Depots and mobile phone factories blow the horn of the interconnection of cars and machines

The illustrations are from Canva Paintable

At present, it is not a strange thing for enterprises to cross borders. On the side of mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi announced a year ago that it would enter the electric vehicle market with tens of billions of dollars, which is currently said to be "progressing smoothly"; Huawei is slowly trying to do so, although it has not directly made cars, but has also reached in-depth cooperation with a number of car manufacturers. In terms of automakers, Weilai announced the time to do mobile phones, but before Xiaomi announced the car, but it is still in the "very early stage of market research"; Geely reported the acquisition of Meizu at the beginning of the year, I don't know how the current progress is.

In short, these cross-border players, whether it is a mobile phone crossover car or a car cross-border mobile phone, both sides want to break into each other's hinterland. However, because the market environment between the automobile and mobile phone industries is very different, there are significant differences in the purpose and attitude of cross-border between each other.

Two-way crossover

At present, the smartphone market and the new energy vehicle market show completely different forms. The domestic smart phone market has been saturated, that is to say, for mobile phone manufacturers, stock competition can no longer meet the pursuit of capital for profits. The new energy vehicle is a relatively new market, and in the mutual game with traditional oil vehicles, the digitization and intelligence of new energy vehicles have become a trend. In this context, the cross-border behavior of mobile phone manufacturers and automobile manufacturers has the value of comparing with each other.

First of all, the two sides have different purposes for crossing borders with each other. Mobile phone manufacturers build cars in order to break through the existing mobile phone market that has touched the ceiling and grab a piece of the emerging new energy vehicle market. The reason why it is a new energy vehicle market, one is because this market is large enough, and the potential has not yet been exerted; the second is because the existence of oil vehicles, although the development of new energy vehicles is delayed, but in fact, the pace of competition between new energy vehicle companies is slowed down, so that mobile phone manufacturers have the opportunity to enter the market.

The car manufacturers make mobile phones in order to comply with the wave of digitalization and intelligence, and it is better to seek people than to seek themselves, and simply do it themselves. In the view of new energy manufacturers, smart cars will be a new form of intelligent terminals, but also an important use case for new applications, in which the positioning of smart phones is the medium that connects people and cars. However, few of the current smart phones are adapted specifically for smart cars, and after all, there is a "heart and stomach" between mobile phone manufacturers and car manufacturers, so it is not surprising that they personally go down.

Second, the two sides have different cross-border attitudes towards each other. For mobile phone manufacturers, the ultra-high investment in the car has decided that not anyone can do it, whether it is Xiaomi or Huawei, in the Chinese mobile phone market are the leading enterprises, the volume is huge, the cash flow is abundant, but also need to be very cautious treatment, are strategic radical, tactical caution. For automakers, mobile phones are made to enhance product strength and auxiliary cars sell better, but after all, they do not involve fundamental interests, so they are slightly arbitrary.

Millet, Huawei: broad grain, slowly king

Although many mobile phone manufacturers have rumors of entering the car in the network, Huawei and Xiaomi are at the forefront in action. However, the difference between the two is huge after all, Xiaomi is a typical To C company, there is a strong sense of service in business thinking, and it has also moved a lot of experience in making mobile phones to the car; Huawei is a veteran To B company, even after the product turns to To C, its bones still retain a tendency to cooperate with enterprises.

Xiaomi is using its own idea of making mobile phones to build cars. In addition to forming a team of self-research, Xiaomi's most important measure is to buy and buy in the upstream and downstream of the automotive industry chain, and the behavior of "being merciful everywhere" in the fields of power batteries, sensors, chips, automotive electronic components and automatic driving is similar to its practice of strengthening the mobile phone supply chain and xiaomi ecosystem? It is said that the price of Xiaomi's new car is still lower than that of the same level of cars, and it is close to its idea of making smart phones, and it is thanks to its hard work in the supply chain that Xiaomi can take a stable and cost-effective sign in the new field.

Huawei adopts a roundabout strategy, choosing to be the "man behind" many car manufacturers. First, because the car is much more complicated than the mobile phone, in the current special historical node rushed "stud", will bring a lot of pressure to Huawei; second, because the mobile phone business continues to decline, Huawei will see the smart car business as a new growth point to make up for this vacancy, and by the way, it can also use the mobile phone flagship store as a sales channel to open the car sales channel; the third is because Huawei does not build cars, but can go deep into the fields of three electric systems, intelligent cockpits and intelligent driving, becoming a more upstream core technology supplier, sitting firmly on the Diaoyutai.

According to public information, Huawei and Polar Fox released the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version in April last year, and its deeply involved car industry M5 has also been listed, but Huawei's top management is still reiterating that "it will not build cars"; and Xiaomi's speed is thunderous, a year ago announced that tens of billions of dollars into the field of electric vehicles, has now fallen in Beijing, and is expected to achieve mass production in 2024. Overall, the way Xiaomi and Huawei enter the car can be called "broad grain, slowly claiming the king", although the strategic goal is long-term and radical, but the tactics are still relying on their own step by step.

Weilai, Auspicious: The Red Sea grabs food, and has other intentions

Compared with mobile phone manufacturers cross-border cars, automotive manufacturers' cross-border mobile phones are actually much lower in difficulty. First, because although the smart phone market has exhausted the dividends and is not done, the capital required to make mobile phones is less than that of the automotive industry, and the technology is relatively mature, and the car manufacturers are more or less rich and can bear the corresponding cost; the second is because the car manufacturers do mobile phones in order to improve the automobile ecology, and the pursuit of market share is actually to the back row.

In making mobile phones, Geely has consistently integrated the means of resource integration in the past. In September 2021, Geely established "Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd." and announced that it would spend tens of billions of yuan to enter the high-end smartphone market. On the one hand, Geely has taken out the style of integrating Volvo that year, and has begun to negotiate with Meizu, which has not been in a good state in recent years; on the other hand, Geely has also seen the general trend of automobile intelligence, if it is no longer hard work in software and seizes the intelligent entrance, then it may become an OEM factory for other technology-based enterprises in the future.

Compared with the more clear main line revealed by Geely, how Weilai does mobile phones does not seem to have a clear conclusion. In the face of related inquiries, the official response was "there is no information available for disclosure at present" and also made it clear that "we do not consider doing OEM". Previously, in February, a blogger broke the news, saying that Weilai had recruited a large number of mobile phone research and development related positions in recent months, and Yin Shuijun, the former president of Meitu Mobile Phone, had also joined and was responsible for related business. Therefore, Weilai mobile phone may take the road of self-research, and it should be positioned as high-end as the car.

In fact, the reason why we chose to enter the game at such a time when the smart phone market has been saturated or even shrinking, the car manufacturers are nothing more than "intended to be Peigong". Geely and Weilai have the same purpose of making mobile phones, but the difference between them is that Geely has a high probability of taking the acquisition route, hoping to directly use the existing R & D design and manufacturing experience, operating system and channels of mobile phone manufacturers; the other is that Weilai has a high probability of taking the self-developed route, hoping to start from scratch and let the mobile phone serve the car-machine synergy at the beginning of the design.

Seize the smart ecological admission ticket

Overall, whether it is a cross-border car of mobile phone manufacturers or a cross-border mobile phone of an automobile manufacturer, there seems to be a certain meaning of the same destination in it.

After cars – especially those with new energy-powered systems – have been recognized as the next viable form of smart terminals, the need for synergy between "people + mobile phones + cars" has become increasingly valued. From this point of view, it seems that the same trend of mobile phone manufacturers and car manufacturers can be explained to some extent.

For mobile phones and car manufacturers, each other's fields are an indispensable part of building a "people + mobile phones + cars" intelligent ecology. However, from the perspective of the relatively mature ecology and application level of today's smart phones, the potential of smart cars as mobile terminals is still at a low level. For this, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely, believes that mobile phones can "transfer a part of the results of safety and reliability to the application of automobiles, and realize the close interaction between car machines and mobile phone software technology."

That is to say, only after the common use of mobile phones and cars can it be regarded as the "admission ticket" to master the intelligent ecology in the new era. It is conceivable that after the ecosystem of smart cars and smartphones are interconnected, just as mobile phone manufacturers have established collaboration with various industries while meeting consumer demand, automakers can also obtain a wide range of Internet ports like mobile phone manufacturers and become providers of more upstream value-added services.

Text/Financial Reference, ID: Jrwaican