Geely is really going to make a mobile phone.
It took 4 months to finally make some big progress. According to the Caijing reporter confirmed from the insider of the relevant transaction, Xingji Times, a mobile phone company under Geely Group, is in contact with Meizu to negotiate the acquisition and is currently in the due diligence stage.
Geely said that "there is no comment on market rumors, the high-end mobile phone research and development business of the Star Era is progressing in an orderly manner, and we hope to create an open and integrated ecological partnership."
Meizu officials replied: "Thank you for your concern for Meizu."
At the moment when rumors are being refuted at every turn, this non-committal attitude of the two sides has further confirmed the authenticity of the news.
Geely moves the real thing
Li Shufu wanted to build a mobile phone from September last year.
On September 28, 2021, Hubei released the news and the official Weibo of Geely Holding Group announced that Li Shufu entered the mobile phone field and the project headquarters settled in Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, Hubei Province.
The product will be positioned as a high-end smart phone, integrate global technology and resources, target to serve the global market, and more importantly, to empower each other in terms of automotive intelligence and achieve synergy.
According to the data of Tianyancha, the registered capital of Xingji Times is 715 million yuan, of which Geely Group holds 32.3% of the shares as the major shareholder, and Li Shufu himself holds 6.15%.
The Star Age has attracted a group of capable people with experience in mobile phone manufacturing. Its legal representative, Wang Yong, once worked at ZTE and led a number of ZTE communication products, such as TD-SCDMA mobile phones, including Zhang Yadong, former general manager of ZTE's PHS product line, who also joined the management team of Xingji Times.
It is said that Geely also offers 2 to 3 times the high salary, poaching major domestic mobile phone manufacturers. Xiaomi's chief MIUI architect Wang Wenjun announced his entry into Geely on a high-profile official.
This was a shock to Lei Jun, who announced the construction of the car in March last year, and some of the fires that burned the inner courtyard.
Lei Jun wants to build a car, Li Shufu wants to build a mobile phone, kill each other into each other's hinterland, and the short soldiers are connected, and this drama is expected by the outside world.
This time, Li Shufu intends to acquire Meizu, which adds a lot of color to this scene. After all, to say that the grudge is entangled, Xiaomi and Meizu have really been against the wrongdoers.
A public case
Huang Zhang is the founder of Meizu, known as The Chinese Jobs. Coincidentally, Lei Jun is also a Chinese Steve Jobs.
In 2011, just 3 days after the launch of Xiaomi's original mobile phone, Huang Zhang personally shelled Lei Jun and Xiaomi. He bluntly denounced Lei Jun in Meizu's official community for "using the leadership relationship of the high-tech zone as an angel investor to contact me to obtain Meizu's trade secrets", and also issued an injunction, stressing that it is forbidden to discuss Xiaomi and Lei Jun in the Meizu community from now on.
But of course, he did not count his own revenge against Lei Jun in the community. In fact, since then, Huang Zhang has never given up writing in the community to denounce Lei Jun, or angrily scold, or ridicule.
In fact, the two were once introduced as confidants.
Huang Zhang, a high-school graduate, announced in 2008 that Meizu would shift from the MP3 industry to the mobile phone industry and "will release a mobile phone that emulates the iPhone."
Lei Jun has just stepped down as CEO of Kingsoft and is hanging out in the industry as an angel investor. He wants to make a mobile phone, and he often carries more than a dozen mobile phones in his backpack, and he carries it with him wherever he looks at the project.
When Huang Zhang announced the creation of a mobile phone, Lei Jun went to the staff and walked into Huang Zhang's office. Both of them have a deep understanding of the emerging iPhone and are deeply interested in mobile phones, not to mention that one has funds and one has a plan, and soon enters the honeymoon period of the relationship.
At that time, the outside world heard that Lei Jun intended to invest in Meizu, and Huang Zhang was willing to invite Lei Jun to serve as meizu CEO.
But did not wait for a happy finale. As soon as the news of Lei Jun's MIUI system came out, the two sides fought each other overnight.
Huang Zhang stated the case this way: Lei Jun did want to invest 300 million yuan in Meizu, and he "did not completely refuse" this, "but when I formally promised him, he said that he had decided to do a software company on his own." ”
"During the period, he arranged for Lin Bin and Li Wanqiang to visit me separately to understand the situation and ideas of making mobile phones, and I never realized that he was going to make mobile phones."
Once unreserved, "even the UI interaction document of the mobile phone was sent to him to discuss together", and in the blink of an eye, it became a "trap", and "the overall concept, development process, supplier selection, production and sales plan, core personnel introduction and financial statements" all became the chest of competitors.
Lei Jun's response was much simpler: "That's his family's word." ”
It's just that even if the deal is reached, today's Meizu has the support of Auspicious, whether it can continue to be brilliant, or even re-compete with Xiaomi, it is still difficult to say.
Meizu M5 reached 500 million sales in 5 months after its listing, but now it is much more miserable. 2016 is the highest sales point of Meizu, with Alibaba's shares outside, and the launch of 14 new mobile phone products, which won the 8th place in the global market shipments in one fell swoop that year, with shipments as high as 22 million units.
As a result, two years later, this figure was discounted in half. In 2018, Meizu did not even sell 10 million units. By 2020, the market share was even more miserable, with only 0.5% of the market share left in the first half of the year, and it fell to 0.3% in the third quarter, with an estimated shipment of only one million units.
At the end of last year, the official Meizu community also announced that Flyme's mobile phone cloud backup was about to be discontinued. Most of the lists have directly classified Meizu into the "other" column, and the estimated market share is only 0.1%.
Xiaomi, on the other hand, once surpassed Apple and won the second place in global mobile phone shipments. Meizu has long been difficult to look back on.
Therefore, at this time, the news that Meizu was acquired by Jili was estimated to be Lang youqing and the concubine was intentional.
Even Li Nan, a former executive of Meizu Technology and president of the Meizu brand, posted on Weibo, happy for Meizu in advance: "Although I don't know anything, the normal arrangement of the CEO's high-profile pr means that the transaction is stable, and coal friends can be happy." ”
Huang Zhang's younger brother, Meizu's current CEO Huang Zhipan, mentioned the planning for 2022 in an interview, saying: "Meizu is willing to explore with more partners and business partners to achieve a more extreme product and service experience." ”
Acquisition history
Speaking of Li Shufu, acquisitions have always been his strength. In 2006, he led Geely's acquisition of British car manufacturer manganese copper, and in 2008 he acquired Australian transmission manufacturer DSI. The most famous one, of course, is the acquisition of Volvo.
When I saw this news in the newspaper on March 28, 2010, many people were incredulous for a long time.
After all, the saying that there are no luxury cars in China has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people for too many years. Ji Li, who was looked down upon on the usual road, actually swallowed the elephant by the snake and took down the Volvo. This is definitely a turning point worth going down in history.
In fact, for this matter, Li Shufu has been brewing for many years.
As early as 2002, Li Shufu, who had just obtained a car production license, put down his bold words. He is said to have announced at a board meeting: "We are going to acquire the world famous brand Volvo!" ”
The executives attending the meeting were still confused: Boss Li's joke was a bit embarrassing.
At that time, Volvo belonged to the Ford Group and was one of the four major luxury cars in the world, with a brand history of nearly 70 years. And Geely, a small brand that has just been established, has no background and no funds, and Li Shufu talks about the acquisition is completely a fool's dream.
Li Shufu was not joking. He waited darkly until the prelude to the 2007 financial crisis spilled over to Ford.
The established Ford Group is in deep financial trouble. The loss amounted to $12.6 billion. The then CEO of Ford launched the "One Ford" strategy, decided to focus on the Ford brand, and successively sold its sub-brands, laying off 30,000 employees and closing 147 factories.
Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar, these well-known luxury car brands, were all separated from Ford at this time.
But Volvo is still firmly in the hands of the Ford Group, and even though it has been losing money since it was acquired in 1999, there has been no news of the sale.
If there is no news, just ask yourself. In September 2007, Li Shufu asked Zhang Peng to send an English letter to ford group in the name of Geely Group, expressing his desire to buy Volvo and hoping to formally negotiate.
Ford also sent a reply: Sorry, Volvo does not sell.
In January 2008, Book Lee met Dawn Raclair, ford's CFO at the Detroit Auto Show. Li Shufu dragged people to discuss Volvo for a long time, and enthusiastically expressed his desire to trade.
As a result, this person behaved lukewarmly, did not explicitly refuse, but also had no intention of continuing the conversation. This was Geely's first time at a car show, and the skinny camel was bigger than a horse, and even the sleepy Ford didn't pay any attention to Geely.
But as the financial crisis deepened, so did Ford's internal attitude towards Volvo. Bill Ford, the fourth generation of the Ford family at the time, was very fond of Volvo's safety and environmental protection concept, and he firmly opposed the sale.
But some people don't think so. U.S. car sales fell 17 percent in the first half of 2008, and Ford's CFO, Dawn Raclair, retired in October of that year, taking over as Louis Booth, who was in charge of Ford Europe and Volvo. On December 1, 2008, Ford released the news that it was "seriously considering selling Volvo."
In January of the following year, Li Shufu went to the United States again with team members and several large boxes of information. This time, he came to Ford's headquarters, starting from the story of his own car, talking about his love and long-term planning for Volvo for many years, and really won the recognition of Ford's executives.
The later story is no easier than the beginning. He wants to get a pass from the NDRC to go abroad for acquisition, to prevent state-owned enterprises from directly snatching love, to visit the Volvo union in Sweden and Belgium, to negotiate with Ford, how to prove sincerity and lower prices, and of course to raise money everywhere.
Even if the price was reduced from $6 billion to $1.7 billion, it was a huge amount of money that Geely could not come up with at that time.
Chengdu was the first to loosen its mouth and approved 3 billion. The specific method is that Geely borrowed money from several state-owned institutions in the form of a one-year loan, guaranteed by the Chengdu Municipal Government, and counter-guaranteed by Li Shufu himself for life
Negotiated with Shanghai and got another billion. In the end, Shanghai And Daqing City entered and exited through the state-owned asset platform. Chengdu and Zhangjiakou did not enter the equity, and Li Shufu personally counter-guaranteed his life through the way the government guaranteed the loan to Geely.
"I gambled my life."
The final acquisition was completed. Geely and Ford signed an official contract in Gothenburg, Sweden.
But Volvo is actually reluctant. In the first two years after the merger was completed, "Volvo was unwilling to support Geely, did not want Geely to send people over, did not want to engage in any projects with Geely, and did not want to disclose any information to Geely." Geely is more seen as a funding provider.
Li Yongfu preferred to let the tiger go to the mountains and forests, maintaining Volvo's independence.
He has since invested $10 billion in Volvo. Volvo's value has also increased 10-fold over the past 10 years.
"We have almost complete freedom to play on our own," said Volvo's union leader, Magnus Sandmore, from the very beginning, and began to recognize the changes brought about by the new owner. "We're starting to believe we can compete with Audi, BMW and Mercedes.' We regained our faith. ”
On October 29, 2021, Volvo Cars announced its official listing on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in Sweden, which soared by 22% on its first day and surpassed its market capitalization of more than $22 billion.
epilogue
Li Shufu's unremitting pursuit of Volvo is to see Volvo's technology. Geely has indeed achieved a leap from a low-end automaker to a fortune 500 automaker through this acquisition.
Now Li Shufu's acquisition of Meizu is obviously an attempt to strengthen the ecosystem and enhance its competitiveness in the new energy vehicle track. The purpose is the same as the original acquisition of Volvo.
At that time, Volvo's technology compared with domestic car companies, it can be described as a high-rise and unstoppable. But now the domestic smartphone industry has been swept up, and they have also gone abroad to compete with Samsung Apple.
The scale effect of the mobile phone industry is remarkable, which highly affects the level of profits, and Meizu, which has been hit on the ground, can carry the ambition of this car-machine interaction, or a big question mark.
Compared with Wei Xiaoli's three new energy vehicle companies, or BYD, which grasps the lifeblood of batteries, Geely is already one step behind in the new energy track. Huawei and Xiaomi, which make mobile phones, have entered the game, which has stirred up the situation even more chaotically.
When the dust settles on this acquisition, there are still good dramas on the stage.
Author: Wu Xin