22 million unit sales doesn’t sound like a lot by Samsung or Apple’s mobile industry-leading standards, and it’s also a drop in the ocean compared to some of Huawei’s increasingly remarkable quarterly smartphone shipment numbers of late.

But for Meizu, it’s actually a new yearly record, up a healthy 10 percent from 2015’s 20 mil tally. Similar to many budget-focused compatriots, this China-based gadget vendor could use a stronger presence in international markets, where it only managed to unload 2 million of its Flyme OS-skinned, Android-powered handhelds between January and December 2016.

That left a robust 20 million smartphones distributed domestically over the past 12 months, which however still wasn’t a big enough score to contend the likes of OPPO, Vivo or Xiaomi. 2017 marks the beginning of a potentially beautiful friendship lucrative alliance with global semiconductor champ Qualcomm, and at least one Snapdragon-packing Meizu device is reportedly slated for a commercial launch during the year’s final calendar quarter, at the latest.

You probably shouldn’t rule out seeing that same phone in Western stores, though something tells us it’s not going to be a flagship model. The flagship is coming exclusively to Chinese shores around June, according to fairly plausible gossip, with a MediaTek Helio X30 processor inside, curved screen and Pro 7 name… presumably.

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