After waiting for almost a year, we couldn’t wait for the Meizu 19 series, but we waited for FlymeAuto. On October 27, Meizu officially announced FlymeAuto. Meizu does not manufacture cars, but must enter the automotive field.
After Huawei announced its entry into the automobile industry, mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Meizu also entered the market one after another. It seems that the automobile industry has become a piece of fat in the eyes of mobile phone manufacturers.
Karl Benz invented the world’s first car in 1886, and it has been more than 100 years old. Today, there are more than 100 car brands in the world, some of which have a long history and strong technical and financial resources. They have also accumulated a large number of popular and loyal users.
The new forces of car-making are coming, but in the face of the strong enemies of the old car companies, I am afraid that there will not be too many who will have the last laugh. Entering the automobile industry is full of opportunities, but it is also full of risks. However, for Meizu, transformation is an inevitable choice, and automobiles are the goal of Meizu.
Entering the automotive industry, Meizu has no choice
It is undeniable that for all new car-making forces, entering the auto industry is a big gamble. If it fails, it may go bankrupt. However, entering the automotive industry is a helpless choice for Meizu.
Once upon a time, Meizu was also one of the leading mobile phone companies in China. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun once negotiated with Huang Zhang with the idea of taking a share, but failed to do so, so he founded Xiaomi himself. After years of development, Meizu’s situation is getting worse and worse. After 2016, it simply no longer releases financial report information. It only announced that it would make a profit after the end of 2020. It is conceivable that Meizu has been losing money for many years.
Source: Filmed by Lei Technology
The mobile phone released by Meizu in 2020 is the Meizu 17 series. As Meizu’s first 5G mobile phone, the quality is really good, but many people think that Meizu can achieve profitability. The reason is not the release of the Meizu 17 series, but the crazy layoffs of Meizu. When the company’s revenue and profits decline, layoffs have become a common solution to reduce operating costs. For example, Intel, a well-known CPU manufacturer, has recently announced that it will enter the layoff stage due to a sharp drop in net profit of 85%, and plans to reduce 100 billion in three years. yuan cost.
In 2017, Meizu had about 4,300 employees. By the beginning of 2020, there were only more than 1,000 Meizu employees. After another 30% layoff, by the end of 2020, the total number of Meizu employees will be less than 1,000. The impact of the massive layoffs does not seem to last long. Meizu has not announced its revenue and profit in 2021, but it can be roughly guessed from the fact that Meizu did not release the Meizu 19 series in 2022. Meizu’s performance in 2021 is not very optimistic.
Source: Filmed by Lei Technology
For Meizu, it is imperative to find a breakthrough. If you ask what is the best Meizu mobile phone, it is of course Flyme. In the field of Android mobile phones, Flyme can be regarded as the leader of the mobile phone system. The Flyme team is also known as the “Huangpu Military Academy of the mobile phone system”, and many employees have been poached by friends.
There are some differences between the mobile phone system and the car system, but there are many similarities, especially in today’s many car systems based on Android, some cars can already be regarded as an Android tablet. At present, most of the functions possessed by the car-machine system can also be realized on the mobile phone. Therefore, for the Meizu and Flyme teams, making a car system is a transformation that can be tried.
In addition, Meizu has also found a financial master in the automotive industry – Geely. Geely is an established car company in China, and its car sales reached 130,528 in September this year. In terms of hardware configuration, most of the domestic cars take the cost-effective route. Both the power and the interior are much better than the joint venture cars, but Geely’s system has always been a weakness.
Geely needed a team from the Internet and mobile phones to help redesign the system. It happened that Meizu also planned to enter the automobile industry. The two hit it off, so Geely’s Xingji Times acquired 79.09% of Meizu’s shares.
Meizu has obvious advantages and obvious disadvantages
We can drive without buying a car, but we can’t do without mobile phones. Therefore, the distance between car companies and us is obviously farther than that of mobile phone manufacturers. It can be said that mobile phone manufacturers are seeking consumers’ needs and understanding consumers’ psychology better when they are messing with consumers. This is the advantage of all mobile phone manufacturers. Xiaomi, Huawei and other car systems and smart cockpits will most likely be more user-friendly than traditional car companies.
In addition, after entering the 5G era, the concept of the Internet of Everything has become the theme and core of smart devices, and cars are called “the ultimate form of mobile devices” by Apple executives. In this case, the car machine and the mobile phone must be connected naturally. Many newly released cars already support the networking function and can be controlled remotely through the mobile phone App.
Source: Geely Auto App
However, it can only be controlled through the App, and the convenience is not high enough. For example, voice control, telling Siri to turn on the air conditioner of the car, Siri cannot handle it directly. Therefore, in recent years, not only mobile phone manufacturers have entered the automotive industry, but also auto manufacturers have officially announced the manufacture of mobile phones, such as Weilai, the leader in the new car-making power.
Geely created the Xingji era, the purpose is to make mobile phones, but it is too difficult to create out of nothing, and it is obviously a better choice to cooperate with Meizu. In early September, Xingji Times announced that it will launch the world’s first consumer-grade mobile phone directly connected to low-orbit satellites. This mobile phone is likely to be the product of cooperation with Meizu. Through the mobile phone jointly developed by Xingji Times and Meizu, it is estimated that the car can be remotely controlled by voice seamlessly.
Meizu cooperates with Geely, the former continues to release mobile phones with the financial support of the latter, and enough funds can be used to upgrade the mobile phone configuration; the latter has the blessing of the former system team, and the car system will be more intelligent and user-friendly. Through the combination of Meizu mobile phone and Geely Auto, full-scene, long-distance interconnection and control can be realized, and the interconnection of everything can be further realized.
Source: Geely
When entering the automotive field, Meizu’s advantages are very obvious, and the bonus it can bring to Geely Auto is also obvious, but in the same way, the disadvantages of Meizu and FlymeAuto are also obvious. The role of the smart cockpit is not only navigation and entertainment, but also automatic driving, assisted driving, high-precision maps, all-round vehicle status monitoring, etc. In these aspects, Meizu’s technology is a bit immature.
It is no wonder that Meizu, the small factory in Zhuhai has limited financial resources, and it is difficult to spend too much cost in the intelligent transportation industry. Take a look at Baidu, which has a big business and a big business. After entering intelligent transportation, in addition to autonomous driving technology, there are high-precision maps, driverless taxis, etc., which have been tried in some cities in China.
Compared with Huawei and Baidu, Meizu is weak domestically in the field of smart cockpits and vehicles, and may even be inferior to Xiaomi, which has not yet launched automotive products. Can Meizu, which is surrounded by strong enemies, started late, and relies on Geely’s blessing, really succeed?
What is the success rate of Meizu smart cockpit?
When it comes to smart cockpits, we have to talk about the Hongmeng smart cockpit released by Huawei. Like Meizu, Huawei also stated that it does not make cars, but is only a part of the automotive supply chain. Huawei, which has a lot of money and strong software and hardware strength, not only launched Hongmeng smart cockpit early, but also reached cooperation with many domestic and foreign car companies. .
More importantly, Huawei’s brand power is strong enough, and there are a large number of offline stores across the country, which not only sell mobile phones, but also undertake auto business consulting work. Under the blessing of Huawei, the little-known models of Celis and Wenjie can sell over 10,000 a month. Huawei is still developing its own lidar and autonomous driving technologies, and can provide support for car companies in the future.
Let’s talk about Xiaomi. Although the software and hardware strength of the smart cockpit is not as good as that of Huawei, Xiaomi has developed its own electric vehicle, and its own products must be its own systems. There are more than 2,000 domestic Xiaomi homes to help sell, and the advantages are also very obvious.
Meizu is not as powerful as Huawei, but there will be many cars suitable for FlymeAuto in the future, because the partner with Meizu is Geely, an old car company. Geely sells millions of cars a year. After the two have reached a cooperation, it is expected that most Geely cars will be equipped with FlymeAuto.
Source: Flyme official micro
Huawei and Xiaomi may be more powerful in the field of smart cars and smart cockpits, but Meizu has a partner that Geely has sold over 100,000 this month. Geely has its own self-driving technology and has cooperated with other hardware suppliers for many years, which has greatly reduced the pressure on Meizu. FlymeAuto does not need to develop too many functions such as automatic driving and vehicle health status monitoring, but only needs to ensure that the system is more user-friendly. More stable and smooth is enough.
With the strength of the Meizu Flyme team, it is not difficult to do this. Therefore, Xiaolei can boldly predict that the future development of Meizu will definitely be stronger than that of 2017 so far. Not only can we see Meizu on Geely cars, but also Meizu mobile phones are expected to make a comeback.
Cover image source: Flyme official micro