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A rather odd piece of news surfaced today, Sony actually agreed on a partnership with Meizu. This information has been shared by Ice Universe, but both Flyme (Meizu’s account) and Sony Xperia published it on Weibo.
Sony & Meizu partnership has been announced, but only in China
Why Weibo? Well, it seems like this partnership will apply only to the Chinese market. What is it about? Based on what was said, Sony phones will now be able to use some applications and services offered by Meizu’s Flyme skin.
We’re not really sure why would Sony want to do that, but there you go. Perhaps Sony wants to succeed in the Chinese smartphone market, and sees Flyme as a way to do it. Does that mean Flyme will come pre-installed on Sony smartphones? Well, that’s one of the possibilities.
The other is that Sony will only use some applications and services from Flyme, and apply them to its own UI. As most of you know, Google play services don’t come pre-installed on smartphones made for the Chinese smartphone market, so… Sony can’t really use the same software it sells elsewhere.
Regardless, this is still a bit odd. Sony could have just removed Google play services, and be done with it. The company obviously sees the benefit of Flyme in one way or the other.
Flyme OS has been around for a long time
Truth be said, Flyme has been around for a long time, and is a solid OS. Its global iteration did have its issues, but the Chinese variant works a lot better. It has reached a high level of polish, so Sony probably sees a benefit there.
Sony’s smartphones haven’t exactly been flying off the shelves in recent years, though the company’s situation seems to be improving slowly. We’re not sure how involved will Sony get in the Chinese smartphone market, only time will tell.
One thing is for sure, though, Flyme connections end in the Chinese market, don’t expect anything Meizu-related to be included on Sony’s smartphones for the global market. There’s a reason this was announced on Weibo only.