NIO.
NIO phones are never short of controversy
Written byMeng Huiyuan.
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Recently, the "god operation" of Weilai's mobile phone vividly showed the outside world what it means to "quietly come out for 132 days, once boasting but out of the circle", but this time it is out of the circle in reverse.
It was only because Bai Jian, vice president of Weilai Automobile and head of mobile phone business who had been in office for less than a month, conducted a topic marketing on social ** "Weilai mobile phone can take screenshots with one hand, can your mobile phone" on social **. As soon as this remark was made, it attracted ridicule and made the outside world begin to question the business ability of the person in charge.
From Xiaomi, Huawei and other bigwigs in the machine circle to "build cars", to Geely, Weilai and other car company stars "make mobile phones", both sides want to win each other's market, but their fates are surprisingly consistent, and each other's cross-border moves have been questioned by users. Indeed, there have been many home appliance manufacturers such as Gree Electric Appliances and Konka who have tried to "make mobile phones" across borders, but unfortunately they did not cause any splashes in the end, which shows that it is not easy to cross the border rashly.
The key is, why does NIO have to play "headwind" under the pressure of being ridiculed by the group?
The voices of doubt never cease
Bai Jian's boasting of helping Weilai's mobile phone go out of the circle in reverse is actually a typical manifestation of the outside world's disapproval of Weilai's cross-border mobile phone. In fact, from the day when NIO intended to "make a mobile phone", until today, more than four months after the launch of the new NIO Phone, there has never been a shortage of controversy on NIO mobile phones.
Bai Jian's remarks caused controversy.
When NIO's mobile phone business was first officially established, it caused a big discussion in the market: why did NIO have to cross the border at this time when the terminal equipment had fallen into the red sea competition?
Judging from the feedback of users on the Internet, the statement that they are not optimistic about NIO mobile phones remains high. And in terms of the market performance after the launch of the new phone, after the release of mobile phone products, NIO did not officially announce the specific sales of NIO Phone, and even when Yin Shuijun, the former head of the mobile phone business of NIO PHONE, stepped down, many ** also believed that the main reason behind it may be that the sales of NIO mobile phone products did not meet expectations.
Feedback from some web users.
Combined with the data disclosed by IDC, in the third quarter of 2023, China's smartphone shipments fell by 63%, and the market share of other brands is only 192%。That means that Weilai mobile phone needs to compete with Meizu, Lenovo, Red Devil and other mobile phone brands for less than one-fifth of the market left after the fierce competition for the head brand, and the pressure can be imagined. Even Bai Jian bluntly expressed his anxiety about this when he took over, saying that he would take over the mobile phone business "Yali Mountain".Of course, in terms of Li Bin's previous positioning of Weilai mobile phones, he said to the outside world, "The starting point for us to consider making mobile phones is very simple, that is, we want to give Weilai car owners a mobile phone with the best car-machine interconnection experience, rather than thinking from the perspective of commercial success." NIO looks at the phone from the perspective of the car, not from the perspective of the phone. In other words, NIO makes mobile phones to improve the car owner's car experience, "even super easy car keys are worth making".
If the target customer group of NIO mobile phones does not include external users, and they just want a group of NIO car owners to pay, then the delivery volume of NIO cars may be the ceiling of NIO mobile phone sales. According to official data, in 2023, NIO will deliver a total of 160,000 vehicles, only 65% of its annual sales target. But even if all NIO owners buy NIO phones, the sales of NIO phones will only be 160,000 units.
The problem is that NIO's mobile phone has fallen into a very embarrassing situation: on the one hand, under the general trend, NIO is committed to "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", and does not want to make major investments in projects that are difficult to improve the company's financial performance in the short term; On the other hand, due to the decay of market dividends and the lack of product competitiveness, it is indeed difficult for the limited sales of NIO Phone to release sufficient profits.
From this point of view, the distrust and disoptimism of NIO's decision to "build a mobile phone" inside and outside the industry are indeed justified.
The underlying logic of car companies playing "headwinds".
The stars of car companies who like to play "headwinds" are not only NIO, but also Geely, and the markets they are targeting also have Xiaomi, Huawei and other machine circle leaders who have crossed over. But the question is, why are people so obsessed with attacking each other's hinterland?
In the context of the era of cold snaps sweeping the world, the two tracks of automobiles and consumer electronics fell into a state of weakness at the same time.
As the world's most important production base for consumer electronics, China carries more than 70% of the world's production capacity. However, according to data from the General Administration of Customs, in the first half of 2023, the export value of domestic mobile phones, computer products, and integrated circuits decreased year-on-year. 8%, the decline of the consumer electronics market can be seen.
The situation of the automobile track is surprisingly similar to that of the former, and in order to deeply stimulate the consumption potential of the market, "* war" has become a key word in the automotive industry in 2023. At the beginning of last year, since Tesla took the initiative to adjust the first war, domestic car companies began to roll up low prices, but this move not only further compressed their profit margins, but also turned the industry into a "red ocean".
Facts have proved that the blind pursuit of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" can not achieve the "long-termism" of enterprises, and the most important thing is to find a new way out——Last year, as the wind of AIGC blew across many industries, it became everyone's hope to survive the "cold winter" by using this wave of technology to boost consumer demand. The industry believes that accelerating the integration of consumer electronics and the automotive industry and expanding the imagination of the industry may be the best solution.
In the view of Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, the advantage of China's development of intelligent electric vehicles is not in automobile companies, but in communication companies, Internet companies and many high-tech companies. He believes that in order to fully unleash the potential of this automobile revolution to benefit society, it is necessary to integrate and connect electric vehicles with new energy, a new generation of mobile Internet, intelligent transportation and smart cities.
So,The integration of cross-border business formats is not only the key to the next step of development, but also an opportunity for the two industries to jump out of the established framework.
As far as new energy vehicle companies and terminal equipment manufacturers are concerned, mobile phones, as the main terminal entry point, will become increasingly strong as users' demand for full-scene intelligent interconnection solutions will become increasingly strong, and it is foreseeable that in the future, the connection between mobile phones and on-board systems will be more in-depth, and the linkage between people, vehicles and machines will be more frequent.
"Making mobile phones" is only a means, and realizing "car-machine interconnection" is the goal.
To this end, car companies are eager to create their own "intelligent Internet of Things" by "making mobile phones", and they must also develop and occupy more intelligent terminals as much as possible, and make the woven "intelligent Internet of Things" bigger (the same is true for circle companies that choose to "build cars").
In this way, it not only opens up the space for reverse development, but also realizes the countermeasures against another industry. Because only by unifying the systems of mobile phones and automobiles and creating an ecological closed loop covering the entire life scene for users can we consolidate and ensure our own industrial strategic position and avoid being invaded by mobile phone (automobile) enterprises.
As Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, said, "The prospect of intelligent vehicles is broad, and it cannot only stay in the automobile industry. Through the layout of the mobile phone business, the consumer electronics industry and the automobile industry are deeply integrated, and the cross-border user ecological chain is created, which can achieve super collaboration. ”
Vehicle-machine interconnection, the time has not yet come?
If car manufacturers do not want to become vassals of mobile phone manufacturers, then the two will set off a protracted war for market and technology dominance in the future. And at that time,Under the same intelligent system, the competition between the automobile and mobile phone industries will be full of ecology.
At present, there are two main types of "vehicle-machine interconnection". One is self-developed players such as Geely and Weilai. The former spent 10 billion yuan to acquire Meizu, and with the help of Flyme Auto, it empowered its sub-brands such as Zeekr, Galaxy, and Polestar with intelligent cockpits; The latter has set up a mobile phone team of hundreds of people to develop its own mobile phone for car owners.
At the 2023 MWC Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, the staff of Meizu Group introduced the Flyme Auto intelligent cockpit operating system to the audience.
The second is that mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei and Xiaomi use operating systems to realize the interoperability between cars and mobile phones. The first to connect the car machine and mobile phone from the system level is HarmonyOS OS, in addition, there is the surging OS (Xiaomi HyperOS) released by Xiaomi, and the cross-terminal operating system Blue River OS launched by vivo for the era of intelligent connection of all things.
In the middle ground between the two, there are also car manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers who extend their tentacles to each other. For example, Nezha Automobile has reached a cooperation with BlackBerry; Li Auto and Xpeng Motors have both opened up the ecology of mobile phones and car machines with OPPO, and can realize functions such as non-inductive unlocking, automatic locking when leaving the car, and remote control of car doors. OPPO, Changan Automobile, BYD and other traditional car companies have launched the car key function in the OPPO wallet.
In general, the current connection between mobile phones and cars is still based on the application layer, which mainly meets the needs of basic functions such as unlocking, vehicle condition monitoring, car search, and navigation. At the same time, major manufacturers are still in the stage of active exploration of data sharing, as well as deeper ecological co-construction and application implementation on this basis.
For car companies that do not have a strong grasp of mobile terminals, although they can quickly fill their own shortcomings through cooperation with mobile phone manufacturers, and compared with the high cost of launching mobile phones, this collaboration model can reduce R&D costs and shorten R&D cycles, but correspondingly, their data belonging to mobile phone manufacturers will become a practical problem that needs to be negotiated and solved with each other.
It's not hard to spot,The competition and cooperation relationship between mobile phones and cars has gradually emerged, and mobile phones are also bringing greater imagination to the intelligence of carsHowever, it should be noted that at present, the "vehicle-machine interconnection" is in the early stage of both the extension of services and the construction of the ecology, and it will take a long time to see the specific results of the "vehicle-machine interconnection" for car companies.
Looking at the future of "vehicle-machine interconnection", NIO and Geely's move to "build mobile phones" may not be useless, but whether they can succeed in counterattacking from criticism remains to be observed by the market.