Meizu is perhaps the most emotional mobile phone manufacturer in China, it regards "pursuit from love" as the spirit of enterprise, unique temperament and elegant taste, products are also very idealistic, always full of artistic atmosphere. Because of this, Meizu, which has a distinct personality, has attracted many "ambiguous objects" in the course of many years of development, and those anecdotes between them will be interesting to look back at now.
And Xiaomi's feud
In 2007, the iPhone re-"invented" the mobile phone, although the Chinese mobile phone market was still in the era of copycat machines, but the MP3-born Meizu saw new hope, when meizu MP3 has achieved the top level in the country, but the boss Huang Zhang believes that MP3 will soon be eliminated, using mobile phones to listen to songs is the trend, so he resolutely began to transform the development of smart phones, 2009 Meizu M8 appeared.
Meizu M8 is the first large-screen touch machine in China, whether it is hardware design or software system is a very innovative existence, once released, it gained a large number of fans, including Lei Jun. Anecdotal rumors that Lei Jun carried meizu M8 with him, and introduced the advanced points of Meizu M8 to everyone. Although Lei Jun had not yet founded Xiaomi that year, he firmly identified the business model of "software + hardware + Internet", so he became extremely interested in smart phones, and then Lei Jun tried to get to know Huang Zhang, and wanted to invest in Meizu to build China's iPhone with Huang Zhang.
Huang Zhang and Lei Jun have similar hobbies and common ideals, often discuss the technological development of smart phones together, when the two seem to have spent a "honeymoon period", and even once reported that Huang Zhang was always in the office with Lei Jun's favorite Coke. But unfortunately, Huang Zhang, who has always been conservative in business operations, has some resistance to Lei Jun's investment, and Lei Jun is a very pragmatic entrepreneur, and after investing in Meizu was blocked, he had the idea of creating millet, so the two gradually disagreed.
For Lei Jun, who came from the Internet, the threshold for entering the mobile phone hardware is relatively high, so before doing Xiaomi mobile phones, Lei Jun intends to launch a customized system like Meizu, when Meizu M8 adopted the My Mobile system developed based on WinCE, and Lei Jun did MIUI. When Huang Zhang learned that MIUI was from Lei Jun's hands, he was furious, because it meant that the two had turned into a competitive relationship, Huang Zhang had publicly expressed his dislike for MIUI on the Meizu forum, and he bluntly regretted communicating with Lei Jun about Meizu without reservation, and even the unpublished UI design of M9 was sent to Lei Jun.
Looking back now, the feud between Xiaomi and Meizu actually stems from the differences in business philosophy between the two entrepreneurs, which also led them to embark on different paths, and in the next few years, Xiaomi mobile phones and MIUI were quickly recognized, followed by Xiaomi began to lay out intelligent hardware, and now stepped into the smart automotive industry, and Meizu Huangzhang has been relatively conservative in business operations, which to some extent also limits the development of Meizu, so today, Meizu and Xiaomi are not an order of magnitude company.
I have a crush on Samsung
Meizu has a special love for Samsung processors, from the earliest M8/M9 series, to the later MX series, and then to the PRO 5/6 series, Meizu has always insisted on choosing Samsung processors on the highest-end models.
In the early days of smart phone development, Qualcomm chips were not the optimal solution, but it was easy to overturn, such as the Snapdragon 810 of the year, which was seriously hot and had a bad endurance, and single-handedly dragged down many flagships, while the Samsung Exynos 7420 in the same period became the hardware king of that year by relying on the process advantage, and also achieved its own flagship Galaxy S6 series and Meizu PRO 5. In the later PRO 6 Plus, Meizu used the same Exynos 8890 processor of the Samsung S8 series, and the experience was higher than that of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 in the same period, in those years, relying on the excellent experience of Samsung chips and the influence of the Galaxy S series flagship, Meizu mobile phones have become the "Android light" in the hearts of many digital enthusiasts.
Meizu insisted on using Samsung processors in the early days, first of all, for historical reasons, in the early years, Meizu used Samsung chip solutions when doing MP3, and the two have maintained a friendly technical cooperation relationship, so Meizu's development experience on the Samsung platform is also richer. On the other hand, the strength of Samsung at that time was indeed good, once for Apple's A series processors to do OEM, there are great advantages in technology, the process technology is often ahead of the same period of Qualcomm chips, so Samsung is indeed a better choice for Meizu.
However, in addition to historical reasons, more importantly, for cost considerations, Meizu has always been known as a "small factory", on the one hand, the volume is small, on the other hand, it also means that the assets are not particularly abundant, and the choice of Qualcomm solution can not bypass Qualcomm's expensive licensing fees, which is not a small burden for Meizu, but even so, Meizu mobile phones in the process of years of development, or can not completely avoid the use of Qualcomm's communication patents, Qualcomm also launched a lawsuit against Meizu in 2016, and finally the two reached a settlement. But Qualcomm also asked Meizu to join the Snapdragon camp after that, which was a bit of a "zhaoan", but at that time, Samsung Exynos also began to go downhill, so Samsung also became Meizu's old lover.
A farce with Ali
Ali and Meizu had a utilitarian marriage.
In 2014, Meizu's development momentum is very strong, MX4 flagship series has been recognized by the market, and at the end of the year, it launched a sub-brand charm blue, which has the potential to benchmark millet and red rice, but forced by the volume of "small factories", Meizu wants to continue to be limited, so Meizu was struggling to find external funds to enter the game. At that time, Ali was promoting its YunOS system, but only some second-tier manufacturers with weak technical strength were equipped, which led to the controversial YunOS and the hat of "cottage machine system", so Ali also urgently needed to find a mobile phone manufacturer with both popularity and recognition to justify YunOS.
In February 2015, Meizu Technology and Alibaba reached a cooperation and received a total of $650 million in investment from Alibaba, in exchange, Meizu needed to launch a mobile phone equipped with YunOS system, but because the YunOS experience was too poor, Meizu later launched Flyme powered by YunOS based on YunOS, that is, Flyme based on the bottom of YunOS. At that time, there were rumors that Ali proposed a VAM agreement to Meizu, requiring Meizu's annual sales to reach 20 million, so as to bring enough users to YunOS, during that time, many Meizu users also found that the music and maps in the Flyme system became Ali's shrimp and Gaode, and there were many "life service" cards from Ali.
In order to complete the VAM agreement, Meizu launched an explosive crazy expansion under the stimulation of capital, from the end of 2015, Meizu carried out machine sea tactics around the Charm Blue brand, to 2016, there were almost monthly new machines, even crazier than today's realme, and the annual shipment volume once exceeded 22 million units, quickly completing the transformation from "niche" to "big factory".
Overgrown Meizu exposed many problems, that year's Charm Blue mobile phone product positioning was repeated, and the chip could not get Qualcomm's support, can only use mediatek with poor performance experience, so it was saddled with the insult of "Wannian MediaTek", plus the experience of YunOS was not better than Android, and then due to various problems, Meizu and Alibaba were not happy and dispersed, in the same year Ali divested, Meizu also quickly exchanged YunOS back to Android.
Meizu with Ali caused a lot of controversy, many Meizu friends said that Meizu is no longer "small and beautiful", but full of "copper smell", now look back, many products were indeed patched together by both sides for interests, Meizu in order to pull investment, and Ali in order to earn users, full of utilitarianism, and eventually became a farce.
And Sony, Geely two-way rush
The digital circle has a high evaluation of Meizu - the Whampoa Military Academy of the mobile phone.
This evaluation is indeed more pertinent, because Meizu's understanding of the product experience is very keen, the early mBack interaction, waist round key design, ring flash, curved antenna, etc., have played a good exemplary role for domestic mobile phone manufacturers, until now, Meizu also has a small window mode and superior OTA capabilities. The reason why it is called Whampoa Military Academy, perhaps more convincingly, is that Flyme has "delivered" many outstanding talents to OV's two major factories in the past few years.
Meizu's ultimate understanding of software interaction has attracted many people who come to learn. First of all, in October last year, Sony Xperia mobile phone announced a cooperation with Flyme, Which will provide Many excellent software ecological services for Sony Xperia users. Today, Meizu Flyme has provided first-party applications such as the app store, email, weather and other first-party applications for Sony Xperia mobile phones, and the cooperation between the two is still advancing.
The second is the cooperation with Geely, although neither side has made it clear, but it has become an open secret in the industry, and the cooperation between the two is more like a "two-way rush". Geely has many car brands, but the interaction between the car and the machine has been relatively weak, so Geely's choice of Meizu is undoubtedly to value the outstanding advantages of Flyme in the interactive experience. In addition, Geely also announced some time ago that it entered the mobile phone industry against the trend, and although Meizu is not better than that year, it still has its own brand advantages, experienced mobile phone research and development system and supply chain, etc. Geely directly uses Meizu's mature operating system, which is far more reliable than starting from scratch.
For Meizu, today's smart phone market seems to be no longer suitable for survival and development, rather than groping in the mobile phone market, it is better to change a field to play their own expertise, perhaps this will live longer. I also believe that Meizu also does not want to see Meizu decline, in contrast, if you can feel the excellent experience of Meizu in the smart car in a few years, it is undoubtedly a fortunate thing.
Pursuit comes from love
Personally, I like Meizu's spirit of "pursuit comes from love", which makes it form a unique temperament that distinguishes it from other brands, and also attracts many "ambiguous objects" who come to admire it. But today, Meizu obviously encountered some ups and downs, the smartphone industry is no longer suitable for Meizu to survive, all this seems to be back to the moment when MP3 turned to the mobile phone, how Meizu will choose we do not know, but as a bystander, I still hope that Meizu's story can continue, I also hope that Meizu can usher in rebirth.
This article was originally published by Geek Park GeekPark, please add Geek Jun (ID: geekchoiecs).