Chinese tech firm LeEco exploded into the US market last year with a number of compelling deals on powerful smartphones. But things haven't gone as planned for the company. As its operation back in China faltered, the future of its US expansion has become unclear. It's more unclear than ever now that the LeEco US website is gone. According to the message left in place of the website, the company is busy "upgrading the system."

LeEco was essentially unknown to US consumers until last year, but it was a big player in China with ventures in mobile, film, streaming media, and even cars. It wasn't long after the company's international expansion began that CEO Jia Yueting signaled things had not worked out as expected. LeEco ended up calling off its acquisition of Vizio (resulting in a lawsuit), trading of stock was halted, and most of its US employees were let go.

This is the backdrop for LeEco's latest move; shutting down its website for a whole week. Going to LeEco.com right now offers a message, which you can read above, explaining that the site is being upgraded and is unavailable. It's a bold approach to site maintenance. The nature of this upgrade is unclear, but it will apparently be ongoing until September 15th (next Friday). Most websites don't need to be completely disabled for a week to perform maintenance, but maybe this is related to firing 70% of US staff. If you weren't already skeptical about LeEco's stability before, this should help you get there.

Source: LeEco