In the "car-making" section, Huawei is ahead of Xiaomi

Among many Chinese mobile phone brands, if you want to choose a brand that can compete with Apple, who will you choose?

If it had been two or three years ago, I reckon many people would have voted for Huawei without hesitation.

Apple mobile phones are representative of high-end mobile phones, which is beyond doubt. The iPhone wasn't the first smartphone, but now the smartphone form can be said to have been founded by Apple. With the introduction of various generations of iPhones, many technologies have begun to become popular. In this process, in fact, Chinese mobile phone brands have been chasing the identity of most of the time, and Huawei should be the first to perform the closest to Apple in the domestic high-end mobile phone market.

The real power of Huawei terminals is actually due to the self-developed SOC. As a "friend" who has been playing mobile phones since the era of Soai G900 and SOAI X1, I can feel that the homogenization of Chinese brand mobile phones is more serious for a long time.

From the perspective of hardware, there will be no difference between the early brands of mobile phones, and there are only a few major hardware suppliers that can affect the actual experience. For example, the SOCs that each family has focused on promoting, which were commonly used before, qualcomm, MediaTek, Texas Instruments, and NVIDIA, have basically become Qualcomm SOCs and MediaTek singing double reeds. In addition to MediaTek, there is no manufacturer entering the mobile phone SOC market in China, such as the Mainland Spreadtrum SC8810, but to say that it can really go to the high-end, for a long time, there is no.

At that time, the most direct core competitiveness of major mobile phone brands, simply seems to be 2 places, the first is the cost performance, who can provide more powerful SOC, better screen, more exaggerated camera modules within the limited price, then who can become popular. The second is the system of each family, Xiaomi's MIUI, Meizu's Flyme, OPPO's ColorOS and other brands to launch the system, a variety of micro-innovative functions and unique aesthetics so that each system has a certain amount of fans.

This situation did not change until HiSilicon released the mobile phone SOC. Although the performance of HiSilicon's mobile phone SOC in the early stage is not good (before Kirin 960), as long as it continues to invest, there will eventually be a time for glowing. In the impression, the first SOC that HiSilicon can be accepted by the public is the Kirin 970 released in 2017, which was announced before Apple released the new iPhone, which is quite a bit of the meaning of the needle to Mai Mang.

Huawei MATE 10, as the first mobile phone equipped with Kirin 970, has also successfully entered the high-end market. Prior to this, Apple's mobile phone has been the grand prize of various activities, including but not limited to the lottery activities of various merchants and the year-end gifts prepared by various companies for employees. But after that, the visibility of Apple's mobile phone in the event was reduced, replaced by Huawei mobile phones.

Through self-developed SOCs, Huawei has successfully opened up the same path as Apple's mobile phones. From MATE 10 to MATE 40, from P20 to P50, Huawei's high-end mobile phone prices are not cheaper than domestic friends (before there was no money to buy Huawei, and then no money to buy Huawei), the configuration is not necessarily higher than that of friends (such as the famous "Zhou Dongyu arrangement" event), but the self-developed SOCs that perform well enough give Huawei the competitiveness that other Chinese brands have not had, and will get rid of themselves from the competition of stacking hardware parameters.

After Huawei officially decided to enter the automotive industry, the habit of self-development was also brought over. The first thing to explain is that Huawei does not build a car, and Huawei is relatively close to Polar Fox and Xilis, and in terms of equity structure, it actually has little to do with Huawei. However, as a "parts supplier", Huawei is qualified.

Huawei's layout is quite extensive. Taking HUAWEI's independent brand of intelligent vehicle solutions, HI, Huawei can provide a new computing and communication architecture and 5 intelligent systems, as well as a full set of intelligent components such as lidar and AR-HUD, to create an ecological layout of "sensor-chip-operating system-algorithm and development application-cloud service", including five parts: intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent network connection, intelligent electric, and intelligent vehicle cloud. From the perspective of car companies, as long as Huawei's smart car solutions are adopted directly or on demand, the difficulty of developing new cars can be greatly reduced.

Taking the Q&I M5 as an example, the car is related to The HarmonyOS car machine, HUAWEI SUUND sound system, HUAWEI SuperCharge wireless charging, and also supports the interconnection with Huawei HarmonyOS devices, and can also view and control the vehicle through Huawei watches; the discontinued Cyrus SF5 and the Huawei three-in-one electric drive system. Let's put it this way, if you cover the brand logo and look at the various Huawei configurations inside, it is estimated that everyone's first reaction is "this is a Huawei car."

For Huawei, the entering automotive industry actually has its own ecological considerations. In China, the xiaomi ecology should be the best ecology, and the second place should be Huawei.

The number of Huawei's ecosystem-related products should not be as much as Xiaomi's, but the main products Huawei are covered, and the car is the last layout point of Huawei's ecology. Through Huawei's smart car solutions, cars can achieve the same "Internet of Everything" as mobile phones, and the gap between cars and mobile phones, cars and watches, cars and home intelligence, mobile phones and home intelligence, watches and home intelligence will be much less than before.

For Huawei, this is a new business growth point and a moat for its own business. In the current highly developed society, if a company wants to maintain long-term competitiveness, it is more important to develop the "irreplaceability" of its own products. The simplest in this process is to raise the "sunk cost" of consumers.

For example, when you have a "Huawei car", will you choose a Huawei mobile phone in order to be able to easily control and view the vehicle information? That mobile phone has, can work with Huawei mobile phone Huawei computer should not consider it? Should we consider Huawei's smart home solutions that can make the home more "smart"?

When you have these things, it is quite expensive to replace cars, mobile phones, computers, etc. with other brands.

summary:

Due to U.S. sanctions, Huawei's technology development is now much slower. But it is undeniable that Huawei's terminals have reached a height that other domestic friends have not reached.

In the automotive industry, although Huawei provides a full set of solutions, its own right to speak is actually not large, and the sales of the M5 that stand on its own platform and wave the flag are not too good. But fortunately, Huawei's current positioning is still a "supplier", and brands such as Changan, E-An, and Mercedes-Benz have cooperated with Huawei. Even if we can't see the car with the Huawei logo on it, there is no shortage of Huawei figures on the car now. In the future, perhaps Huawei's vision of "Internet of Everything" may really be realized.

And all we have to do is wait quietly.