"Meizu MX" is here again, but this time with the name of the car.
On May 13, the website of Meizu Unbounded Zhixing showed that Meizu's first model will be named "Meizu MX". You know, the name "Meizu MX" has been around for a long time.
On December 6, 2011, Meizu released a 3G Internet mobile phone, formerly known as M9II, which inherited the previous generation model Meizu M9. But Huang Zhang later renamed it MX, and was called a dream phone by Meizu (Meizu fans). This is a new flashpoint in Meizu's mobile phone business, and it is also the starting point of many Meizu stories later. It was also in this year that Xiaomi officially entered the mobile phone market and released its first Xiaomi mobile phone.
Meizu car "rubbing" named
From this point of view, this name may carry Meizu's high expectations for this model. However, later in the day, the official website of Meizu Unbounded Zhixing deleted the three unlisted models of Galaxy E5, Lynk & Co Zero, and Meizu MX, and only retained the Lynk & Co 07 and Lynk & Co 08 that had been released. It is said that it is because the name of the vehicle has not been officially determined.
This can't help but make the outside world speculate that Meizu is playing a little trick, "low-key announcement" of the first car name through the official website to test the market reaction. Then take the next step to respond based on the feedback. It stands to reason that with the blessing of Li Shufu and Geely, as well as Xiaomi Automobile, Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing Zhuyu in front, plus Shen Ziyu, the soul of Xingji Meizu, has just been replaced, and the superposition of multiple news should cause a sensation, but this small action did not reach the expected popularity.
One possible explanation is that neither the industry nor the market is optimistic about the prospects of this new car with the Meizu name and essentially Geely. Tang Chen's circle of friends has insiders who said that the expectations are low, and the user's participation in car building is unreliable (product definition and trade-offs), and in the end, it is a product model of ZEEKR.
According to the official statement, as the first model of the Meizu brand, the "Meizu MX" will be equipped with the FlymeAuto full-case intelligent vehicle machine system, and will be built based on SEA's vast architecture and Geely's Industry 4.0 manufacturing capabilities. Rumor has it that the Meizu MX may be deeply customized based on the Lynk & Co ZERO.
For more information about this model, at the autumn press conference on November 30 last year, Shen Ziyu, then chairman and CEO of Xingji Meizu Group, made full preparations. He said that Meizu will combine a series of Geely Group's manufacturing capabilities to launch the first car: the MEIZU DreamCar MX. The car will be deeply customized by users, and Meiyou can co-create and define a large number of personalized details such as its livery, interior, and car theme.
In addition, Shen Ziyu also said that this Meizu customized car will not only be equipped with the Flyme Auto system, but also integrate Meizu's past experience in software, design, interior and other aspects, and will only be sold in the Meizu Group channel.
In fact, in 2023, Geely acquired Meizu Technology and merged with Xingji Times to form Meizu Group, with business spanning three major tracks: smartphones, smart cars, and XR (extended reality). In other words, the new Meizu has become a new intelligent brand under the deep integration of cars and mobile phones.
Shen Ziyu is the main promoter of the establishment of Meizu Group. In his view, the car is changing from a traditional means of transportation to an interconnected mobile platform for intelligent travel, and the ecological model based on the "handcar interconnection" is emerging, and semiconductor technology, operating system, and software ecology are the core advantages and scarce capabilities. At this stage, the real potential players must be those technology companies that integrate mobile phones and automobiles, software and hardware, intelligent terminals and the Internet of Things.
He also told the media: "At present, the three OS systems created by Huawei, Xingji Meizu, and Xiaomi represent players in the automotive 3.0 era. Combined with Meizu's increasingly prominent slogan of "no Meizu, no Meizu", the new Meizu brand of cars, reproduce the name of the old Meizu, and its car-making ideas can be summarized in one sentence: I learned the surface of Xiaomi, but it is more like Huawei's inside, and Meizu friends create a "dream" car. But this is like a game of "shell change" in Geely's system.
Is it to learn from Xiaomi or Huawei?
This kind of close confrontation with the head of the industry has allowed the new Meizu to re-tell an attractive "car machine" story on top of the lonely mobile phone business, and Xingji Meizu has also become a rookie in the automotive industry.
After Li Shufu became the owner, Meizu shouted the slogan "All in Auto", combined with its own accumulation in the operating system, and launched the Flyme Auto car machine system with the company's strength, including Geely Galaxy E8, Lynk & Co 08, Lynk & Co 06 EM-P and Lynk & Co 09 and so on. This represents an idea of traditional car companies to lay out "electrification, intelligence, and networking": directly acquire mature intelligent operating systems for magic reform.
This approach is very effective, and in one fell swoop, Geely's vehicle machine system has been raised to the top level of the industry. Among them, the Lynk & Co 08 equipped with Flyme Auto has shown strong vitality, and once ranked first in the mid-size plug-in hybrid SUV market in a single week. Functions such as card-type widgets and non-inductive connection between the car and the mobile phone make the car an expansion of the mobile phone.
Since then, Meizu has launched the Unbounded Zhixing solution, including Flyme Auto, Service and Link. Shen Ziyu believes that car manufacturers without mobile phone software empowerment will gradually fall behind, "The Unbounded Zhixing Open Platform is based on Flyme Auto as a modular platform, just like the Android system, and all OEMs can develop their own related products." ”
Specifically, Link is a car company that retains the original system and accesses the mobile phone domain, so that mobile phone applications and services can be transferred to the car, and hardware and computing power sharing are supported. Srevice's customization has gone a step further, and Flyme Auto provides car companies with a customizable system framework, including ecological applications, theme engines, scene engines, cloud service functions, etc., to help car companies customize smart cockpits at low cost.
Meizu will work with vehicle brands to provide a set of solutions including product definition, HMI design, product development, testing and delivery, as well as a complete experience in the mobile phone domain, and jointly create an intelligent cockpit with car companies. At present, the Lynk & Co 07 EM-P and 08 EM-P are all mature products designed by Flyme Auto.
Correspondingly, Lei Jun once said when he announced the construction of a car, "This is the last business in my life, and I am willing to bet on all my reputation to fight for Xiaomi cars." In the following three years, Xiaomi invested heavily in building its own factory, participated in every link of the supply chain, and directly entered the car industry.
During this period, there was a hot topic: should Xiaomi cars change their names? But in the end, the Xiaomi brand was retained until the Xiaomi SU7 was launched with "its own traffic". Behind this is Lei Jun's confidence in Xiaomi's smart ecology, channel operation and brand traffic strength. The addition of Xiaomi Auto has also contributed to Xiaomi's "people, cars and home ecology" strategy to achieve a real closed loop.
At the highest level, Huawei does not directly build cars, but cooperates with vehicle companies as a supplier. At present, Huawei has launched three cooperation models: parts supply, HI (HuaweiInside) supply model that provides full-stack intelligent solutions, and smart car (HarmonyOS Smart Mobility) model, with the degree of cooperation ranging from shallow to deep. The most talked-about smart car model has been infinitely close to car manufacturing, and it is also the one with the best feedback in the market at present, and the success of the new M7 and M9 in sales has verified the feasibility of this route. Huawei has established a "Four Realms" alliance with Cialis, Chery, JAC, and BAIC, and called on more car companies, including FAW, to join.
From this point of view, the Meizu brand has learned the surface of Xiaomi on the one hand: it uses the Meizu way to build cars for Meizu friends, and only sells them in the channels of Xingji Meizu Group; But on the other hand, its specific operation mode is more similar to Huawei, with the meaning of "crossing the river by touching Huawei". Yang Xueliang, senior vice president of Geely Holdings, once said that "Meizu will not make cars, but only provide services for car companies", which is the same as the thinking of Huawei's automotive business.
Prior to this, Shen Ziyu also compared the relationship between Meizu and ECARX to Huawei's ecosystem, saying that ECARX Technology is equivalent to Huawei's car BU, Meizu is similar to Huawei's consumer BG, and Xinqing Technology, which was established by ECARX and ARM, is about equal to HiSilicon Semiconductor. Shen Ziyu also believes that Xingji Meizu's understanding of cars is better than Huawei's, and cars are in the company's genes, and Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, has 30 years of automotive experience.
A game of "shelling"?
For Meizu Automobile, one of its biggest advantages is that Meizu is integrated into the Geely Automobile system, and the threshold for car manufacturing is very low, and it can be supported by Geely's supply chain and manufacturing capacity without entering the supply chain. At present, Meizu's ability to participate in car manufacturing is more reflected in the integration of resources with Geely Group, and the function of connecting mobile phones with cars is done.
This also forms an objective dilemma: Meizu's unbounded Zhixing plan needs to be expanded, and it will face the problem of internal and external relations and balance of interests of Geely. Externally, the pit that Hongmeng Zhixing has stepped on, and Unbounded Zhixing will also step on it without exception, such as how to dispel the doubts of third-party car companies about "handing over their souls". Internally, the customized route of Meizu cars (which is expressed in the "co-creation" of Meizu friends) inevitably leaves people with the impression of "nesting dolls".
Li Shufu previously said that the prospect of automotive intelligence is broad, not only in the automotive industry, through the layout of mobile phone business, the deep integration of the consumer electronics industry and the automotive industry, cross-border to create a user ecological chain, can achieve collaboration.
From this statement, Tang Chen saw that the biggest challenge for Meizu Automobile in the future is not the technology and industrial strength of the car itself, but how much room for growth can be obtained in the Geely system. Otherwise, Meizu is just a "shell" game, no matter how affectionate the name is, but in the Geely system, it is just a shuffle on the table. To paraphrase a familiar sentence, success is also auspicious, and defeat may also be auspicious.
It is worth mentioning that Polestar has already played this "shell changing" game. According to media reports, at the Polestar Brand Night event held not long ago, the first Polestar-designed AI flagship mobile phone, Polestar Phone, was officially released, priced at 7,388 yuan, aiming to bring users an unbounded and cross-terminal connected intelligent ecological experience.
It should be added that Polestar Technology is a joint venture between Meizu Group and Polestar Automobile, with Shen Ziyu as chairman and CEO. Polestar, on the other hand, is a global high-performance electric vehicle brand owned by Volvo and Geely Group. If Meizu is for the intelligence of Geely cars, then Polestar Technology is dedicated to Polestar cars. Isn't this model very auspicious (matryoshka)?
However, in the actual evaluation, some institutions found that even though the Polestar Phone has added many special elements, the appearance with a high degree of similarity with the Meizu 21 PRO is still easy to make people wonder: "Isn't this Meizu?" ”
The official filing information also shows that the relevant information of the Polestar Phone (model M481S), the applicant and the manufacturer are Zhuhai Meizu Technology Co., Ltd., just to increase the appearance, which means that the Polestar Phone is likely to be a "skinned" model, and the core configuration is expected to be the same as the Meizu 21 PRO.
At present, judging from the progress of car manufacturing, Xingji Meizu is not going very smoothly. Just a few days ago, Xingji Meizu experienced a change of general, and Shen Ziyu went to office. Previously, an insider broke the news that Xingji Meizu had experienced layoffs. In August last year, Meizu officially announced that it would stop developing its own chips, and laid off the chip team in the institute, retaining a few old employees.
For Meizu Automobile, whether the first car is a dream (MX) or just a car dream (MX), everything is still unknown.
Resources:
Yicai, "From Integrating into the Car Enterprise System to Independently Building Cars: Huawei, Xiaomi, Meizu, and Mobile Phone Manufacturing"
Observer.com, "Why does Meizu build a car? 》
Southern Weekly, "Aiming at the "Mobile Phone Domain", Meizu's Innovative End of "Building Cars"
Interface News, "Another Family! Xingji Meizu officially announced the end of "making cars"
I'm Tang Chen, and I'm interested in Internet technology and business stories. Original content, without permission, please do not reprint.
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