Looks like they're trying to continue the development of the "Smartisan" phone company, which has produced interesting products despite meager market share and even cashflow issues (
https://technode.com/2018/11/19/briefing-smartisan-confirms-...), and build their own ecosystems around their own hardware instead of profiting from the hardware itself. But all previous attempts proved unsuccessful (Firephone, Facebook, ...), I wonder how they'll attract consumers? Mobile devices haven't seen many groundbreaking innovations for a while and the market is saturating (at least seems so in China).