Following Geely Automobile's desire to build mobile phones, another automobile company announced that it has made mobile phones - Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, recently announced that it will build its own mobile phones from the perspective of improving user experience.
During the interview, the reporter learned that just like Apple created the iPhone ecology to enhance user stickiness, car companies build mobile phones to connect their mobile terminals with cars and peripheral products, and there are unlimited "stories" to tell. Car companies take this opportunity to break through the resource barriers between mobile phones and cars, and better collect road data, driving data and user data to improve the level of smart cockpits.
If so, the intention of the car company is no longer in the mobile phone.
There are infinite "stories" to tell
Li Bin, chairman of Weilai Automobile, pointed out that considering making mobile phones is to give car owners the best mobile phone for the internet experience of car and machine, rather than thinking from the perspective of commercial success. The relevant person in charge of Weilai also pointed out: "At present, the company is still in a very early stage of market research on making mobile phones, and will carry out more exploration from the perspective of user experience. ”
Weilai is not the first car company to build mobile phones across borders. As early as September 2021, Geely founder Li Shufu founded Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd., announcing that it would build a high-end mobile phone for the global market, and then acquired mobile phone manufacturer Meizu.
At that time, Li Shufu pointed out that mobile phones can connect the Internet of Vehicles and satellite Internet to create rich consumption scenarios, strengthen the ecosystem, and build a user ecological chain across borders, which will build a new moat for Geely. It is expected that some of the mobile phone innovations will be transferred to the car application to realize the close interaction between the car machine and mobile phone software technology.
Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of Ai Media Consulting, pointed out in an interview with the "China Electronics News" reporter that the self-made mobile phones of car companies are essentially measures to create a closed-loop ecology, just as Apple creates mobile phones, APP applications, and iOS operating systems to firmly enhance user stickiness, and car companies must also stabilize users through this move to maintain market growth. From the operational point of view, its own mobile phone terminal is connected with cars and peripheral products, and there are unlimited "stories" to tell.
TCL founder Li Dongsheng publicly stated in March this year that mobile communication terminals are a basis for future intelligent Internet applications, including smart cars, so smart car companies enter mobile communication terminals and seek new opportunities in industrial development, which is caused by the development competition of the entire industry.
Honor CEO Zhao Ming recently expressed his views on the entry of car companies into the mobile phone industry to the media: it is not difficult to build mobile phones, there are many ODM manufacturers can help, but the systematic experience and user recognition in the high-end market requires huge efforts. Car companies are very welcome to enter this industry, indicating that this industry is very attractive and valuable, if car companies can bring new cognition and thinking to the industry is a good thing.
Although the complexity is not as complex as building a car, making a mobile phone is also a system project.
At present, Geely is taking the acquisition path. NIO allegedly began to initially build a mobile phone business unit, led by Yin Shuijun, former president of Meitu Mobile. In the recruitment of wireless test engineers, communication test engineers, car-machine interconnection products and other job requirements, NIO has put forward the needs for mobile phones, Android testing and other development aspects.
Zhang Xiang, dean of the New Energy Vehicle Technology Research Institute of Jiangxi New Energy Technology Vocational College, said in an interview with China Electronics News that car companies making mobile phones through acquisition is a better shortcut, reducing research and development costs, shortening research and development time, and doing more with less. From the perspective of funds, the threshold for making mobile phones is much lower than that of cars, and it may cost 10 billion yuan to build a car, and it takes about 300-500 million yuan to create a mobile phone product, so Geely and Weilai have no problem in terms of funds.
Zhang Yi believes that car companies set up special mobile phone companies or divisions to accumulate talents and suppliers to customize spare parts assembly, that is, self-built teams are relatively preferred choices.
Car machine system to start from the mobile phone?
Li Bin once said that 50% of Weilai car owners use iPhones and 40% use Huawei mobile phones, and now the proportion of iPhones has further increased. However, Apple is very closed to the automotive industry, such as the car standard UWB of the second-generation platform of Weilai, Apple does not open the interface, so it faces a passive situation, so from the perspective of user interests and experience, it is necessary to study mobile phones and car-centric intelligent terminal devices.
In fact, the car and the mobile phone have been connected and controlled by the exclusive APP, and even the mobile phone has become an exclusive Bluetooth car key, such as the ideal ONE car owner using the Honor Magic4 series mobile phone, which can realize no sense unlocking, and automatically lock when far away. Car companies have reached in-depth cooperation with mobile phone companies, why do they need to develop their own mobile phones?
Lu Wenliang, a special researcher in the automotive industry at the Industrial Science and Technology Innovation Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Consulting Institute, said in an interview with the "China Electronics News" reporter that car companies make their own mobile phones, there may be two considerations, on the one hand, they want to achieve a safe, non-sense unlocking car key function; on the other hand, they want to expand the function of mobile phone and car machine connection.
According to the reporter's understanding, the current direct connection between the mobile phone and the car is mainly the car key, and the car company hopes to realize the sensorless unlocking through the mobile phone carried around. However, car keys involve security issues, and usually require support from the hardware level of mobile phones to be both safe and sensorless. In this regard, relying on the universal mobile phone brand, it is difficult to achieve a very perfect solution.
"It is not possible for different companies to cooperate and take into account factors such as technical confidentiality." Zhang Xiang pointed out to reporters. For example, the on-board system Apple CarPlay, Huawei HiCar, Baidu CarLife, etc. are not fully open in navigation, mobile phone remote control car, mobile phone reading car parameters and other functions, although it can realize the call of mobile phone computing resources and sensors, but only the protocol allows the function, the function expansion is limited. It is understood that there are currently nearly 600 new cars equipped with Apple CarPlay, and car companies have to pay a huge licensing fee for this, while also releasing some control authorizations. With certification licensing fees, Apple earns more than $2 billion a year.
The automotive systems developed by car companies, such as BYD DiLink, Geely Galaxy OS, Nippo's in-vehicle artificial intelligence system Nomi, etc., generally have slow response, less content ecology, high data traffic costs, data security and privacy to be strengthened, chip performance generally lags behind the consumer electronics field waiting for improvement, and the car-machine system has a high cost and a long cycle in the development process.
Zhang Xiang introduced to reporters that the owner of the car ecosystem has a low willingness to pay to use, such as the OnStar system built by General Motors, the number of users is very high, but the business model of free use in the first year and then paid for use has led to a decrease in the willingness of users to renew. Therefore, car companies are facing the dilemma that even if they invest a lot of money to build a car machine ecosystem and develop many APP applications, it is difficult to sell services, and there will still be a dilemma that car owners "use a mobile phone bracket to support the mobile phone" instead.
There is still a problem of poor experience in the car's car machine system, and Volkswagen has doubts about the ability of car companies to create a mobile phone ecology. Some voices even pointed out that if the car machine system wants to achieve a qualitative leap, it really has to start from the mobile phone.
In this regard, Zhang Xiang analyzed to reporters that compared with Apple, Android and other mobile phone ecosystems are very perfect, there are millions of APP applications, the current car machine system applications are very few, may not exceed 30.
Gao Dan, director of CCID Consulting Business, pointed out in an interview with the "China Electronic News" reporter that most of the mobile phones are now mature operating systems and ecosystems, and the on-board system needs time to achieve such a perfect ecology, and it takes time to realize the ecological interconnection of the two ends of the equipment, which also promotes the idea of making mobile phones.
Industry insiders pointed out that the development of car-machine connections by car companies themselves may break through the barriers of mobile phone resources and automobile resources, better collect road data, driving data and user data, and improve the level of intelligent cockpits.
At present, although the alliance between car companies and mobile phone companies is indeed a convenient direction, it is constrained by various interests, so it is difficult to open up the deep alliance. Hou Lin, a senior analyst at GfK, pointed out in an interview with the "China Electronic News" reporter that especially in the mobile phone companies may build cars, car companies may build mobile phones now, although each other are partners today, but tomorrow may be competitors. Therefore, in this case, car companies should be self-sufficient rather than subject to others.
Will users pay for the car company's mobile phone?
When car companies create mobile phones, how much acceptance of users is also a topic worth exploring.
The "2022 China New Energy Automobile Industry Research and Consumer Behavior Survey Report" recently released by Ai Media Consulting pointed out that intelligence and humanization are important considerations for automobile consumers, such as mobile phones plus cars can build in-car entertainment scenes for users, vehicles and mobile phones are highly interconnected to achieve seamless listening and switching, and vehicle control such as driving doors can be achieved with mobile phones.
"Whether consumers pay or not depends on the maturity of the overall ecology of car companies in the future." Gao Dan pointed out to reporters. A number of experts said in an interview with reporters that the focus of car companies' self-made mobile phones to impress consumers lies in the addition of the characteristic functions of car-machine interconnection, forming a unique experience and business model, and building their own software content ecological closed loop.
In the short term, the probability of consumers paying for mobile phones made by domestic car companies is relatively low. Hou Lin pointed out that at present, several domestic head mobile phone manufacturers have their own fixed ecology and consumer circle, which is difficult to pry in a short period of time. However, after a long period of deep cultivation, to create an integrated ecology of mobile phones and automobiles, and then work on-board performance and brand tonality, in the long run, as long as a complete ecology is formed, it will definitely attract consumers to pay.
For consumers, brand preference is strongly correlated with product price. Zhang Yi analyzed to reporters that in theory, to do a good job in adapting mobile phone hardware and software to cars, car companies sell a car with a price of hundreds of thousands, and sell a mobile phone at a low price, which is essentially not difficult.
Zhang Xiang also pointed out to reporters that car companies may be able to explore the business model of including the cost of mobile phones in car packages and "buying high-end models and sending mobile phones". For potential users who are "fans" of car brands but have not yet purchased a car, mobile phones can be sold as souvenirs or add-on products.
Objective prediction, the mobile phone manufactured by the car company can not reach the volume of the general mobile phone, more or to provide a special mobile phone for the owner, to create a better service and experience, feeding back the sales of the car is the purpose. "Car companies making mobile phones should be clearly positioned in a professional market segment from the beginning." Zhang Xiang said.
Xiaomi, which was the first to step on the take-off of Android smartphones, took nearly 5 years to gain a foothold in the domestic market. Hou Lin stressed that for car companies that make mobile phones, this outlet is no longer there. Even if you count the user accumulation brought by car companies, it may take five years to make mobile phones become a Volkswagen brand, and the continuous investment in these five years is actually the biggest difficulty faced by car companies such as Geely and Weilai in making mobile phones.