Meizu, if you’re not aware, launched its new series of smartphones, the Meizu 18, which includes devices such as the Meizu 18 and Meizu 18 Pro, back in March 2021. A few days after the debut of these smartphones, the company promised that these smartphones will offer their users “a clean operating system without ads, malware and annoying push notifications.” However, as it became known, the firm went against its word by displaying ads on their respective smartphones in November.
And yes, this did not end well for the manufacturer, since right now Meizu is facing a fine from the government for a rather strange, and even ridiculous amount. And if you refer to one of the latest reports from ITHome, Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. was fined more than 25,000 yen, which translates to $ 3,923, by the Zhuhai Market Oversight and Management Authority. And yes, the aforementioned authority issued this fine even though the company ended up not showing ads on the Meizu 18 and Meizu 18 Pro, as promised. However, other smartphones have not received this honor.
And by the way, even in this case, there were some nuances, because back in November of this year, due to a configuration mismatch, users of Meizu 18 and Meizu 18 Pro were still shown small advertising banners, as well as completely opening full-screen advertising in the standard Weather application Flyme, an Android-based operating system installed on all Meizu smartphones. But yes, it was recognized as a bug, and the firm rather quickly fixed the bug in a few hours. But, in the end, the aforementioned management rightly believes that this should not have happened at all. Consequently, the Chinese government should have fined Meizu for not following its own words, which it did.
For those who don’t know, Meizu has been very active in promoting its Meizu 18 series as “Three Zero Mobile”, which means no ads, malware or push notifications as mentioned above. The company even decided, as part of its advertising campaign, to troll other brands that could not boast of anything like that. However, one day, as is often the case, Meizu deleted all messages on its social networks containing such promotions. And yes, this was done in order to still implement advertising on their own devices.
