NIO made a mobile phone, was it forced by Apple?
Recently, a Weibo blogger said that NIO CEO Li Bin revealed some information about NIO's mobile phone in a group chat:
* Sina Weibo
"The basic performance is very good", the feel is "absolutely good", and the back design is "NIO at a glance".
Soon, Li Bin officially said at the earnings conference that "mobile phone products will be delivered in late September."
*Global Network
Although the actual machine has not yet flowed out, NIO Phone has previously passed the radio approval of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and there are Antutu running scores.
The machine has achieved a total score of 1360974 points, a CPU score of 355091 points, and a GPU score of 434891 points.
Judging from Li Bin's words and running scores, Lao Hu believes that this mobile phone is a mid-to-high-end positioning, with a price of about 5,000 to 7,000.
The "future" of NIO
Car companies make mobile phones, it is not a miracle, but NIO is the loudest of the slogans, and it is also implemented more thoroughly.
Li Bin once said that the reason for making mobile phones, most of NIO owners are iPhone users, limited by the closed nature of the iPhone in the car, so he came up with the idea of making his own smart terminal.
Mobile phones are not as complex as cars, but to be manufactured from scratch and produced continuously, they must be invested heavily and uninterrupted.
Even a large factory like Xiaomi that has been cultivating for many years, the relevant technology research and development investment is not a lot, not long ago held the annual conference, Lei Jun said that the next 5 years to invest hundreds of billions.
* Sina Technology
To continue to invest, companies need to have a good financial position, so what is NIO's current financial situation?
Not long ago, NIO released its financial report for the second quarter of 2023, with revenue of 8.772 billion yuan, down 14.8% year-on-year and 17.8% month-on-month.
On June 20, NIO signed a share subscription agreement with Abu Dhabi investor CYVN Holdings, securing a strategic investment of approximately US$1.1 billion.
The above situation shows that NIO's revenue is under considerable pressure, but it can still get a large amount of investment.
In this state, NIO's investment in the research and development of mobile phones should not be too small, but how long it can last, it is not easy to judge.
Li Bin built the NIO mobile phone in order to connect the car machine and not be influenced by the iPhone, so the NIO mobile phone must be built around the NIO car.
Therefore, the biggest reliance of NIO mobile phones is NIO, and the development of NIO determines the development space of NIO mobile phones.
However, can the car and machine connection alone turn iPhone users into NIO mobile phone users? It's much harder than turning a BBA owner into a NIO owner.
Li Bin is also aware of this, he once said: "NIO mobile phones can sell hundreds of thousands of units, half of the users are very happy."
* IT House
Having said that, mobile phone brands with hundreds of thousands of sales, in the current mobile phone market, it is basically difficult to survive, and the future of NIO mobile phones remains to be seen.
Geely and Meizu "married"
Self-made mobile phones or the acquisition of mobile phone manufacturers, car companies to build mobile phones, are to make up for the shortcomings of their own cars to make up for the mobile entrance, NIO, Geely is also the same.
NIO made mobile phones and chose a completely self-made path, Geely was much simpler and brighter, directly acquired Meizu, and renamed Meizu as Xingji Meizu.
Compared with NIO, Geely's R&D pressure for mobile phones is not large, there are relevant industrial chain resources and assembly lines, and through the acquisition of Meizu, it can also save a lot of early R&D costs.
Geely's acquisition of Meizu is mainly for the interconnection of vehicles and machines, and compared with other brands, the vehicle system has always been Geely's weakness.
After the smart cockpit solution launched by Huawei and other mobile phone manufacturers, Geely acquired Meizu, which has the Flyme operating system, hoping to solve the problem.
But Geely's finances are much better than NIO's, so its eyes are much bigger, and in addition to the interconnection of cars and machines, they also want to build their own chips.
*Image source: Samsung official website
In October 2021, Geely released a 7nm automotive-grade SOC chip and said that it would launch a self-developed chip with a shorter process in the future.
After that, Geely acquired Meizu, not only intending to improve the vehicle system, but also to improve the success rate of self-developed chips through Meizu's technical capabilities.
* Phoenix Technology
But self-developed chips are destined to be difficult, and in August this year, Xingji Meizu publicly stated that it would terminate its chip research and development business.
At present, only Huawei has successfully developed SoC chips, and other manufacturers have chosen to give up under the high cost, even if Geely has money, it cannot withstand such a burn.
As for Meizu, after they were acquired by Geely, they changed their name to Xingji Meizu, and recently released Meizu 20 series mobile phones.
This mobile phone is mainly cost-effective, with a price of about 3,000 yuan, it can be equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen2 processor, but the appearance is relatively mediocre and has no Meizu features.
Although Meizu complained about the loss of characteristics, this year's 618, Meizu 20 series sales are acceptable, and once on the first praise list.
* Fast technology
However, the "Meizu folding screen mobile phone" that has always been rumored was cut off, and in May this year, Meizu gave up the research and development of folding screen mobile phones.
* IT House
For Geely, whether the mobile phone has "Meizu" characteristics, how the sales are, whether the folding screen can be made, it does not matter, as long as the car machine is done, the investment will not be less.
Geely and Meizu may not be able to "grow old together", but compared to NIO, who travels alone, they are still a lot more reliable.
Tesla mobile phone "painting pie"
Regardless of the mobile phones of NIO and Geely, the bad guys have clearly involved in the mobile phone business, but some car companies are drawing pies by "making mobile phones".
This car company is Tesla, Tesla's mobile phone painting cake, but after many years:
At the end of 2017, there were rumors on the Internet that Tesla was going to build a mobile phone, and at that time, netizens even asserted that it would "scare iPhone X";
In 2019, some media reported that Tesla had signed agreements with several smartphone parts suppliers around the world;
In March 2021, a promotional video of Tesla's mobile phone circulated online, and Musk also said that he would build an independent system.
Recently, it was rumored that Tesla intends to launch a Tesla mobile phone, and the name of the mobile phone is Model π.
According to rumors, the back of the Model π is a square multi-camera module, using a 4K resolution HD screen, supporting a high refresh rate of up to 165Hz, and an 8000 mAh large-capacity battery.
The module is equipped with four cameras of different sizes, equipped with ZEISS optical-coated lenses, equipped with a 100 million pixel main camera, and a telephoto and ultra-wide-angle lens with 50 million pixels each.
Shortly after the Model π rumors appeared, Tesla mobile phones had new rumors, this time Tesla mobile phone PI.
According to rumors, the machine uses Qualcomm's third-generation Snapdragon 8 chip, equipped with a 5800 mAh large-capacity battery and fast charging of up to 100W, and is also equipped with Starlink satellite communication technology.
The Tesla PI rear camera module is centrally placed in the center of the fuselage, presenting a unique symmetrical arrangement.
And then? No then, as usual, as always, as soon as similar messages appeared, Musk said that he would definitely build a mobile phone, and then continued to tinker with Twitter.
Tesla wants to make a mobile phone, you can make up 10,000 reasons, but Tesla does not want to build it, only need one reason.
Therefore, Tesla makes a mobile phone, or just listen to it.
Why car companies make mobile phones
Some insiders said that car companies make mobile phones, which are not so reliable, and it is very unrealistic to expect to sell mobile phones to make money.
According to the latest report from market research agency Canalys, in the second quarter of 2023, the global smartphone market fell by 10% year-on-year, with sales of about 260 million units.
* Zhongguancun online
Mobile phone manufacturers themselves are not enough points, car companies want to enter the game, I am afraid that they don't even have to eat scraps, since there is no money to earn, why do they build mobile phones?
In the era of the Internet of Everything, the importance of software ecology began to far exceed that of hardware, and the existence of ecology became more and more important, and the development of intelligent vehicles has derived the concept of "software-defined vehicles".
As the most comprehensive terminal device, mobile phones carry more and more functions, creating product interconnection and intelligent ecology, no matter what, mobile phones cannot be bypassed.
This is the reason why car companies make mobile phones, they choose mobile phones, not the mobile phone itself, but the meaning of mobile phones.
But so far, there are still few car companies that have really decided to make mobile phones, and there are still many difficulties for car companies to make mobile phones across borders.
The biggest problem for car companies to make mobile phones is to "break the circle", and the main customer group of car companies mobile phones is car owners, which is the basic plate.
However, to increase sales, it is absolutely not enough to rely on car owners alone, and it is necessary to attract a larger number of non-owner users, which requires high brand power of car companies, at least "out of the circle".
In addition to brand power, if an enterprise wants to create cross-border products, the company's own successful experience may not be able to play a role.
For example, Gree that crosses the border to make mobile phones, has been complained about, although Gree began to make mobile phones in 2015, but so far, Gree mobile phone sales are difficult to say excellent.
Automotive products and consumer electronics standard requirements are different, sales are not in an order of magnitude, can do a good car, does not mean can do a good mobile phone.
The old fox believes that car companies to build mobile phones, is an unknown road, in order to succeed, you have to see the respective creation of these car companies.
Resources:
Sanyan PRO: Car companies have cross-border mobile phones, why? Who buys? Make money
China Automotive News: Do you know the real intention behind the imminent creation of mobile phones by car companies?
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Editor: Chen Zhanxiang