Oppo and Vivo take over Meizu developers
While Flyme 8 was announced for this beginning of the year, communication around the new version of Meizu’s home OS seems to have suffered a shutdown. First expected on the Meizu 16th and then on the 16s, the release of the first beta was postponed to several weeks.
On the Chinese social network Weibo, many users are beginning to worry about the slowdown and difficulties in the development of Flyme. To understand this situation we must go back to August 2018.
As Meizu announced his smartphone celebratingème his 16th birthday. The Chinese manufacturer was under attack in the shadows of a new type from the BBK Electronics group.
On November 22, 2018, Oppo unveiled Color OS6, the latest version of its home OS that brought a lot of new features and a redesign of the design.
The day after the presentation, the Meizu community vehemently described the many similarities between Flyme and ColorOS 6 even speaking of plagiarism. Even the bell rings for CEO Jack Wong who did not hesitate to talk about a clear violation.
Although accusations of copying or plagiarism are commonplace in the sector. In this case, these accusations are actually based on a curious wave of departure within the various departments of Meizu. In the space of a few months several hundred Meizu engineers left the ship for its competitors Oppo and Vivo. And the icing on the cake, the designer of ColorsOS, is none other than Chen Xi ex-responsible for the visual design of Flyme.
Today, Flyme’s chief development officer, in a message on Weibo, broke the silence about this situation. In his message, he admits that nearly two-thirds of the engineers actually left the company for their competitors. A real razzia made possible by the attractiveness of the offers issued by Oppo and Vivo by promising salaries twice as much as those offered by Meizu.
Today the situation is tense between the two groups, the CEO has announced that he is taking legal measures against former employees who violated the confidentiality clause. Many analysts in China see behind these recruitments a clear desire on the part of Oppo to weaken Meizu, already in trouble by dispossessing them of their best elements.
To cope with this brain drain, Meizu undertook a major restructuring of all key departments, including new appointments. In addition, according to recent reports Meizu and Alibaba are again in discussions for a new capital injection (N.B.: Alibaba had already invested in Meizu to the tune of $515 million.
Since then, the situation seems to have stabilized. After a long restructuring, weekly updates are back in China and the global version has finally had the right to an update schedule.
