Introduction: On the same day that Huawei released the M7, Geely’s acquisition of Meizu was officially finalized. Regarding cross-border, technology Internet companies can go, and so can car companies.
(Text / Edited by Zhang Jiadong / Lou Bing) On July 4, Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Xingji Times) and Zhuhai Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. held a strategic investment signing ceremony in Hangzhou, officially announcing that Xingji Times held Meizu Technology has a 79.09% controlling stake and has obtained sole control over Meizu Technology.
At the press conference, Li Shufu, who added the post of chairman of Xingji Times, said, “In the future,smart carThe track of the two industries of , smartphone is no longer monotonous, and the two no longer go their separate ways, but an integrated relationship of multi-terminal, full-scene, and immersive experience for common users. Recently, mobile phone companies have started to build cars, and auto companies have also tried to build mobile phones. In the end, they all aim to create a better user experience. “
In 2021, Tesla has exposed a set of renderings of Tesla mobile phones. At the beginning of this year, foreign media broke the news that the first mobile phone Tesla%u3C0 made by Musk has been released. In March of this year, Li Bin confirmed the rumors of NIO making mobile phones, and SAIC Motor is also thinking about deep integration with mobile phone manufacturers.
The influx of car companies into the mobile phone industry is undoubtedly another new stage in the development of the automotive industry.
As early as 2014, Apple set its sights onnew energy vehiclesIn the field, under the promotion of Apple’s “Titan Project”, the Apple Car Team was officially born. Although Apple’s car-making is still a legend in the industry, with Apple’s entry into the game, in recent years, Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO and Sony have either built cars in person on the auto track, or have been deeply cultivating technical support for new energy vehicles. Mobile phone manufacturers continue to spread.
As far as mobile phone manufacturers are concerned, as early as 2017, after the global smartphone shipments broke through the historical peak, the high-speed growth period of the smartphone industry is gone forever. Before the emergence of disruptive technologies, it has become the consensus of mobile phone manufacturers to stabilize the basic market of the smartphone business by occupying the high-end market, while looking for the next incremental market.
Under this premise, the automobile industry, which coincides with the era of intelligent transformation, has undoubtedly become the first choice for mobile phone manufacturers to enter.
Apple CEO Tim Cook once emphasized: “Autonomous systems may be the foundation of all machine learning products and can be used in many products and services of enterprises in the future. We are keen to integrate hardware, software and services. It is not necessary to introduce automatic drive a car.”
Therefore, whether it is Apple’s CarPlay or Huawei’s Smart Choice, “providing services for car companies” is the result of most mobile phone companies’ exploration of cross-border cooperation in the automotive field. However, behind the continuous exploration of mobile phone companies, the market pressure faced by traditional car companies is increasing day by day.
Auto companies fight back
“Software-defined car” is a new concept derived from the intelligent transformation of automobiles, but it also creates the difficult problem of “soul” ownership between automobile companies and service providers. Even behind Jidu, which was jointly created by Geely and Baidu, and Xiaomi, which officially launched two-line car manufacturing, as a substantive car, it has to face the form of “de-automotive” that has become a software carrier.
However, as the jewel in the crown of modern industry, the automobile industry has always been at the top of the industrial chain since its emergence, and it also has absolute control and dominance in the relationship with suppliers. But now, the enemy that car companies have to face is no longer the peers who have reached a consensus in the past, but the mobile phone companies that master intelligent hardware and software systems.
In 2015, a data analysis company pointed out that in the competition for Internet of Vehicles data, car companies and Internet companies are born to be rivals, unless car companies are willing to be “blacksmiths” rather than “ecological chain masters”.
For Geely, which is currently undergoing the transformation from traditional cars to intelligent connected cars, it is quite urgent to create a vehicle-mounted system or even a complete vehicle ecosystem with top market competitiveness. In the face of the negative feedback of the GKUI system in the early years and the short board of the Ji Krypton 001 car machine being reduced to the barrel effect of the whole vehicle, Geely’s supplementary force in the automotive intelligent system is imminent.
This also means that Geely is obviously not eager to jump into the red ocean market of high-end smartphones when making mobile phones, but more like to use the technology and research and development results of mobile phone companies to feed back smart cars, making Geely cars smarter and more complete.
In fact, in this dimension, the consideration of any vehicle company has the same goal, even if the active and passive relationship in the layout of the mobile phone business is different. Based on this concept, car companies maintain their dominance in vehicle manufacturing.
Cross-border still needs lightning protection
Li Bin once mentioned that it is easy to build a mobile phone, nothing more than “Qualcomm chip + android system”, but it is not easy to break through in the high-end market.
According to the report of Counterpoint, a third-party research organization, more than 95% of the domestic smartphone market share in 2021 will be occupied by five leading brands: Apple, Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, and Vivo, and the rest of the brands can only follow behind. Leftovers”.
Although it has strong financial support from the group, for Geely and many car companies, there are many lessons learned from crossing the border into a new field. The Gree mobile phone, which was officially launched in 2015, was given 50 million units by Dong Mingzhu.salesTarget. But to this day, Gree mobile phones, which have been on the market for many years, have exhausted all kinds of promotion methods, but they have only sold 100,000 units, which is not even a fraction of the monthly sales of leading companies.
Of course, for car companies, mobile phones bound to car products may only be a one-to-one digital relationship in the future. Based on the million-year sales of first-tier car companies, their self-developed mobile phone products do not need to achieve the same exaggerated annual sales figures as mobile phone companies.
Compared with starting from scratch, through industrial cooperation will undoubtedly achieve twice the result with half the effort. And this may be the fundamental reason why Geely gave up self-research and instead acquired Meizu.
With the help of Meizu, Geely may be able to realize a deeper interaction between the car and the mobile phone as soon as possible, so as to help its products complete the closed loop of the intelligent car system.
On the other hand, Geely, which has mobile phone manufacturing capabilities after the acquisition of Meizu, will also improve its “integrated world” travel ecology involving application scenarios and realize a closed loop of multi-ecological links. In June this year, with the successful launch of the first track nine stars of the “Geely Future Travel Constellation”, the “Star Chain” plan belonging to Geely officially kicked off. It is reported that Geely plans to have 72 satellites in orbit by 2025 and begin to provide services in China and the Asia-Pacific region. After 2026, it will have 240 satellites to form a “star chain” to achieve global coverage.
At that time, the advantages of Geely’s mobile phones will be further highlighted. According to Geely’s disclosure, Geely’s mobile phones will be able to cooperate with Geely’s low-orbit satellite system to realize satellite communication functions. That is to say, in the future, Geely will be expected to create a new travel scene with cars and mobile phones as terminals, connecting a wider living space.
Li Shufu once said that a new round of technological and industrial revolution has spawned a large number of new formats and models, and technological innovation and ecological integration of the consumer electronics industry and the automotive industry are imperative. Although entering the mobile phone industry does not intend to form direct competition with mobile phone manufacturers, it is clear that car companies do not want to be “stuck” in the relevant hardware and software.
As the terminal and entrance of consumers’ smart life, the intersection between cars and mobile phones is constantly overlapping, and at the same time, a closed-loop ecological chain is created for the two, and a new blue ocean is derived.
Therefore, from the current layout of the two, whether it is mobile phone companies entering the automotive field or auto companies entering the mobile phone field, both are conducive to creating a stronger ecosystem for automotive products.
On the same day that Geely acquired Meizu, the second model selected by Huawei, the Wenjie M7, was officially launched. The full-cycle operation of Huawei has undoubtedly long been the protagonist of new product promotion. With Geely sounding the horn of cross-border counterattack by car companies, the battle for the new voice under intelligence will also be about to start.
Original title: Geely acquired Meizu, car companies began to compete for the initiative of intelligent