In the past two years, mobile phone giants such as Apple, Xiaomi, and Huawei have crossed borders to build cars, and automakers have also begun to lay out mobile phone business. Following Geely's announcement of making mobile phones, weilai automobile has also been exposed to enter the mobile phone industry recently.
Weilai Automobile cross-border to do mobile phones
According to 36Kr, the domestic new car head company Weilai has entered the mobile phone industry, and Yin Shuijun, former president of Meitu Mobile Phone, has joined and taken the lead in taking charge of Weilai's mobile phone business.
According to reports, the "Nio mobile phone" project has been established for a while, and the current team is located in Shenzhen, doing personnel recruitment. From the job information released on the recruitment website, it can also be found that WEI has released a large number of mobile phone business related positions, including BSP engineers, communication test engineers, imaging chip design engineers, etc.
In addition, people familiar with the matter also revealed that as early as Xiaomi announced the car, Weilai already had a mobile phone business plan.
Why do mobile phones and cars cross each other?
In fact, Weilai is not the first car company to announce a mobile phone. At the end of September 2021, 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.
So why are car companies suddenly keen on mobile phones? Why are mobile phone brands focusing on cars?
On the one hand, auto companies choose to build mobile phones more in order to form their own ecology. It is understood that the current mobile phone can link the intelligent car car networking, in this process will produce a large amount of data, if these data can be completely in the hands of car manufacturers, it can maximize the user stickiness, which is beneficial to the development of future car companies.
For the manufacture of mobile phones, Li Shufu said, "Mobile phones are the application carriers of electronic product market verification and software innovation, which not only allows users to share innovative achievements as soon as possible, but also transfers 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." ”
On the other hand, now consumers have higher and higher requirements for car intelligence, cars are no longer simply acting as a means of transportation, more inclined to intelligent terminals, users hope that their cars can be more and more intelligent like mobile phones, more and more convenient. The intelligent experience is not an advantage for traditional car companies, which makes mobile phone brands also see market opportunities.
At this stage, there is a consensus in the automotive sector: the industry's profit source is shifting from hardware to software. Therefore, the phased evolution of smart cars mainly has two directions: intelligent cockpit and automatic driving, of which the intelligent cockpit has more entry points and the speed of technology landing is faster.
For example, the large-screen control system in the smart cockpit, intelligent voice assistants and other functions are extensions of the functions of mobile phone manufacturers at the software level. For car companies, if they cannot independently develop related technologies, they cannot grasp the initiative, and the model of pure hardware assembly of traditional car companies has become obsolete.
As Li Shufu said, "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 all things multi-screen interactive life experience." ”
Finally, under the rapid development of the Internet of Vehicles and the Internet of Things, the interconnection of vehicles, machines and mobile phones is the trend of the times. Smart phone manufacturers have cross-border car manufacturing, the premise is the closed loop of intelligent ecology, that is, Li Shufu yearns for "interconnection of all things, multi-screen interaction". In the future intelligent terminal form represented by the intelligent Internet of Things, the mobile phone is the entrance and key of the car, and the coordination of the car and the machine is the norm.
In the industry's view, the competition and cooperation between mobile phone manufacturers and smart car manufacturers will be more frequent in the future, and the sharing of resources between the industry in the industrial chain, talents, and technology will also be further. However, cross-border is not an easy task, and the problems faced during the period such as industrial chain, research and development, and security will be challenges.
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