Wen 丨 BT Finance Aoyama Egret
Netizens called good guys! Sony is also going to build new energy vehicles!
According to the news on Sony's official website on January 5, at the 2022 CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) conference, Sony announced a new energy vehicle, code-named VISION-S 02. At the same time, Sony President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida announced the establishment of Sony Mobility Inc., which is responsible for commercializing Sony's electric vehicles.
Sony, the former electronic consumer overlord and film and television entertainment giant, the news of building a car has attracted much market attention, and Sony's stock price has risen by more than 5% due to the news.
As more and more Internet companies lay out new energy vehicle tracks, is Sony's car reliable? Will it break the sand like before entering the mobile phone business?
Sony's mobile phone business is losing ground
Once mentioned sony's name, everyone knows it. There are even Fans of Sony jokingly called "Sony Dafa Good" (meaning that using Sony's products is a kind of faith), a company has fans like a star, Sony is 20 years earlier than Apple.
Sony is a Multinational Conglomerate in Japan, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The business includes gaming entertainment, audiovisual, communications and information technology. Sony developed the world's first portable digital products, is also the world's largest electronics manufacturer, one of the world's six major film companies, and one of the world's three major video game industry.
Even to this day, Sony's cameras, avio-visual digital products, game consoles and TVs are still recognized as the top products in the industry. In particular, Sony after years of technological precipitation, has a strong industrial manufacturing strength and industrial design strength, almost all mobile phone brands are currently using Sony's cameras, even the domestic brand "Huami OV" mobile phone in the sale, will be "Sony sensor" as a major selling point.
It is Sony, which has such strength, but it has been defeated in its own mobile phone brand and has fallen out of the first echelon. In 2019, whether Sony's mobile phone business will continue has sparked a fierce debate within the company.
Sony's mobile phone business originated from Ericsson, which was jointly launched with Ericsson (Sony Ericsson), which ranked among the top three global sales in the era of feature phones. After entering the era of smart phones, Sony wholly swallowed Ericsson, and since then the mobile phone brand has been renamed Sony Mobile Phone.
It can be said that from the beginning of sony mobile phones in the competition can not touch the north, by the user spit conservative design, high pricing, poor localization optimization, etc., after several rounds of survival of the fittest, Sony mobile phones in the Japanese base camp have fallen to the fourth, in the world is more difficult to find.
The main reasons for the decline of Sony's mobile phone business are mainly as follows. First of all, the conservative characteristics of Japanese companies are caused, Sony pursues stability both from the management mode and product innovation concept, and now the new technology application speed of smart phones is unprecedentedly fast, such as wireless flash charging, reverse charging, screen fingerprints, etc., it is difficult to see traces on Sony mobile phones, and even full screen, hole-digging screen and other technologies have rarely been tried.
The high price of Sony mobile phones also comes from the social characteristics of Japan, Japan's labor costs are particularly high, and the result is that the products of Japanese companies require high manpower added value, resulting in the price of mobile phones that cannot be reduced. In the same way, China's mobile phones can be very low in price, of which labor costs are also a key factor.
Sony mobile phone system optimization is relatively poor, and Japan's software industry has a lot to do with the situation, Japan's traditional industry is strong, the Internet software industry is relatively backward, and even there is no well-known Internet company. In other words, Sony has top-notch hardware, but no software optimizations. Recent news exposed that Sony mobile phones want to cooperate with Meizu, and Meizu helps Sony to do localization optimization of the system, which is the reason behind this.
Another important reason is that Sony does not want to forge ahead, Sony is currently the world's largest CMOS (image sensor) supplier, has occupied more than 70% of the global market, that is to say, Sony by selling mobile phone parts can make money, but also a lot less marketing expenses, can lie to make money Why bother to invest more in the mobile phone business? Sony in recent years in the efforts to break free of the quagmire of losses, but also on the research and development investment is careful, so to see such a situation, although the mobile phone business is known as one of Sony's three major businesses, Sony's R & D investment is not much.
Under various factors, Sony mobile phones have finally become the current embarrassing situation, will Sony cars be like mobile phone business?
Is Sony's car reliable?
According to the news released by Sony officials on January 5, Sony's prototype car has been tested on the road, and the maturity of driving system, safety system, and human-vehicle interaction is very high, and it is very close to commercialization. According to the news, the car has two 200KW motors, 4.8 seconds of acceleration per 100 kilometers, and the limit speed can reach 238km/h, and the power is quite good.
Unlike other companies that have entered the game to build cars, Sony is the first to act, and the announcement is later. In the past two years, Sony has been quietly laying out, Sony has accumulated in the electric vehicle industry, and it is clear that Sony's announcement of entering the automotive industry is deliberate.
As can be seen from the name of Sony's prototype VISION-S 02, this is not Sony's first prototype. Sony has actually announced the first pure electric concept model VISION-S on a small scale in January 2020, which has not attracted much attention.
It is worth noting that the concept car VISION-S announced in 2020 is not created by Sony alone, Sony has many partners around the world, and this concept car brings together the technology from Qualcomm, NVIDIA, ZF, Bosch, QNX, BlackBerry, Horse Pai, Bentler, Magna and so on, which is a real "star team" to create.
Combing found that Sony has long been preparing to enter the new energy vehicle track. In 2019, it was revealed that Sony was seeking cooperation from auto parts manufacturers; in 2020, there was news that Sony's concept car or had been tested on the road to evaluate the power system and safety performance; in April 2021, Sony Group and Vodafone of Germany did in-vehicle 5G tests in Germany to verify the low-latency transmission of various sensor data obtained by the vehicle to the cloud, as well as the possibility of real-time control.
Sun Pengyu, a practitioner in the new energy vehicle industry, told BT Finance that Sony car manufacturing is still very reliable, after all, the industrial strength is there, and Sony's car manufacturing plan is not a "domestic popular" PPT car, first take a concept map, and then find investment. Sony directly came up with a sample car when announcing the car-making plan, which brings no less pressure to the new domestic car-making forces than the news of Apple's car-making.
Sun Pengyu also analyzed that Sony has more advantages than Internet companies to build cars, such as consumer electronics, sensor semiconductors and other aspects of Sony has a strong accumulation of technology, Sony is standing on the starting line is more advanced.
It should be emphasized that Sony's car is distributed to the newly established Sony Mobility Inc., and it is reported that the core members of Sony Mobile are from the Sony mobile phone division and the Sony entertainment department.
Why is Sony mobile building cars? Some insiders pointed out that the intelligentization of new energy vehicles is a trend, including Sony and other new car-making forces value not the car itself, but the future of people's life entertainment changes, the vehicle terminal will be the next battlefield after the "living room dispute", Sony itself is an electronic consumption, family entertainment giant, personally down to build a car is to see the future of creative entertainment cross-industry integration, so Sony will let Sony mobile to achieve car manufacturing.
In addition, Sony car manufacturing has an advantage, Sony has a lot of fans, even if Sony in recent years has not caused too many sensational electronic products, there are still many loyal users in the purchase of Sony's expensive TV products and camera products.
Industry insiders also pointed out that Sony's car manufacturing of course has disadvantages, consumer electronics products are individual consumer groups, and cars involve family consumer groups, how Sony can adjust the positioning is very critical. In addition, it is still worth observing whether sony's outdated management model and high labor costs exposed in the mobile phone business can be solved in the car-making business.
Whether Sony's car can go the old way of mobile phone business, time will give us the answer.
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