It is no exaggeration to say that Tesla sneezes and the rim of the car shakes. Recently, there is news that Tesla plans to develop its own software application store, which has brought a discussion to the automotive industry and the technology circle, can it replicate Apple's ecological myth?
In the direction of the tide: the app store
Although Tesla has not yet been officially announced, the outside world has been determined that Tesla will definitely do the app store.
Tesla won't be the first app store on the car. Previously, BYD, Ideal and other car companies were developing app stores, and industry insiders believed that this would be a big trend.
In September 2021, Ideal made a big upgrade to Ideal students in the OTA upgrade, including the voice store - the application center is a voice store, which has been connected to NetEase Cloud Music and Lychee Podcast, and will be successively connected to Tencent Video, Baidu Map, Mango TV, etc. At the same time, the original application on the vehicle will be uninstalled with the OTA update, and it needs to be downloaded and installed again in the application center, and it will no longer come with the car.
In February 2022, Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt tweeted a video of Steve Jobs introducing the app store, with an article mentioning that something similar would appear on a four-wheeled car with a T.
Industry insiders believe that software application stores will be a big trend. Whoever can take the lead in creating a platform that is both easy to use and open will determine the level of corporate value and profitability in the industry in the future.
Although the app store has not yet been launched, the concept of software charging was first proposed by Tesla on the car. Owners can purchase assisted driving features, fully autonomous driving features, acceleration performance improvements, and other high-end features in the Tesla APP. For example, Tesla's navigation assisted driving function is priced at 32,000, and the cost will increase as more software and functions are opened.
Under the trend of software being "profitable", technology companies are grabbing the fat meat of the car.
Secret Apple car rumors are frequent, but the real body is never seen. But what is certain is that Apple Cars will definitely take the business model of software and hardware integration and create a software kingdom in the field of travel.
Tesla's ambitions are close to Apple's. Musk said recently: "Whether in the automotive industry or in the manufacturing industry, Tesla is both a software company and a hardware company. This is not widely understood. ”
The obvious decision: huge profits
Behind the rush is a huge economic value.
When car companies build their own soft and hard ecology, the software fees that may be generated will bring new revenue.
Tesla's latest fourth-quarter and full-year financial reports show that the gross profit margin of the vehicle business reached 30%. Apple, the world's most profitable company, has a gross margin of more than 40% in the past 12 months, of which the gross profit margin of products exceeds 30%, and the gross margin of the service business is close to 70%. Then once Tesla runs through the business model of the software and services business, it will reap new profit value.
This is also the territory that technology companies are determined to break into, and Huawei has made it clear after participating in the "car-making hotspot" many times that it will not build cars, but it will be the right hand of car companies. On February 9, Huawei's "smart car cockpit butler software" obtained software copyright registration approval, so far Huawei has 639 software copyrights, will Huawei do software stores? It is reported that Ali's zebra will also develop a software store model in the future car.
In February, FAW-Volkswagen also introduced a new policy to transfer users' mobile entertainment needs to car machines. ID.CROZZ owners can download and use software such as iQiyi, Kugou Music, NetEase Cloud Music and other software in the car application store, and more applications such as Tencent Video are in the planning. FAW-Volkswagen machines make ID possible through interoperability with users' private mobile devices. CROZZ has gradually become a member of the smart "home appliance".
In the case of car companies have laid out the software ecology, it is only a matter of time before Tesla develops its own APP application store. According to reports, Tesla has been preparing related development work since May last year.
With the sales of new energy vehicles increasing day by day, how can car companies tap greater user value through private domain traffic? Among them, the APP app store has a lot of imagination space. Still talking about the most successful case of soft and hard integration Apple, Apple Car will also be the iOS service of the full scene ecological application to the car, the whole Taiwan tentacles to the field of travel.
Tesla's main business is in the field of automobile sales, in addition to energy storage products, superchargering stations, FSD, software subscriptions, robots and other aspects of the deployment, the whole ecological scene evolution, the software application store plays an indispensable platform role.
Premature euphoria: Charging barriers
From the perspective of economic and social benefits, the intelligent ecology in the car stands on the side of the car company's development application store. And from the feedback of the industry after Tesla released the news, everyone is looking forward to the effect that the software application store on the car can achieve.
However, practitioners in this field are much calmer. The product manager of a new car-making force believes that the development of an application store is a very expensive project, and from the perspective of the current reality, the application adaptation is difficult and long.
"Unopposed applications cannot be put on the car," an employee of a car company bluntly said, "If you adapt one by one, it will consume a lot of resources, so at present, it is according to the priority level of its own resources." "This is the biggest concern of car companies.
According to the development path of mobile phones, Apple's app store is a high penetration rate of smart phones, and the public has a higher demand in addition to basic functions such as voice calls. In terms of network, network stability, speed and tariffs have been greatly improved; in terms of hardware, the iPhone has given a variety of applications room to play; developers, Apple will feedback 70% of the application revenue to application developers, surging mobile application development boom.
On the other hand, Tesla, the new energy sales crown is only two million sales, the scale of the foundation is insufficient; in terms of safety, the safety index of the car is much higher than that of the mobile phone, once a software in the driving function network delay, system caton and other issues, the consequences are very serious.
At this stage, whether it is a car company or a technology company around the development of application stores and programs, in a short period of time will still be a closed-loop operation mode, which brings great difficulty to developers, especially for small developer companies, to develop applications suitable for each car company The cost is huge or even insufficient.
Some experts have proposed that even if the development of the software store is completed, the audit and safety inspection of the APP in the subsequent store, and the permission control of the vehicle interface opened by the car company need to be specifically improved.
The whole process is still a long way off.
Even li xiang, the founder of Ideal Auto, failed to make a final decision. In an interview, he told Cheyun. "It's too early to talk about software subscription revenue, and it's hard to predict what the future vehicle usage scenario will be." With the change of the times, more and more use cases that can be opened to users, liberating users' time, do not need to drive themselves. Today, there is still no way to directly take the computer or take the business model of the mobile phone. ”
Che Yun summary
People in the industry generally believe that Tesla's development of application stores and the creation of a model of software and hardware integration are the general trend. At present, other car companies, especially new energy vehicle companies, have also vigorously invested in the development of software after using Internet thinking to achieve a leading position in the automotive industry.
Returning to the current development, research, and production, there are many specific difficulties.
The competition of smart cars in the future must be ecological competition, but if it is only to copy the business model of smart phones, then the ecology of smart cars is too small. After all, the order of magnitude of the car and the mobile phone are not on the same level at all.
But after all, the app store is the most visible source of profit in the current business model of smart cars. Whether it is a car company or an operating system company, they are staring at this piece of fat.
Even like Apple, the App Store only charges a toll. It is many app developers who really want to dig a bucket of gold in smart cars. But at present, the killer app on smart cars that can allow users to pay for it has not yet appeared.