out plans to launch a second-generation Republic of Gamers (RoG) smartphone toward the end of 2019, with a partnership with Chinese online giant Tencent established to promote it in China.

The company took the wraps off the first-generation device in June 2018, touting its high performance for gaming applications. This includes a mode focused purely on performance and improvements to the cooling to address heat issues when a device is delivering peak speeds.

DigiTimes – a publication with a mixed performance in terms of device rumours – reported the second RoG smartphone would launch in the third quarter.

Late in 2018, Asus announced a plan to turnaround its loss-making mobile phone business by shifting its focus to gaming and premium models, with a “return to the Asus brand essence of creating the most powerful, beautiful and highest-quality products”.

This came with a one-time cost of TWD6 billion ($194.5 million), related to inventory, royalty, production cost and organisational adjustment expenses.

In 2018, just 13 per cent of its revenue came from smartphones (including the discontinued parts of its operation), compared with 21 per cent for components and 63 per cent for its PC business. It expects its smartphone business transition to be completed in the first half of this year.