Li Shufu wants to take lei jun's "old road"?

The rumor that Geely Automobile will acquire Meizu, which has been rumored for nearly 4 months, is probably about to settle down.

Recently, there are media reports that Meizu has been acquired by Geely and is currently completing the closing stage. In this regard, Geely said that it "will not evaluate the market rumors for the time being.".

Four months ago, Caijing reporter confirmed from people familiar with the relevant transaction that Hubei Xingji Times Technology, a mobile phone company under Geely, was in contact with Meizu to negotiate the acquisition and had entered the due diligence stage. In this regard, Geely said that it would not comment, and Meizu replied "thank you for your concern for Meizu".

According to the past practice, this non-committal attitude is equivalent to acquiescence, coupled with the hints of information in all aspects and the coincidence of the timeline, which can basically do the authenticity of the actual rumors.

This is easy to think of Lei Jun, who announced the construction of the car at about the same time. Although both sides are grasping mobile phones with one hand and cars with the other, Li Shufu is undoubtedly a "retrograde" in the car-making army, and why did he choose to embark on lei jun's "old road" at this point in time?

In response to the rumors of Geely's acquisition of Meizu, external analysis generally believes that for Geely, this is an important step in seizing the key node of the Internet of Everything and revitalizing the entire ecology; as for Meizu, it can also rely on Geely's powerful resources to regain a new life.

It seems like a good win-win game.

Lei Jun built a car, Li Shufu made a mobile phone, and they all ended up together

Li Shufu and Lei Jun, one car and one mobile phone, do not have much intersection.

Li Shufu transformed into a car company in the era of no one, no money, no technology, and no policy support, and finally realized his "car dream" in the change of the times; Lei Jun founded Xiaomi in 2010, achieved annual sales of 7.9 million units in two years, ended the domestic cottage machine era in three years, achieved the first mobile phone shipment in the country in four years, and realized his "mobile phone dream" by stepping on the wind outlet.

Success in their respective fields contributed to the first time the two were in the same frame. In 2013, Lei Jun was awarded the honor of "Practitioner of the Chinese Dream", and Li Shufu presented him with the "Chinese Dream" Tribute Cup. In the photos left behind, both are smiling.

Li Shufu and Lei Jun's second remarkable intersection stemmed from attacking each other's hinterland eight years later.

In March 2021, at the Xiaomi Spring New Product Conference, Lei Jun announced a high-profile car-making, with an initial investment of 10 billion yuan, and a cumulative investment of 10 billion US dollars in the next 10 years; in September of the same year, Geely Group established Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd., Li Shufu announced that it officially entered the mobile phone field, positioned the high-end field, and the headquarters was located in the Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone in Hubei Province.

Lei Jun, who made mobile phones, began to build cars, and Li Shufu, who built cars, began to build mobile phones, or in Wuhan, lei jun's base camp. Two seemingly parallel lines of relationship began to compete with each other, attracting various media outlets to report on it.

Xiaomi made a car, Lei Jun thought about it 3 years ago. At the Xiaomi Annual Meeting held in early 2019, Lei Jun announced the launch of the "mobile phone + AIoT (Artificial Intelligence Internet of Things)" dual-engine strategy. As an important terminal in AIoT, car building has become the proper meaning of Xiaomi's twin-engine strategy.

Geely makes mobile phones, and Li Shufu's goal is also very clear. Positioning high-end mobile phones and looking at the global market is intended to achieve close interaction between car machines and mobile phone software technology, and to empower each other and achieve synergy in terms of intelligence.

Lei Jun and Li Shufu invariably share the layout of mobile phones and cars, which stems from the increasingly close relationship between mobile phones and cars. Nowadays, with the trend of intelligent networking, smart cars have been regarded as the third generation of intelligent mobile terminals after PCs and smart phones, and to achieve the third generation of intelligent terminals, they must rely on the help of mobile phones.

As Wang Jian, then chairman of Alibaba Group's technology committee, said at the 10th TC Automotive Internet Conference in 2017: After many years, no matter how smart the car is claimed, there are still car owners who buy a set of nine-pack mobile phone holders and prepare them in the car.

Apple began to build cars, Huawei built cars under the banner of "not building cars"; car companies Tesla and Weilai rumored that they wanted to build mobile phones, all of which are the same reason. For a company, the importance of having these two closely related businesses at the same time is self-evident, and the sooner it is laid out, the better, and the consequence of sitting still is to be slaughtered.

Therefore, it is not difficult to see that Lei Jun built the car for the car, and the fundamental purpose of Li Shufu's mobile phone is also for the car, and the two seem to run opposites, but in fact, they have the same destination.

It's just that making different choices for the same purpose also means having different odds of winning for each other. Under the wave of new energy, Lei Jun, who has moved from making mobile phones to building cars, has chosen a game from limited to wireless. In the context of the mobile phone dividend period has passed and the growth has peaked, Li Shufu, who has moved from making cars to making mobile phones, has obviously chosen a more difficult road.

The outside world has questioned one after another, but how to go this way, how to improve the odds of winning, the acquisition of "crazy man" Li Shufu is too familiar. Without him, only the acquisition.

Huang Zhang rejected Lei Jun and walked towards Li Shufu

For Meizu, when it is dying, it has become the best destination to be acquired by Geely.

The different trends of Meizu and Xiaomi have also become two new development trends in the mobile phone industry in the current Red Sea. One side is represented by Xiaomi, through the user's mobile phone in the industry to gain a firm foothold, now looking for new areas, the development of new mobile phone manufacturers; the other side is Meizu as the representative, a corner of the side to do fans of the mobile phone, as the market share is constantly eroded, looking for large companies to continue to live mobile phone manufacturers.

Lei Jun and Huang Zhang, who have embarked on different paths, once had a story of confidants becoming enemies.

Lei Jun was once a big fan of Meizu. In 2009, Huang Zhang manufactured the first touchscreen smartphone Meizu M8 in China, at this time, Lei Jun had just retired from the position of CEO of Kingsoft Not long ago, Fortune Freedom was looking for the next entrepreneurial outlet.

At that time, Meizu M8, like a bombshell thrown at the domestic mobile phone market, created a sales miracle of 500 million yuan in five months, Lei Jun praised it, and often took out the Meizu M8 at dinner occasions to explain to people.

He praised Meizu for "there are only two Internet mobile phone companies in the world: one is Apple and the other is Meizu." He also admired Huang Zhang's craftsman spirit: "Meizu is one of the few companies in China that does things with heart. ”

Like-minded, The relationship between Lei Jun and Huang Zhang quickly warmed up, and the two have discussed a lot of mobile phones in Huang Zhang's office since then. During the period, it was reported that Lei Jun intended to invest in Meizu, and Huang Zhang also considered inviting Lei Jun as CEO.

Meizu was a family business from the beginning, and Huang Zhang naturally maintained a certain vigilance against external investment. When he weighed the balance left and right, Lei Jun had decided to do a software company on his own, and as Lei Jun made the MIUI system, the two sides turned against each other.

Huang Zhang repeatedly scolded Lei Jun as a liar in the forum, saying that he had defrauded many Meizu trade secrets under the banner of angel investors, "the overall concept, development process, supplier selection, production and sales plan, core personnel introduction and financial statements, etc." "Even the UI interactive documents of the mobile phone were sent to him to discuss together."

Lei Jun's response was: "That was his family's word." ”

Later, the millet founded by Lei Jun in Beijing rose rapidly, but Huang Zhang, who was guarding in Zhuhai, in the golden period of mobile phone development, gradually went to a dead end due to a series of problems such as choosing the wrong product strategy, the game with capital, the confrontation with Qualcomm, the frequent internal organizational management problems, and Huang Zhang's own several retreats and exits.

At that time, Huang Zhang desperately made a high-end bet and cut off the sales engine Charm Blue series. He himself has a maverick personality, retreating several times and going out of the mountains several times, coming and going, constantly shaking the power structure within Meizu.

Under the influence of unclear strategy and Huang Zhang's personal will, a large number of senior executives such as Yang Tuo, senior vice president, Bai Yongxiang, co-founder, Yang Yan, senior vice president and president of Flyme business unit, and Li Nan, vice president of Meizu, founder of Charm Blue, have left one after another. The ensuing airborne team can not be well integrated with the original team, the new faction and the old faction are independent, the differences are serious, and the internal friction is constantly attrition, which accelerates the process of Meizu's decline. According to data released by market research agency BCI, by the end of January 2021, Meizu's market share has been eroded to 0.1%.

Lei Jun has gradually realized the name of "Rebbs", and Huang Zhang, who was once known as "China's Jobs", has been powerless to return to heaven after taking Meizu through a small and beautiful route, machine sea tactics, cost-effective strategy, and streamlining strategy, and Meizu is expelled from the mobile phone market only sooner or later.

In this context, the struggling Huang Zhang met Li Shufu, who was planning a transformation for Geely.

Although from the perspective of market share, Meizu has been completely reduced to a marginal role, it cannot be denied that Meizu has a mature mobile phone research and development team, rich mobile phone manufacturing experience, perfect channels and brand awareness accumulated over the years, and its design and Flyme OS operating system have also had a great impact on the industry.

Therefore, for Geely, if you want to create mobile phones and cars interconnected, and quickly make your own ecological barriers, the acquisition of Meizu is the most direct and effective strategy.

Market competition is cruel, and enterprises without scale will eventually face the choice of "life" or "death". For Meizu, being acquired by Geely is also an opportunity to retain the fire and regain its new life.

Li Shufu joined hands with Huang Zhang, the time is just right?

In leifeng network view, geely anxious in the future, Meizu struggle in the present, each need each other to open up a new imagination, so it hit it off.

Unlike Dong Mingzhu, who built mobile phones for Gree from scratch, Li Shufu chose to exchange money for time in the face of unfamiliar mobile phone fields, which is also his consistent style.

In recent years, Geely has actively laid out the future technology field, and it is difficult for the outside world to define it as a car company.

In 2018, Geely strategically invested in aerospace technology company "Space-time Daoyu", becoming the first car company in China to independently develop low-orbit satellites, and entered the mass production stage in September last year. In 2020, Wofei Long Sky was established to do flying cars and drones. In January this year, while the news of the acquisition of Meizu was announced, Geely announced the establishment of a joint venture with Lifan Technology to establish Ruilan Automobile, which was laid out in the power exchange and expanded the scope of operations, aiming at the entire battery ecology.

Smart cars, flying cars, low-orbit satellites, chip research and development, it is not difficult to see that Li Shufu wants to create a comprehensive intelligent ecosystem. Today's involvement in the field of mobile phones is intended to seize the key nodes of the Internet of Everything.

In addition to having the genes of high-end mobile phones, Meizu also has certain software capabilities. At the end of 2020, Meizu officially released the high-end smart home brand Lipro, and updated the Flyme OS system the following year, realizing the use of voice assistant Aicy to control the smart home.

For Geely, its fundamental purpose is vehicle-machine collaboration, and Meizu's software capabilities are just needed at the moment.

Let's look at the real problems that Geely is facing.

With the continuous expansion of its business territory, Geely's operating costs began to soar, with operating costs of 48.9 billion yuan in 2016 and rising to 88.2 billion yuan by 2020. At the same time, the total revenue showed a clear downward trend, and negative growth began in 2019. Net profit also fell from 12.6 billion yuan in 2018 to 5.5 billion yuan in 2020.

As for the new energy vehicle field announced in 2015, Li Shufu's original plan was to achieve new energy vehicle sales accounting for more than 90% of the total sales by 2020, but the actual data accounted for less than 5%, far lower than his expectations, and far below the industry average of 12%.

In the face of future worries, Li Shufu found a new stimulus point for Geely, that is, mobile phones, the purpose is to revitalize the intelligent ecology and pull a new growth curve.

Looking back at the development of Xiaomi's "mobile phone + AIoT" in recent years, it can be found that Xiaomi is seeking its own secondary growth by exploring the ecological industry.

In 2018, Xiaomi was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to ring the bell, and xiaomi clarified its positioning in the prospectus: "Xiaomi is an Internet company with mobile phones, smart hardware and IoT (Internet of Things) platform as the core. "The AIoT strategy was set at the time as the core development strategy of Xiaomi in the next 5-10 years.

In Xiaomi's latest 2021 financial report, Xiaomi's total revenue in 2021 was 328.3 billion yuan, an increase of 33.5% year-on-year. The smartphone business, accounting for 63.6%, still accounts for the majority of the annual revenue, and IoT and consumer products account for 25.9% of the total revenue.

For Lei Jun, the commercialization of Xiaomi mobile phones has been very successful, but with the peak of dividends, mobile phone manufacturers have gradually matured, which means that the supply chain behind them is also gradually converging. With the loss of differentiated competitive advantage, it is only a matter of time before it goes downhill.

Therefore, on March 30 last year, Lei Jun announced at the Xiaomi new product launch conference that "this is my last venture, I will bet on everything and fight for Xiaomi cars." For Lei Jun, choosing to join the car-making army at this time is helpless, and it is also his personal heroism.

The mobile phone industry and the automotive industry have moved from parallel to intersecting, showing the future direction of the entire industry. Li Shufu, Huang Zhang, and Lei Jun, who have attracted much attention because of this acquisition incident, are all smart people who choose to follow the trend under the tide of the times.

At the beginning, Huang Zhang rejected Lei Jun because the mobile phone market is still a blue ocean and has a choice; now that Geely has acquired Meizu, Li Shufu has joined hands with Huang Zhang, and he is afraid that he will soon have no choice.

This seemingly "win-win" good chess has just fallen, because the opposite competitors are numerous and strong enough, how the future chess game will go, but also to see the after-effect.