Image source @ Visual China
Text | Talk about AI
In 2014, Apple officially launched Carplay, which was praised by many as a "once used and never go back" function, once landed on more than 80% of the world's sales of models.
Today, although the penetration rate of new energy vehicles with the banner of intelligence has exceeded 20%, it is still not difficult to see or experience such a routine operation process in our lives: get on the car - take out the mobile phone - plug the data cable - open bluetooth - navigation - departure.
Why is it that with the rapid development of smart cockpit technology in new energy vehicles today, mobile phones are still rigid in the driving scene to a certain extent?
"On the one hand, the number of old cars and low-end electric vehicles with insufficient level of intelligence on the market is still very large, on the other hand, although the intelligent level of many high-end car cockpits has crushed Carplay, but back to the just need side, such as map and other pre-software, some models give a single choice, and there are not many models that can really compete with mobile phone communication, navigation and other vehicle-mounted just needed models in terms of flexibility. Of course, user habit problems also require time buffering. Tan Qing said that AI editor Xiao Yi analyzed.
Recently, 36Kr reported that it learned from a number of insiders that the domestic new car head company Weilai has entered the mobile phone industry, and Yin Shuijun, the former president of Meitu Mobile Phone, has joined and taken the lead in responsible for Weilai's mobile phone business.
This can't help but make people ask, as a new car "brother" Weilai entered the mobile phone industry, is it to use the terminal value of mobile phones in the era of internet of everything to feed back the car?
If so, does this mean that the mobile phone projected smart cockpit led by Apple Carplay will continue to dominate the car in the future? These questions are worth some consideration.
"After buying a car, the first thing is to change the phone for the family"
At the end of 2021, Xiaoyi had the idea of changing a new car for his parents, but it is quite ironic that as a media practitioner in the field of intelligent cars, Xiaoyi did not consider the new force car brands that he had a number of family treasures after the emergence of the idea of changing cars.
In this regard, Xiao Yi explained, "This is actually a very helpless decision", on the one hand, the new energy vehicle replenishment infrastructure in the hometown is poor, and the property in his own community cannot help build private charging piles; on the other hand, from the perspective of safety, Xiao Yi is not very confident to let his parents drive more complex electric vehicles.
"But the too old-fashioned car is not suitable, my father used to drive because of the mobile phone navigation distraction, there was an accident", and therefore, "just need the level of intelligence" is Xiao Yi's last stubbornness, comprehensive consideration, Xiao Yi finally chose the latest 25Li premium version BMW X1 for his parents.
"The difference between the same level of BBA is actually not big, but the most important reason to choose this car is also very simple, because it supports wireless direct connection to Apple Carplay, basically connect once and then get on the car, the car machine can quickly connect directly to the mobile phone, answer the phone, look at the map navigation and other just need to operate concisely and completely, parents can let me rest assured that driving, in fact, it is enough", Xiao Yi said.
In order to let parents enjoy this convenience, Xiao Yi can also be said to have practiced the essence of "curve to save the country", "On the day I paid the deposit, I directly bought an Apple mobile phone for my parents, and during the New Year, a lot of time was teaching them to adapt to the new mobile phone", Xiao Yi said with a smile.
Some people may say that Xiaoyi's car purchase decision is more like a somewhat extreme case, but we may wish to look further at a few sets of data.
According to a 2017 study by Strategy Analytics, 23 percent of U.S. new car buyers said they "must own" CarPlay, and 56 percent wanted to have a CarPlay when buying a new car. In the 2018 survey, 33 percent said they use CarPlay the most, and only 4 percent of users surveyed said they use embedded systems more than CarPlay.
Although the above data has been a few years ago, it is relatively long, but according to the survey data freshly released by the Yiou think tank at the end of last year, among young people aged 25-35, 51% of them said that the intelligent level of the cockpit was an important reference factor for their car purchase, and even 28% of them regarded the intelligent level of the cockpit as the primary reference factor when buying a car.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that Carplay is essentially to undertake the rigid intelligent appeal of modern driving such as navigation, music, and communication.
When many consumers buy a car, they look forward to whether the car is equipped with Apple Carplay, in fact, to a certain extent, they are looking forward to whether the cockpit can reach a certain level of intelligence.
Therefore, in the era when the level of intelligence at the end of the car is difficult to be complimented, it is not too surprising that Apple uses highly practical and competitive intelligent means to cause a great impact on the traditional automotive industry.
So, what did this shock bring to Apple?
Citi analyst Jim Suva has estimated that if Apple bundles CarPlay capabilities at $750 per unit, it would add $2 billion to Apple's annual service sales.
But in fact, Apple did not do this, Apple has said that it will not charge car manufacturers to use the software, and the same is true for C-end users, which means that Carplay does not seem to have brought Apple an intuitive return on money for many years.
This can't help but make people ask, it seems that "people and animals are harmless" Apple Carplay has been on the end of the car for many years, what kind of calculation is it?
From Apple Carplay, look at the value geometry of the smart cockpit
In the "2021 China Automotive Cockpit Intelligent Development Market Demand Research Report", Yiou Think Tank defined the intelligent cockpit as a car cockpit equipped with the functions of central control color screen, intelligent voice and OTA upgrade at the same time.
According to this definition, as of October last year, the penetration rate of smart cockpits in China's newly released passenger car models (including modifications) in 2021 has reached 50.6%. Not only that, the information of the Tianyancha APP shows that the number of enterprises related to the smart cockpit has reached 211, and the track is not crowded.
Why is there a growing interest in building smart cockpits? We may wish to focus on Carplay again, the "thick eyebrows and big eyes" guy, although for many years do not provide direct profits for Apple, but Apple's heart of the little "flower intestines", OEMs seem to be well understood.
First of all, at the level of external factors, on the one hand, the Prospective Industry Research Institute has predicted that the scale of the mainland intelligent cockpit market will exceed 100 billion yuan by 2025, and the OEMs obviously do not want to give this 100 billion market to Apple for "charity".
In addition to the considerable potential market prospects, Apple's recent announcement of entering the car is also a hidden worry for Carplay as a player and a referee.
In terms of internal factors, Tan Qing said that AI believes that the smart cockpit actually has a lower value, Carplay is ostensibly a business that does not make money for Apple, but in essence, it is actually an excellent strategy that can help Apple occupy the car scene, thus feeding back its mobile phone and software market to renew its competitiveness, we further look at what carplay is worth to Apple.
First of all, in terms of empowering the car side, the degree of intelligence of Carplay is essentially testing Apple's mobile phone.
From the perspective of the three elements of the definition of smart cockpit by Yiou Think Tank, first of all, OTA upgrades are common for Apple mobile phones, and secondly, whether it is the simplicity, efficiency and silkiness of the IOS system on the central control color screen, or Siri, which is competitive in the field of intelligent voice, it is the strength of Carplay to empower the smart cockpit through the car machine.
With apple's car-making plans repeatedly put on the agenda, perhaps in the eyes of consumers, its achievements in the electronics industry are difficult to intuitively graft onto the automotive level, but Carplay, which has been deeply cultivating the automotive market for many years, will undoubtedly give "Apple brand" cars the first to establish a layer of user mentality in the field of smart cockpits.
On the other hand, as far as the mobile phone side is concerned, the potential value of Carplay is also huge, first of all, it can help Apple convert Android camp users like Xiaoyi parents, and use the rigidity of the driving scene to improve its competitiveness in the mobile phone market.
At the same time, Carplay can also better feed back apple software business. Although the Carplay software ecosystem is open, it is like Apple's official maps and music applications that are highly matched with the driving scene, and under the priority of the default front installation, it can also inspire more users to use.
From the underlying logic of Apple Carplay, we can further extend that for automotive OEMs, the development of smart cockpits, whether it is the competitiveness of automotive products themselves in the future, or mining the second growth curve from the software business, there is considerable potential value.
However, what is the correct way to open the smart cockpit, is to constantly do intelligent armament in the car like Tesla? Or is it to use the new idea of Weilai to build mobile phones to defeat "Apple" with "Apple"? We might as well analyze it further.
Use mobile phones to "realize the dream" smart cockpit, is it reliable?
Since last year, there have been two car stars who have rumored to make mobile phones, the former is the independent car giant Geely, and the latter is the new force "a brother" Weilai. The idea of cross-border mobile phones by car companies has triggered the speculation of many "little geniuses" in our readership, two of which are more conventional speculations as follows:
WEILAI mobile phone "Huawei Edition": "Weilai OS" style innovation, by seizing the C-level intelligent terminal entrance, to provide Weilai users with a man-car-machine driving experience.
Weilai made mobile phone "Apple version": by creating a powerful product such as "Nio Phone", we will create the next explosive model in the mobile phone industry, so as to create a new growth curve for enterprises.
However, there is also such a style of painting:
Weilai made mobile phone "Jia Accounting Edition": "hardware free stream", the mobile phone will be part of the Weilai brand ecology, and the car end ecology is strongly combined, with the terminal value of the mobile phone and the car end of the two-way empowerment, so as to better pull up the ecological strength of Weilai, and finally achieve ecological anti-.
How to interpret it? It is only up to the audience to decide.
Here, we may wish to further analyze mobile phones and car machines, in the future development of smart cockpits, who can have more advantages.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that the advantages of mobile phones in the car at this stage are still obvious to a certain extent, thanks to years of rapid development, mobile phones seem to have always been the C-like existence of smart terminals.
On the one hand, the reason is that the user inertia of the mobile phone side has a huge advantage, just like most of the website applications on the PC side today will give priority to mobile phone scanning code login. Another point is the software ecological barriers built by the mobile phone for many years, and the advantages are outstanding.
And the reason why Carplay has been quite popular in previous years is that on the one hand, the communication, music and other functions that users have established personality portraits are directly embedded in the cockpit to undertake user inertia, on the other hand, it can migrate the developed software ecology of the mobile phone end to the car machine side.
The advantage of the car machine is that in the state of high level of intelligence, the intermediate operation link of the mobile phone can be omitted, providing the owner with a more convenient operation mode.
On the No. 42 garage network, there is a data survey that has been done as early as 2019: For car-machine interaction, do you prefer mobile phone + screen projection (example: Carplay) or on-board intelligent system (example: Tesla, Nio)? A total of 279 people participated in the survey, and the results showed that only 19.4% of the respondents chose mobile phones + projection screens, while the proportion of in-vehicle intelligent systems was as high as 78.5%.
At this point, we have come to a conclusion: if the future car machine can develop and mature in the smart cockpit, the mobile phone does not actually have the advantage of seizing the smart cockpit C position in the car.
From the above analysis, we believe that the "maturity" of the car machine will be mainly reflected in two aspects, one is the diversification of the software ecology, and the other is the user inertia that can connect the mobile phone terminal.
However, from the perspective of the short-term development of the market, not only is the number of old and low-intelligence models still huge, but the data of the Billion Euro Think Tank shows that although the penetration rate of the smart cockpit has reached 50.6% as of October 2021, but in the models below 100,000 and more than 750,000, the penetration rate of the smart cockpit is still not optimistic, and the market development of the smart cockpit is not balanced.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that such a spindle structure development may lead to a period of time in the future, the "terminal discourse power" of the car machine in the field of intelligent cockpit is still relatively weak, under the guidance of industry development and market demand, the mission of empowering the cockpit with mobile phones may still need to last for a period of time, and this is where the opportunity for car companies to build mobile phones lies.
Perhaps Geely, Weilai and other OEMs to build mobile phones, meaning to land in the smart value of the mobile phone terminal market, or to open up a new growth curve for the brand.
However, for the mobile phone industry that has already entered the stock market, from the Rongmi OV in the low-end market to Huawei and Apple in the high-end market, can Weilai still get a piece of the pie in the industry pattern that is dominated by the crowd? It still needs to be tested by time.