Shentucar original
Author | Zhou Jifeng
Edit | dawn
Wei Lai, recently did another crazy thing. It planted a flag in the base camps of Xiaomi and Apple.
Many bloggers broke the news on Weibo that Weilai intends to enter the mobile phone industry.
The first Weibo netizen to break the news was named "Rogue Scout". In his description, "Weilai mobile phone plate has recently moved frequently, and funds continue to increase investment, and the number of new offers has reached more than 100 years later..."
The news spread more and more widely, and finally, Ma Lin, senior director of corporate communications at WEILAI, had to personally respond to the media: "There is no information to disclose at present, and there is further information that will be communicated with you." ”
The "melon-eating masses" are very excited: there is no direct denial of this matter, which shows that the possibility of the rumors being true is relatively large.
More news also proves that Weilai is ready to build cross-border mobile phones. According to 36Kr, it has been learned from a number of insiders that Nio has indeed entered the mobile phone industry, and former Meitu Mobile Phone President Yin Shuijun has joined and taken the lead in taking charge of Weilai's mobile phone business.
Now, the entire Internet jianghu is "not doing the right thing". Do two-wheeled electric vehicles cross-border to build four-wheeled electric vehicles, do mobile phones to study car automatic driving, build complete vehicles. Now, automakers are coming to grab the business of mobile phone manufacturers.
Previously, Geely invested tens of billions of yuan to lay out the mobile phone business. Nowadays, the mobile phone industry has come to another Weilai.
The problem is that NIO's sales in January this year did not exceed 10,000 yuan, and it lost 835 million yuan in the latest quarter. Weilai, which has not yet stood firm in the car circle, why is it suddenly ready to make mobile phones? What kind of medicine is sold in this gourd?
Why make mobile phones?
"Weilai is attacking and defending." Sun Yanbiao, president of the First Mobile Phone Industry Research Institute, pointed out to Shentu.
In Sun Yanbiao's view, mobile phone manufacturers represented by Xiaomi and Huawei have shown super cross-border and subversive traditional industries in the past four or five years.
Take the camera function of mobile phones, under the impact of the mobile phone industry, global digital camera production and sales plummeted, according to CIPA data, global digital camera production in 2020 is only 8.737 million units.
Let's talk about the home appliance industry. At present, the entire home appliance industry has collectively entered a bottleneck period. Many home appliance companies have even transformed into foundries for Xiaomi and its ecological chain enterprises. In contrast, the public enemy of home appliances - Xiaomi's IoT consumer product revenue in 2020 has reached a scale of 67.4 billion yuan. Xiaomi's smart TV shipments ranked first in China in 2020.
After subverting the digital camera, home appliance, and even lighting industry, these mobile phone manufacturers have all set their sights on another sunrise market – cars.
Xiaomi has set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to take charge of the smart electric vehicle business, with an initial investment of 10 billion yuan and an estimated investment of $10 billion over the next 10 years. Huawei's stores across the country have begun to sell electric vehicles. Huawei's smart car BU Yu Chengdong boasted about Haikou to challenge the sales target of 300,000 vehicles in 2022.
Powerful enemies, with the power of destruction and decay, crossed the border.
"The enemy is coming." Sun Yanbiao understands Weilai's mobile phone in this way: "Car companies should not take the attack as the defense, cross-border mobile phones, and understand how the cross-border capabilities of mobile phone manufacturers are." ”
The drunkard's intention is not in the phone
The more realistic reason is that "whether it is Geely or Weilai, they build mobile phones that are drunk not in mobile phones, but in the new business models brought by mobile phones." Sun Yanbiao thought.
In the era of mobile Internet, more and more scenes are transplanted to mobile phones, and more and more people's time is also attracted to mobile phones. As the upstream controller of the smart terminal of the mobile phone, the major mobile phone manufacturers have eaten up the dividends of the mobile Internet era.
Taking Apple as an example, on the first trading day of the US stock market in 2022, Apple's market value broke a new record, becoming the world's first company with a market value of more than $3 trillion.
"Why is Apple's market value still rising after so many years without technological innovation? Because it has almost 1 billion mobile Internet users worldwide. Sun Yanbiao said.
Mastering nearly 1 billion mobile Internet users is like sitting on a golden mountain. In 2008, Apple launched the App Store, pioneering the ecological model of the mobile app store. No app developer or advertiser can get around Apple.
As the world's most active app store, the App Store receives more than 500 million weekly visits and visitors to 175 countries and territories. Apple has publicly revealed that since the App Store came out in 2008, it has accumulated more than $260 billion in revenue by selling digital products and services.
"At present, car manufacturers sell 200,000 cars a year and can only get 200,000 users. But phones are different, Xiaomi's smartphone shipments in 2021 are 191 million. Even if the cross-border sale of mobile phones sells poorly, a brand sells 100,000 units a month and can get more than 1 million users a year. Sun Yanbiao believes that "these car companies cross-border mobile phones, in fact, in order to expand their mobile user base." ”
The mobile user base is larger, and car companies have the courage to negotiate with Companies such as Tencent, and the big screen on the car can settle in more mobile applications and create more commercial value.
Car companies are making mobile phones, in fact, creating more possibilities.
As the two major intelligent mobile terminals in the Internet era, mobile phones and electric vehicles, there was almost no intersection in the past. At the 10th TC Automotive Internet Conference in 2017, Wang Jian, then chairman of Alibaba Group's technical committee, said: "After many years, no matter how smart the car is claimed, there are still cars that buy a set of nine-pack mobile phone holders and prepare them in the car. ”
Weilai made a mobile phone, and it may be possible to break the dimensional wall of the two worlds.
"Mobile phones are smart, and now cars are also intelligently networked. Logically, the ecosystems of cars and phones can merge into one. Auto analyst Zhang Xiang said to Shentu: "For Weilai, opening up the two major software ecosystems of mobile phones and cars, the user experience of the car has become better, and it has also opened up the mobile phone market, killing two birds with one stone." ”
The interaction and integration of the two terminals of mobile phones and cars can also create more possibilities. As one Weibo user imagined: "Weilai mobile phone will have a lot of interactive functions with Weilai Car, such as mobile phone & car machine file mutual transmission, AR, VR resource projection, NOMI voice assistant mobile version, etc." ”
Not losing money is the best result
The next question is, will Weilai's mobile phone threaten the market share of Xiaomi and Huawei?
Unlikely.
In fact, the threshold for making mobile phones is much lower than that of building cars. It may only take half a year to one year for mobile phone manufacturers to develop mobile phones, and the car design and development cycle usually takes three or four years.
The hardware supply chain system of mobile phones is quite mature and complete. Many people even ridiculed Weilai to make mobile phones: just do a program integrator, let Foxconn to OEM.
It's also easy to form a mobile team. An industry insider told Shentu: "Now the people who do smart cockpits in large quantities come from the mobile phone industry of that year. ”
But in today's Chinese mobile phone market, there is no spare space left for car companies.
After years of close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, the domestic mobile phone market is seriously inward-volume. In the high-end market, Apple is still an absolute strongman. The remaining market share was divided up by Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and glory.
According to the "2020 Chinese Smart Phone White Paper" released by iResearch Consulting, China's smartphone shipments have shown a downward trend for three consecutive years, from 522 million units in 2016 to 372 million units in 2019, with shipments falling by more than 28% and an average decline of nearly 10.6% in 3 years.
Sun Yanbiao pointed out: "These car companies sell mobile phones, and sales will definitely be a mess. For them, selling phones is just a defense. So sales are not the most important, not losing money is the most important. ”
Zhang Xiang also holds the same view: "Weilai can make a niche brand at most to make a mobile phone, and it is difficult to occupy a large market share like Xiaomi and Huawei." ”
There is no way to make it bigger, but it is difficult to really sell the mobile phone. The biggest difficulty is actually positioning. If you want to kill a bloody road in the stock market, car companies must find a unique market positioning.
In Sun Yanbiao's view, a more feasible path is to find the positioning of mobile phone products among car users of car companies. "That's unique, and maybe there's a chance to overtake in a corner."
Geely already has its own niche. On September 28 last year, Geely officially announced its entry into the mobile phone field and positioned high-end smartphones. According to Sun Yanbiao, Geely is currently preparing to make a smart phone with satellite phone function.
As for Weilai, there is no latest news on the market. "Weilai may not have thought it through yet." Sun Yanbiao pointed out: "In fact, the news of Weilai's mobile phone is equivalent to putting up a flag, and Weilai can also sit and wait for some mobile phone manufacturers to come and negotiate cooperation." In this way, you can also understand the specific situation of the mobile phone industry. Entering any entirely new industry requires knowing oneself and knowing one's other. ”
*The caption and illustrations in the text are from Visual China.