The rumors of "Geely or the acquisition of Meizu" that broke out earlier were finally confirmed, zhuhai small factories found a rich gold owner father, the control of the founder Huang Zhangzhi was completely weakened, whether in the industry or ordinary users, Meizu really has hope to stand up this time.
According to the official information announcement on June 13, Li Shufu's Xingji Times has signed an agreement with Meizu Technology to acquire 79.09% of its equity and become the largest shareholder in one fell swoop. With the takeover of the Geely system, not only will Taobao China completely withdraw from the holding of Meizu, but also the equity of founder Huang Zhang will be reduced from 27.23% to 9.79%. This means that Geely will henceforth become the absolute controller of Meizu.
Judging from the acquisition action, Geely is the first traditional car company in China to attach importance to the integration of "car-machine interconnection" terminals. It obviously covets Meizu's ability accumulation in the design and manufacture of mobile phone software and hardware, and at the same time preemptively lays out the competitive track of future intelligent car and machine interconnection and integration. For Meizu, after receiving financial and resource support from Geely, it also has the confidence to compete with big manufacturers in the field of mobile phones.
More crucially, although Meizu is also yellow, it is also yellow chapter. Now, after the Geely system has gained completely independent control, Meizu can finally get rid of the shackles of the founder's style system and have a freer space to play.
Car companies make mobile phones, the trend is gradually rising?
Many people feel that the acquisition of Meizu may be able to change the current Geely market performance of the extremely crotch-pulling car machine system, after all, there is Huawei Hongmeng OS Zhuyu in front, "mobile phone manufacturers to do car machine is undoubtedly a dimensionality reduction blow." In fact, with the research and development capabilities of the Meizu Flyme team, Geely's car machine is indeed worth looking forward to. But I think the real main purpose of Geely's acquisition of Meizu is to build mobile phones.
Car companies make mobile phones, and ultimately still serve the car, which is a very clever closed-loop logic. In the era of software-defined cars, the importance of smart cockpits is self-evident, and Apple CEO Tim Cook once said: "Smart cars will be the ultimate form of mobile devices." "However, no matter how smart the car is, it cannot replace the status of mobile phones, and the portability and popularity alone are far inferior, so in the era of the Internet of Everything, the smart cockpit and the mobile phone must be closely connected."
This can be demonstrated by the simplest example, and no matter what brand of car you are currently driving, as long as it supports Apple CarPlay, you will definitely open it before driving. That is to say, mobile phones can replace part of the intelligence of the car, but the car cannot in turn, because people cut off contact as soon as they leave the car.
Car companies want to create the strongest intelligent cockpit in the future, or do not give the initiative to mobile phone manufacturers, or in the face of competitive pressure from mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi Huawei to transform cars, they must strengthen their software research and development capabilities and try to do mobile phones.
Geely is not the first car company to want to build a mobile phone, and Tesla and Weilai in the field of electric vehicles have clearly expressed the same will. In May this year, Weilai founder Li Bin said in an interview: "Weilai will launch a mobile phone in the near future, which will be paired with Weilai electric vehicles. ”
Car companies make mobile phones, the core is still ultimately for the car's intelligence, networking, information services.
Car companies make mobile phones, do you dare to buy them?
Cross-border seems to be a very easy thing to do in the Internet age. With the openness and transparency of the supply chain, technology manufacturers can build whatever they want as long as they have money. In the past, mobile phone manufacturers have crossed the border smart TV, smart home hardware, headphones and watches and other wearable devices, etc., and now they have to build cars. In turn, it is obviously not difficult for car companies to make mobile phones.
But what is rare is that people will buy mobile phones made by car companies? On the one hand, software research and development capabilities are the most lacking shortcomings of car companies, from the performance of a number of crotch-pulling car machines on the market, it can be seen that the car machine tablets created by Qualcomm's recent generations of Snapdragon chips are not as smooth as Android prototypes, and restarting stuck is more frequent;
On the other hand, the smartphone market has long been a "red sea", in the face of Apple OV Xiaomi's siege, car companies such a stunned youth is not to say stand up, even survival is a big problem.
Think of that year, Gree Dong Mingzhu also made a bold ambition: "My own Gree mobile phone is not worse than Apple." "As a result, up to now, Gree mobile phones do not dare to take out and sell publicly, 7 years only rely on internal consumption of 35,000 units, whether it is performance, design, or price has been crushed by mobile phone manufacturers, simply can not be on the table."
Therefore, it is definitely a very difficult and very low success thing for car companies to build mobile phones, even after they are built, I am afraid that not many consumers will pay for it. And like Geely's direct acquisition of Meizu, it is undoubtedly a very smart approach, but this kind of thing requires capital strength on the one hand, on the other hand, the opportunity is rare, meizu may not be able to find a second similar mobile phone manufacturer.