Geely wants to buy Meizu? The acquisition of small mobile phone factories is their best ending

"Finally... It's coming."

I believe that the "kerosene" who recently saw "Meizu" on the list on weibo hot search will giggle in their hearts.

As early as early January this year, 36 Kr received news that Geely's mobile phone company was in contact with Meizu to negotiate the acquisition.

As soon as the news came out, the mobile phone circle set off an uproar, everyone did not think that Meizu would send people to the fence one day, but did not expect that it would be Auspicious who would hold Meizu's hand and continue to move forward.

In this regard, neither Geely nor Meizu has made an official response, and for the media reports, Meizu officials have only replied: "Thank you for your concern for Meizu."

Although both sides tacitly avoided the acquisition rumors, in the following time, there were still more details of the acquisition.

In March, there were rumors that Geely and Meizu had reached the bargaining stage, and recently there was news that the acquisition had reached the final stage, and Meizu, as a "small mobile phone factory", was about to become a "car factory".

Everyone is so "concerned" about Meizu is not without reason, now 2022 has almost half of the past, the major mobile phone manufacturers have released this year's flagship series of mobile phones, only Meizu 19 series is delayed in the future, which inevitably causes people to worry, Meizu digital series can not survive 2022.

Is Meizu about to change its flavor? Before answering this question, let us put aside the past honors and feelings, for the mobile phone factory that is seeking survival in the cracks, being acquired may be the best destination.

The market no longer believes in "polishing"

Meizu is one of the brands that must not be mentioned when talking about the development of China's smartphones, at least in the Bronze Age of smartphones.

In 2009, meizu cross-border made the first smart phone M8, mobile phones replaced MP3 players to become the main business of this Zhuhai company, and in the following 10 years, Meizu mobile phone shipments once exceeded 20 million units, sales exceeded 20 billion yuan, once occupied the commanding heights of domestic mobile phones.

However, the good times are not long, Meizu's high sales volume created by relying on the machine sea tactics cannot be sustained, and meizu's sales have gradually declined after the growth of the mobile phone market has entered a flat period.

According to CINNO Reaserch's mobile phone sales monitoring data, Meizu shipped 1.4% of the domestic market in 2019, selling about 5.43 million mobile phones. When people lament that Meizu is still under the fight of the big factory after all, they do not know that this is already meizu's "last glory".

Also from the 2021 domestic mobile phone sales data calculated by CINNO Research, Meizu has disappeared from the top ten list, ranking behind Samsung, which accounts for 0.6% of shipments (about 1.88 million), and divides 1.9% of the market with other small mobile phone manufacturers.

Compared with 5 years ago, Meizu's situation can be described as a plummet. Once upon a time, Meizu was still a literary and artistic brother who held a "concert" every month, and now like Su Can, who was unsuccessful in Wu Zhuangyuan, he had a kung fu but no place to play.

Meizu's decline is inseparable from its internal chaotic management and the repeated departures of executives, but the more important reason is that consumers have begun to forget Meizu, which is a fatal injury for Meizu.

Take the Meizu flagship mobile phone 18 Pro released last year as an example, which is a very balanced mobile phone in all aspects, and it is difficult to pick out faults in hardware and software.

However, under the siege of various scare words such as GN2 super-bottom taken out by Xiaomi, 120W fast charging of vivo, Huawei's computing optics, OPPO's full-link 10Bit and so on, consumers seem to be unable to find a particularly prominent memory point on the 18 Pro.

▲ Meizu had promised zero advertising, zero push, zero pre-installed "three zero" guarantee, which has now been withdrawn

At present, the stimulation threshold of consumers has been collectively raised by the "inner volume marketing" of mobile phone manufacturers, and Meizu has not brought more freshness after the small circle and mback, and naturally cannot find a reason to choose Meizu mobile phones, resulting in the embarrassing situation that old users continue to lose and new users are not interested.

Today, only the old "kerosene" who believes in the extreme, believes in dreams, and believes in love is left with Meizu, but how far can Meizu go forward with the ultimate of Meizu's belief?

Meizu's "extreme", different from the mechanical extreme that pushes the machine to the limit in the conventional sense, is a kind of craftsman's pursuit that contains temperature, and it is the best grip that Huang Zhang takes the wooden board to polish the MX3 over and over again; it is the "Ru kiln white" that has been painted 7 times, baked 7 times, and polished 5 times.

Ten years ago, the "extreme" Meizu could attract a group of maverick users, but ten years later, this extreme is difficult to make a sound in the market, because people need no longer a toy that makes people unstoppable, but a tool that can change their lives.

In order to meet these needs, manufacturers are not competing for "polishing", but to see who can use the latest core hardware in the supply chain the fastest, who can make the most algorithms and functions, which is exactly what the small-scale Meizu lacks the most.

Due to the small size, small factories are often slower than Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other large manufacturers to get new components, which means that when people have been on the Snapdragon 8, Tianji 9000 flagship CPU fresh energy has passed, small factories have the opportunity to whisper their new machines.

In terms of core technical strength, the disadvantages of small manufacturers have been further expanded. The rich and powerful factories have invested tens of billions of dollars, a team of 1,000 people to develop their own photographic chips and algorithms, or spent years developing their own charging protocols to make an impression on consumers to make an impression of the "difference point".

To catch up with the pace of large factories, it means that a lot of time, manpower and capital investment is required, which makes any small factory look prohibitive.

The mobile phone market has long passed the era of "soil workshop", and now everyone is fighting a war of attrition, self-developed chip development, software systems need a lot of resources, and it is difficult for small manufacturers like Meizu to use stories and feelings to bypass the arms race to launch surprise attacks like in the past.

This is also why, even though the Meizu 18 Pro still feels superior and the temperament is still literary, sales have never gone up.

If sales cannot continue to support development, and there is no strong financial support behind the company, then the small factory that "applauds but does not applaud" is likely to be eaten away step by step in the end, becoming another proof of the Matthew effect.

Pack up and go again

Since the mobile phone market cannot open the situation, Meizu is also trying to open up new markets outside mobile phones and find new living space.

In 2020, Meizu established a sub-brand Lipro to enter the smart home market. A year later, Meizu set up the Chaoku brand PANDAER, focusing on the business of digital accessories and life peripheral products.

It is not difficult to see from the spring new product viewing meeting opened by Meizu for Lipro and PANDAER in April this year that Meizu's market focus has begun to change, and mobile phones are no longer the only pillar of Meizu, but let people buy their home products and digital peripherals.

Since PANDAER released a series of iPhone accessories, some Meizu users also laughed at themselves as Meizu's "best Apple accessories manufacturer".

After all, the accessories business is difficult to support the main business of mobile phones, and hammer technology, which was jokingly called "the best Apple accessories manufacturer", has now been acquired by ByteDance and has never been involved in the mobile phone business.

Therefore, Meizu is also looked at by Geely, who also wants to make mobile phones, which is not a bad thing. In September 2021, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, founded Star Era and spent more than 10 billion yuan to enter the high-end mobile phone market.

The difficulty of traditional car companies to build high-end mobile phones is not less difficult than the difficulty of mobile phone companies to build cars, if the car is to compete in industrial design, supply chain management and other "hard tricks", then the high-end mobile phone competition is the combination of software and hardware functions, brand marketing and other "ingenuity".

For Geely, who has no experience in building machines, acquiring a mature and perfect mobile phone team is indeed a shortcut to accelerate the achievement of the goal.

Geely, who is eager to create a "mobile phone - automobile ecosystem", and Meizu, whose product research and development are weakening, want to walk together, just like Tang Sanzang, who went to the Western Heavens to learn the scriptures, met Sun Wukong under the Five Finger Mountain, and met each other at the right point in time.

But whether this pair of "masters and apprentices" who have not yet achieved a final result can ultimately be cultivated depends on whether they can experience the eighty-one difficulties of the mobile phone market, you know, on this road to learn the scriptures, there is no shortage of "bones" of predecessors such as BlackBerry and Nokia.

It is an indisputable fact that the cake of the mobile phone market is shrinking day by day.

The data released by the Communication Institute shows that mobile phone manufacturers did not encounter the peak sales season after the Spring Festival in previous years this year, and the total shipment of the domestic mobile phone market in February 2022 was 14.9 million units, down 31.7% year-on-year, while the total shipments from January to February this year were only 47.9 million units, down 22.6% year-on-year.

The decline in market demand will force the giants of the industry to invest more resources in development, create new selling points to stimulate consumer purchases, and the mobile phone industry will also change to a capital- and labor-intensive industry.

Under this change in the general environment, small manufacturers with weak capital can easily fall into a dilemma - continue to fight with large manufacturers, it is difficult to save themselves; it is difficult to make a living by withdrawing from the mobile phone market on which they depend.

Once, hammer, one plus, Meizu is considered to be the "small and beautiful" of the three representatives, now the three different choices have created different results: one plus returned to the Oujia Group, tired birds returned to the forest; the hammer took off the clothes of the craftsmen, the goose passed without a trace; Meizu, who is still pursuing its dreams, waiting to be fed.

In addition to the three, there are many more Internet mobile phone brands such as Big Coke, Little Pepper, LeTV, 360 and so on in the same period that have not yet taken off, and have already collapsed, bankrupt or been forgotten.

When the small mobile phone factory is in a difficult situation, it can be pulled ashore by a strong hand, get the support of funds and manpower, or become a resource for others to realize their dreams, which is indeed a rare and good ending.

The pursuit is still derived from love, the ultimate is still derived from the dream, but in this era where the volume of voice is equal to sales and sales are equal to everything, Meizu, or the small mobile phone factories, have been difficult to realize their dreams on their own.