Benchmarking Apples? Li Bin made a risky move

Text | Jingyu

For the creation of mobile phones, Weilai founder Li Bin recently responded for the first time in an interview column, "Weilai mobile phones are still in the preliminary research stage, and the mobile phones planned to be built are more for the purpose of defense rather than expansion." ”

After the news was released, he made further explanations in the core car owner group of Weilai:

"Apple is now very closed to the automotive industry, such as the car of the second generation platform of Weilai with UWB as standard, and Apple does not open the interface, which makes us very passive." Starting from the interests and experiences of users, we must also study mobile phones and car-centric smart terminal devices. ”

As he said, in the era of smart cars, the interaction between smart hardware such as mobile phones and car machines is becoming more and more frequent, for example, many car owners have begun to use mobile phones to open and close doors, air conditioners, etc. However, due to the different degree of system openness of mobile phone manufacturers, new energy vehicle companies will fall into a passive situation of being subject to people.

To achieve a better interconnection experience between mobile phones and cars, self-developed mobile phones are undoubtedly an important path.

The car companies that want to build mobile phones out of similar logic are also Geely. In September last year, Hubei Xingji Times Technology and Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, which is controlled by Geely Chairman Li Shufu, signed a strategic cooperation agreement and announced its entry into the mobile phone field. In addition, in January this year, Geely was also exposed to the news of acquiring Meizu mobile phones.

There are also some car companies that do not agree with the idea of making mobile phones. Tesla founder Musk has publicly responded on social media that smart watches and mobile phones are yesterday's technologies, and the brain-computer interface is the future. Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Holdings, has also publicly stated that Chery will not make mobile phones because the cake of the car is already big enough.

To build mobile phones, Li Bin also has to face another problem is how to stand out in the mobile phone industry that has become a Red Sea. The domestic smartphone industry has developed for more than 10 years, and in 2021, China's top five mobile phone manufacturers have occupied 85% of the market share, and the market pattern has been quite stable.

And the cake of the entire market is still shrinking. Data from agency Canalys shows that Chinese mobile phone shipments have fallen for four consecutive years since China's mobile phone shipments fell for the first time in 2017.

If you simply make a mobile phone, the threshold is actually not high. But it is even more difficult to create a good mobile phone that consumers are willing to pay. You know, more than 60% of Weilai car owners are using iPhones, which means that Weilai mobile phones are directly benchmarked against Apple.

The foresight of car companies

Li Bin's response revealed that car companies are worried about being restricted by mobile phone manufacturers.

In 2021, among the top five mobile phone manufacturers in China - vivo, OPPO, Glory, Xiaomi, and Apple, three companies are currently carrying out car-making plans, plus a Huawei that may retake the mobile phone position at any time and enter the car-making industry. These car-making mobile phone manufacturers will undoubtedly make efforts in the interconnection of mobile phones and car machines to create a differentiated competitive advantage.

In other words, the collaborative experience of Xiaomi mobile phone + Xiaomi car is definitely significantly better than that of Xiaomi mobile phone + Weilai car, which is a situation that most car companies do not want to see, and they do not want the interconnection experience of mobile phones and car machines to become an obvious shortcoming of the product.

In this context, the creation of mobile phones has become a logical development path, especially for car companies such as Weilai that take a high-end route and value user experience.

Taking the same path is Geely. According to a number of media reports, Geely's mobile phone project has a total investment of more than 10 billion yuan, and it plans to launch mobile phone products in 2023, which may be produced or oem by Foxconn.

Last year, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Group, revealed his emphasis on the interconnection experience of car machines and 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 cars, so as to achieve close interaction between car machines and mobile phone software technology." ”

In addition to the interconnection of car machines and mobile phones, collecting user data through mobile phones and improving user experience is also one of the important considerations for car companies to make mobile phones.

In the future, smart cars may become another major smart terminal after smart phones, which is the mobile living space of consumers, and people may even live longer in the car than home and company. However, at present, the on-board large screen generally has problems such as long boot time, non-smooth operation, and less adaptation software, the user experience is not good, and the frequency of click interaction is not high.

On the contrary, many drivers are still accustomed to setting up a mobile phone stand next to the large screen in the car to complete navigation and communication on the mobile phone. In the long run, it is difficult for user data to be precipitated on the car-machine system, and it is difficult for car companies to collect user data to improve user experience. And the car machine system can not be as mobile phones as 24 hours online, its interaction with people is limited to the travel scene.

Attribution of user data is also an issue. From the perspective of car companies, we definitely do not want user data to flow into external mobile phone manufacturers through mobile phones and car-machine interconnection. This is well protected with a private label phone.

From the perspective of business synergy and ecological collaboration, car companies have an important strategic synergy in making mobile phones.

Compared with the sales of mainstream mobile phone manufacturers, the current sales of mainstream new energy vehicle companies in China are generally not high (the delivery volume of Wei Xiaoli's three companies in 2021 is about 100,000 units). After joining the mobile phone business, whether it is convincing software manufacturers to develop adaptation software, improve the system software ecology, or purchase from upstream chip companies, they have greater right to speak and bargain.

More end-of-game thinking, whether it is a car company or a mobile phone manufacturer, they hope to dominate the closed-loop scene of "people-car-life", occupy the entrance to the scene, build a complete ecology, and master users and data in their own hands to form their own moat. However, in order to achieve this path, whether car companies want to achieve it by making mobile phones, there is no clear and consistent conclusion so far.

Make mobile phones near worry

After years of development, smart phones have a fairly mature supply chain in China, and the threshold for making mobile phones is not high.

Wang Tao, the founder of DJI, believes that the current mobile phone industry is a layer of Internet skin, in fact, it is essentially a small household appliance industry, "even less than a high threshold for air conditioning." ”

However, it is not easy to create a new mobile phone brand, form its own competitive advantage, and gain a firm foothold in the current mobile phone market. At present, the main players in the domestic mobile phone market have more than 10 years of industry experience and precipitation, including brands, research and development, channels, talents, etc., and it is almost impossible to surpass in a short period of time.

Taking Xiaomi mobile phones as an example, although its domestic market share in the third quarter of last year was overtaken by Glory and only ranked fourth, behind such achievements is also years of efforts and accumulation. According to the public financial report, at the end of 2020, Xiaomi had 22,074 full-time employees, of which 10,401 were R&D personnel.

Two years ago, Lei Jun announced that it would invest 50 billion yuan in research and development in the next 5 years. In order to make a breakthrough on high-end mobile phones and achieve better camera performance, Xiaomi has nearly a thousand engineers in the camera department alone.

For Weilai, which takes the high-end route, its mobile phone products are likely to be in the middle and high-end price point (according to the survey, 60% of the current owners of Weilai are using iPhones). That is not just to simply make a mobile phone that can be used, but to directly benchmark with Apple in terms of image, performance, process, and system experience. As far as the current strength is concerned, whether Weilai can equal Xiaomi and OV is not certain.

Judging from the current funding situation of Weilai, it is not optimistic. Car building is a well-known money-burning game, Weilai is still in the loss, how much money can be invested in the mobile phone business also needs to play a question mark.

Especially in the case that the main business itself is not stable, it is the top priority to concentrate on enlarging the main business. At present, the domestic new energy vehicle war situation is in full swing, and Weilai has not released new cars because there are only three old models in the world last year, resulting in its sales falling behind, and its sales in 2021 are surpassed by Xiaopeng. The sales volume in the first quarter of this year has been left behind by Nezha and Ideal.

In this context, Weilai's entry into the mobile phone market faces a dilemma: less investment is ineffective, if the investment is huge and resolutely benchmarks Apple, the focus of resources on the main automobile industry is bound to tilt.

In the core owner group of Weilai above, some users also expressed concerns about whether Weilai can build a mobile phone. Some users said, "Let the fruit powder switch to Weilai mobile phone, the difficulty is not lower than the BBA user to change the Weilai car, careful consideration."

Fortunately, the cost of making mobile phones is relatively low, even if it fails, it will not drag down Weilai's main business too much.

Specific cases can refer to Gree mobile phones. Since 2015, Gree has released 6 mobile phones, with sales ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of units, belonging to the "others" of the mobile phone market. The purpose of its mobile phone is also to form a complete ecology with its smart home, although the sales performance is not good, but the advantage is that it does not drag down the performance of Gree.

As for what kind of answer the mobile phone will be given by Weilai, whether it will become the next Gree mobile phone, or successfully replace Apple, whether it is limited to meeting the needs of Weilai car owners, or successfully moving towards the majority of consumers, it is still uncertain. What is certain is that with Li Bin's personality, subjectively it must be made into a high-end.

Write at the end

Mobile phone manufacturers pile up to build cars, and car companies enter the game to build mobile phones, which is likely to make the future smart phones and smart cars two major intelligent terminal tracks into a "chaotic war". As Jack Ma's classic quote goes, this is an era when you don't even know who your opponent is.

Ideally, both mobile phone manufacturers and car companies hope to realize the interconnection and complete closed loop between people, cars and lives. From mobile phones to smart homes, wearable devices, and finally to cars, it is best to have a manufacturer dominate the entire process and user data, and is not limited to the interconnection experience of mobile phones and car machines.

But this is not the case. Whether it is a mobile phone, wearable device or a car track, there are manufacturers with full-scene layouts such as Xiaomi and Apple, as well as enterprises such as Tesla, Samsung, and Glory that blossom at a single point. In the future, the competitive relationship between these enterprises will be more complex.

Market competition is a serious challenge for players. But a closer connection between mobile phones and cars is good news for consumers, meaning a better user experience, which is what underpins Li Bin's willingness to bet.