Weilai is ready to plunge into the mobile phone "Red Sea"?

Author 丨 Peng Suping

Editor 丨 Zhang Ruosi

Figure Source 丨 Figure worm

Another car company entered the mobile phone industry. Recently, many sources have shown that Weilai, a new domestic car-making force, has initially set up a mobile phone business department and is ready to cross-border "machine building".

According to 36Kr, Yin Shuijun, former president of Meitu Mobile, will lead the above business.

Another person close to the mobile phone circle said that Weilai's mobile phone business was planned in the middle of last year, and has recruited many people, "more than 100 new offers have been issued after the year, and more than 200 research and development positions are expected to be added in Shenzhen in the near future. ”

On February 23, a research and development person from a well-known mobile phone manufacturer also told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that he had received a headhunting call to discuss the matter a few years ago, and he did not disclose his personal whereabouts, only saying that "it is not easy to make mobile phones."

On a workplace social platform, there are also many clues about the mobile phone department of Weilai. Some people who got the relevant offers said that the proportion of stocks in the compensation structure is very large, and at a price of $38 per share, he gave up because he felt that it was not cost-effective; there were other job seekers looking at related opportunities, and there is currently no product hc (headcount, quota), which to some extent shows that the business is still in a very early stage.

As of now, WEILAI has not replied positively to the above message, but it has not denied it. "There is no information to disclose at this time, and further information will be communicated to you." On February 22, Weilai told the media.

All indications show that Weilai has basically no suspense in making mobile phones.

From Geely to Weilai, why do car companies cross borders into the mobile phone industry? Is it self-reliance that has to be done as a last resort, or is it a backhand blow to deal with the mobile phone manufacturers' door-to-door "kicking the pavilion"?

Mobile phone companies build cars, and car companies make mobile phones

Weilai makes mobile phones, put in the current market environment, in fact, it is not strange.

Before there were xiaomi, Huawei and other mobile phone manufacturers cross-border car manufacturing (although Huawei repeatedly claimed to "not build cars"), after Geely took the lead in breaking the game to make mobile phones, the two industries of automobiles and mobile phones unprecedented convergence, integration, and one more entrant is also reasonable.

In fact, before Geely announced its entry into the mobile phone industry last year, there was news that "(in addition to Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Group), more than one car circle bigwig began to lay out the mobile phone business." ”

Now it seems that on the matter of whether to do mobile phones, Li Bin, chairman of Weilai, and Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Group, quickly reached an agreement. Coincidentally, Weilai and Geely are both car companies with a wide business layout, while Li Bin and Li Shufu have also had a lot of contacts in the past two years.

In August last year, Geely established Lotus Technology Company, a rather niche luxury sports car brand began to electrify and intelligentize, NIO capital made a strategic investment in it, and Li Bin also personally came to support it; earlier in 2019, NIO was tight on funds, looking for investors, Li Shufu was also one of the big hits - in many exchanges, the two may find a lot of consensus, including trying to build cross-border mobile phones.

At the end of September last year, Geely announced its entry into the field of mobile phones, and established Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xingji Times") in the Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, although there has been no official announcement since then, but various rumors from the outside world have not stopped. At the beginning of 2022, there were a number of media reports that Xingji Times was in contact with Meizu to negotiate the acquisition and had entered the due diligence stage.

On the other hand, in the past year, the car-making projects of mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Huawei have also made new progress. Xiaomi Auto officially approved the project, and quickly registered industrial and commercial entities, settled in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone; Huawei promoted the mass production of models with three key car companies, and its own deeply empowered brand AITO was born, and the first model, the M5, was officially released.

Enterprises cross borders, and the flow of people is also more frequent. After Xiaomi announced the car, Hu Zhengnan, president of Geely Automobile Research Institute, joined the Shunwei Capital of Xiaomi, which is considered to be the head of Xiaomi Automobile, and in January this year, Xiaomi appointed Yu Liguo as vice president of Xiaomi Automobile and political commissar of Xiaomi Automobile Beijing Headquarters, Yu Liguo was the president of Jihu, a new energy brand under BAIC before; Geely also "poached" a number of executives in the mobile phone industry, such as Zhang Yadong, former general manager of ZTE's PHS product line, and Wang Wenjun, former chief architect of Xiaomi MIUI.

The penetration of the mobile phone and auto industries has also drawn the watchful eye of large companies. According to 36Kr, in the middle of this month, Xiaomi Mobile began to implement a non-compete agreement, mainly for core talents above the 19th level, and the non-compete companies include new car-making forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng Automobile, and Ideal Automobile.

Intelligent terminal "two hands grasp"

With the continuous improvement of the level of intelligence, the identity of the car has accelerated the transformation, evolving from a traditional means of transportation to another intelligent terminal, and the experience and interaction attributes have been unprecedentedly enhanced, which is the common background of cross-border car manufacturing by mobile phone manufacturers and cross-border mobile phones by automobile manufacturers.

The car will largely copy the evolution path of the mobile phone industry, from mechanical to intelligent, while the hardware performance competition, the PK of the software ecology will also play a pivotal role.

From the perspective of mobile phone manufacturers, entering the automotive field on the basis of mobile phone business is expected to lead the transformation of automobile intelligence; and from the perspective of automobile manufacturers, it is a safer approach to advance their own business and complete industry changes.

In the eyes of some car company leaders, mobile phones may be a threshold that cannot be bypassed, or a "customs clearance weapon" to open up the entire intelligent car ecosystem.

On why to make mobile phones, Li Shufu once said, "Mobile phones are the application carriers of electronic product market verification and software innovation, which can not only allow users to share innovative results as soon as possible, but also transfer a safe and reliable part of the results to the application of cars, so as to realize the close interaction between car machines and mobile phone software technology." ”

He also said that in the future, cross-border to build a user ecological chain, according to the law to build a corporate moat has become a major trend, mobile phones can link the Internet of Vehicles, satellite Internet, to create a rich consumption scenario, strengthen the ecosystem, to provide users with a more convenient, more intelligent, internet of all things multi-screen interactive life experience.

Translated from this, it can be understood that the current level of intelligent car machine development is not satisfactory, to the mature mobile phone industry to learn from the experience, and to open up with the car machine, is expected to solve a major contradiction in the automotive field now: the growing demand for automotive intelligence of users and the contradiction between the car machine experience without breakthrough, slightly chicken ribs.

However, simply borrowing the technology of mobile phones, Geely and Weilai actually do not have to layout mobile phone business.

More critically, the mobile phone is the mobile smart terminal with the largest shipment at present, with high penetration rate and wide application scenarios, although the car is also a smart terminal, it is impossible to replace the mobile phone, and from the perspective of the car, some functions and scenarios are actually not necessary, so in the future intelligent car ecological chain, the mobile phone is indispensable.

In the future form of intelligent terminals, car-machine collaboration must be the norm, on the one hand, the mobile phone will become the entrance and key of the car, for example, through the app of the mobile phone, the air conditioning, seat heating, ventilation and other functions in the car can be started in advance; on the other hand, some of the controversial functions in the car machine can only be carried by the mobile phone without burden to maximize the efficiency of the car.

For Geely's announcement to enter the mobile phone field, the international team of China Merchants Securities has previously commented that this move is to pave the way for the integration of smart cars and smart phones - while laying out mobile phones and smart cars can realize the integration of intelligent terminals, and the software is seamlessly connected between the car machine and mobile phones to form a complete ecological chain.

Who would reject the "second growth curve"?

Car companies do mobile phones, in terms of business logic can be said to make sense, then the second question comes, car companies to do mobile phones reliable?

Mobile phone manufacturers also faced similar doubts in the early days of cross-border car manufacturing. Compared with mobile phones, the number of auto parts is more, the supply chain is more complex, large-scale manufacturing is more difficult, and the amount of capital required is higher - this is not an industry without barriers.

However, the foreign car-making new force Tesla has taken the lead in breaking the "high wall" of the automotive industry, with the acceleration of electrification, intelligence, the threshold for car-making has been lowered, the century-old automobile industry will surely welcome a number of emerging forces to join, these new forces may not be the same mass production process, software foundation of mobile phone manufacturers.

Mobile phone manufacturers build cars, but also more or less have the meaning of a backwater war. The recognized logic of the industry is that compared with the fiercely competitive mobile phone industry, the intelligent electric vehicle industry has a huge incremental space, and mobile phone manufacturers cross-border car manufacturing to find the second growth curve.

On the other hand, the mobile phone market is already a red sea, the fight is fierce, and car companies turn around and rush into this field, which does not seem to be a rational choice. Some people in the field of automotive industry investment told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter: "I don't think Weilai wants to build mobile phones, mobile phones and car machines, cars are completely different battlefields, completely unnecessary - mobile phones, smart hardware and car space better interaction is not fragrant?" ”

But further look, the automotive industry is also visible to the naked eye "rolled up", the market incremental space is huge, but no one can guarantee that every player can develop smoothly, from this point of view, car companies to do mobile phones is also a kind of precautionary, who will reject the "second growth curve"?

Neither Jili nor Niolai is without ambition. Geely's mobile phone positioning high-end smart phone, Li Shufu believes that with the rapid iteration of mobile communication technology and the upgrading of personalized consumption, users' demand for smart phones has become dependent, and the development prospects of more high-end and more intelligent mobile phones are still promising; although There is no "official announcement" in Weilai, according to 36Kr, Weilai mobile phones basically exclude the possibility of OEM, but will personally develop and design.

In the era of intelligent cars, car companies have also laid out related businesses in the mobile phone industry chain, Geely and Weilai are developing underlying technologies such as chips and operating systems, and have accumulated experience in design, research and development, high-end intelligent manufacturing, industrial chain management and other fields.

Geely's automotive intelligent technology company Yijiatong once released a document to introduce the differences in the development of the car machine and the mobile phone, which can be seen that the development difficulty and requirements of the car machine side are higher, and the mobile phone side is better.

The same is the intelligent information system, the ecology of the mobile phone is mature, the mobile phone itself is an independent and closed system engineering, but the vehicle intelligent terminal is not an extension of the simple intelligent technology, because the signal data of the vehicle can be obtained, the essence is still vehicle engineering.

The above document also pointed out that the reliability requirements in the electronic field are generally: consumer grade (mobile phone, computer) < industrial grade (industrial control equipment) < automotive grade, the car machine in the functional test, humid heat test and other indicators are much stricter than the mobile phone, software and hardware development requirements are higher. "In terms of hardware, the temperature range and other indicators that the mobile phone processor can run often cannot meet the requirements of the vehicle specification level, and the car hardware can only meet the vehicle standard certification in terms of process and performance; in the software, the car is different in the use of the scene and environment, which also increases the difficulty of development, such as the short starting time of the car machine, to achieve the effect of ignition that is, the screen, the unnecessary parts of the system need to be cut and secondary development."

It is worth mentioning that car companies cross-border mobile phones, but also an extension of their own brand, Geely and Weilai are mature brands, especially Weilai, the brand label is significant, and has its own channels, from the consumer side to measure, it is not difficult to sell more than one category. In this regard, Huawei has a precedent, and people close to the field of automobile circulation told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that after the improvement of product strength, Huawei's appeal in the automotive field is still very strong, "Recently, the volume of AITO has been rising. ”

However, objectively speaking, the business layout to more areas, the management ability of the helmsman and the company's resource allocation also put forward higher requirements. There are still many differences in the outside world about the prospects of Weilai and Geely's mobile phones, such as many people who are not optimistic about the car business of Xiaomi and Huawei. In fact, Weilai and Geely themselves have a lot of layouts, and even in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and even in some areas that are not relevant at first glance, the extent to which the mobile phone business can be achieved is not completely pessimistic for Geely and Weilai, which are "big factories" with resources in hand.

This issue is edited by Feng Zhanpeng Intern Zhan Huinan