Meizu wants to sell it? Where do small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers go in the "post-5G era"?

At noon on January 21, for the geely acquisition rumors, Meizu told the first financial reporter that there was no latest news announced.

In the morning of the same day, it was reported that geely group's mobile phone company was in contact with the mobile phone manufacturer Meizu to negotiate the acquisition, the transaction is still in progress, and due diligence is being done. For the acquisition rumors, Geely also said that it would not comment on the market rumors.

On September 28, 2021, Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xingji Times"), founded by Li Shufu, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone and officially announced its entry into the field of mobile phones. But for Geely's entry, people in the mobile phone industry have mixed reviews.

The mobile phone industry has always been regarded as the most competitive area in the electronics consumer industry, especially the high-end market, and it is a market that is extremely demanding on brands and products. "Now this market still dares to rush in to do its own brand, which has high requirements for the financial strength of enterprises, and the demand for professional talents is also very high." A mobile phone person reporter said.

"Although the mobile phone industry chain is now relatively mature, it is not difficult to find an OEM supply chain, such as directly looking for Foxconn to do OEM work, but this only means that it is not difficult to make a mobile phone, and it is very difficult to really do a good job in mobile phones and make the high-end market do this thing." The above-mentioned mobile phone person told reporters that at present, the number of employees in the head mobile phone manufacturers generally exceeds 10,000, and the relevant research and development personnel occupy more than 50%.

The formation of a hardware and software team may be the first threshold that Geely needs to face to enter the mobile phone industry.

Former Meizu employees told reporters that Geely makes mobile phones, hardware and supply chain may learn fast enough, and the software system may not be necessary. "Doing a set of your own OS is very long and troublesome, UI, account system, version iteration, etc., hundreds of people smashed down, two or three years did not ring, but also very affect the mobile phone experience and brand." Buy Meizu at least Flyme OS is available. ”

Flyme OS is Meizu's deeply customized mobile phone operating system based on the Android system, but due to the shrinking sales of Meizu mobile phones, the team has also suffered from personnel loss and slow updates in recent years.

According to IDC data, Meizu mobile phones currently sell around tens of thousands of units per month. For Huang Zhang, the founder of Meizu, who once hoped to make a mobile phone only for his "dream", the sales of less than one million a year obviously cannot support this dream to continue.

In addition, the overall smartphone market is in the bottom L-shaped trend. According to GfK data, 2020 is the fourth consecutive year of continuous decline in global smartphone retail sales, global smartphone sales of 1.267 billion units, down 7.9% year-on-year, and 2021 did not reverse the downward trend, the global mobile phone market entered the stock of long-cycle replacement stage.

On the other hand, China's mobile phone manufacturers have shifted from the past extensive development to the era of refined management, whether it is self-developed chips or software underlying technology development has reached the "burning money stage", for small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers, the living space is further squeezed.

Li Rui, CEO of Nuowei Consulting, told reporters that the current monthly sales scale of small and medium-sized smart phone brands is 0.5 to 30,000 units, which is a good path for professional managers and shareholders to successfully sell to large enterprises, but for the founders, it is equivalent to the brand selling cheaply. "After all, they are all old brands for more than a decade, but now is the worst time for performance, and mergers and acquisitions will not bring high revenue."