Recently, a piece of news detonated the automotive technology circle: Weilai entered the mobile phone industry.
Before the first half of last year, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and other mobile phone brands successively announced the manufacture of cars, and the second half of the year began to be the opposite, it was the turn of car brands Geely, Weilai and so on to announce the manufacture of mobile phones.
Whether it is a mobile phone company to build a car, or an automobile company to make a mobile phone, although the starting point of the cross-border is different, the goal is the same, and they all want to create a complete intelligent ecosystem of people-mobile phones-cars.
However, after years of fighting, the mobile phone market is already a red sea, and the mobile phone brand entering the field of new energy vehicles is to open up new growth points, and Weilai wants to plunge into this red sea, is it a good opportunity?
NIO is not the first car brand to announce the creation of mobile phones, Geely is one step ahead. At the end of September last year, Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd., founded by Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone and officially announced its entry into the field of mobile phones. It is understood that the total investment of the project is more than 10 billion yuan, positioning the high-end smart phone market. At the beginning of this year, the market rumors that Geely would acquire Meizu, but neither side confirmed.
Recently, Weilai also reported that it will enter the mobile phone field, and Weilai responded that there is no information to disclose at present. Generally speaking, there is no denial that it means that there is a real thing, and the actual actions of Weilai have explained the problem, and Yin Shuijun, the former president of Meitu Mobile Phone, joined and took the lead in taking charge of weilai's mobile phone business. On the third-party recruitment website, it was learned that WEILAI is also recruiting staff including wireless test engineers, communication test engineers, BSP test engineers and other staff who are strongly related to the mobile phone business.
The answer to why car companies want to build mobile phones is to interconnect and build an ecosystem of people, mobile phones and cars to provide users with a better interactive experience.
Li Shufu once publicly expressed his views on mobile phones: "Mobile phones are rapid iterations of portable mobile terminals, and are application carriers for electronic product market verification and software innovation, which can not only allow users to share innovative achievements as soon as possible, but also transfer a safe and reliable part of the results to the application of automobiles, so as to realize the close interaction between car machines and mobile phone software technology." 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, to strengthen the ecosystem, to provide users with a more convenient, more intelligent, Internet of Everything multi-screen interactive life experience. ”
Nowadays, with the popularity of smart cars, mobile phones have become an important entrance to human-vehicle interaction, and mobile phones will also have deeper bindings in cars in the future. At present, Huawei has first played a model, using a Hongmeng system to open up the seamless interaction between people and mobile phones and cars, and improve the experience of car-machine interaction.
Therefore, for car companies, through the interconnection of cars and mobile phones, the consumer experience can be improved, and a traffic entrance can also be mastered, which is an important logic for car companies to build mobile phones.
But the ideal is plump, cross-border entry into the new industry, but are real money and silver investment, as well as a variety of resources investment, in the new car market changes at the moment, the new forces of car companies fierce competition, but also there is a problem that has not yet made a profit, at this time Weilai layout mobile phone field, may not be a good time.
The competition between the three new car-making forces is quite fierce, at that time it was still the title of "Wei Xiaoli", and now it has become "Li Xiaowei", and the market's change in the name of the three new car-making forces also explains some problems.
In the past two years, Xiaopeng has developed rapidly, in 2020, Xiaopeng released two new cars, Xiaopeng G3i and Xiaopeng P7, added Xiaopeng P5 in 2021, and will mass-produce Xiaopeng G9 this year, thus covering the high-end product lines of cars and SUVs, thus stimulating competitiveness in the market.
According to the data, in the third quarter of 2021, the delivery volume of Xiaopeng Automobile was 25666 units, an increase of 199.2% year-on-year, an increase of 47.5% month-on-month; among them, the delivery of P7 was 19731 units, achieving a new quarterly high, an increase of 71.2% year-on-year; in 2021, Xiaopeng Delivery was 98155 vehicles, ranking first in the new forces.
The delivery of WEILai seems to have signs of decline, with deliveries of only 3667 vehicles in October 2021 and improving in November, with deliveries of 10878 vehicles, an increase of 105.6% year-on-year. Deliveries in the third quarter of 2021 were 24,439 units, the lowest among the three new cars. From the perspective of full-year delivery, WEILAI delivered 91429 vehicles, ranking second, but the ideal delivery volume for the whole year of 2021 was 90491 vehicles, and the gap between Weilai and Weilai was less than 1,000 vehicles.
There are two reasons for the poor performance of Weilai Automobile last year, on the one hand, the negative public opinion of the "automatic assisted driving" publicity has affected the reputation of Weilai Automobile in the market, on the other hand, it is because Weilai Automobile has not launched a new model this year, nor has it been remodeled for its models, such as the Weilai ES8 Model has not been replaced for four years. In addition to the competition between Xiaopeng and Ideal, there is also the rise of high-end smart brands such as Gaohe and Lantu, and more brands have joined, which has also given consumers one more choice, which has led to Weilai Automobile losing part of its market competitiveness.
The most important thing is the loss, Weilai released the third quarter of 2021 financial report shows that the company achieved revenue of 9.81 billion yuan in the quarter, an increase of 116.6% year-on-year; net loss of 835.3 million yuan. Xiaopeng Automobile's net loss was 1.595 billion yuan, while ideal automobile's net loss was recorded at 21.5 million yuan.
At the same time, more competitors are also rubbing their hands, Nezha Automobile and the leader will soon be listed, the traditional car companies BYD, Trumpchi, Great Wall, Geely have also launched new car brands and models on the market, it is foreseeable that the future new energy vehicle market will also face a new round of competition, will also bring pressure to Weilai.
At this time, Weilai began to lay out the mobile phone market that has been red sea, and it is bound to invest more resources and energy, and it may not be a good time to open a side business in the situation that the main business is not yet stable.
In recent years, there have been many brands in the field of cross-border mobile phones, such as Gree and Lenovo, but most of the endings are like a stone thrown into the lake, and after only a little ripple, it will return to calm.
From the perspective of the market, the mobile phone industry is in a downward trend in scale, gradually forming a trend of stock competition. According to IDC data, between 2016 and 2021, China's smartphone shipments showed a downward trend year by year, from 467 million units to 300 million units.
At the same time, under the development of many years, the industry is highly concentrated, and the competition of new entrants is quite difficult. According to IDC data, in the third quarter of 2021, the market share of the top five smartphone manufacturers has further increased from 81.9% in the second quarter of 2021 to 85.9%, which also means that the highly concentrated mobile phone track is obviously not the best choice for automakers.
In contrast, the new energy vehicle market is in a period of growth dividends. According to data released by the China Automobile Association, China's new energy vehicle production in 2020 will be 1.366 million units, and sales will be 1.367 million units. From January to November 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.023 million units and 2.99 million units, respectively, an increase of 1.7 times year-on-year.
For Weilai, at this time, instead of crossing over into the mobile phone field, it is better to concentrate on iterating models, accumulating automatic driving technology, etc., and first standing in the new energy car market, which may be a better choice.