Li Shufu made a new bet, what is the acquisition of Meizu Tu?

Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina

Text / Yin Taibai

Source/Bullet Finance View (ID: zidancaiguan)

Geely Group has not yet won the crown from a thorny “marathon”, and has entered another anxious race.

On June 13, according to the State Administration for Market Regulation, the public announcement of Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd.’s acquisition of the equity of Zhuhai Meizu Technology Co., Ltd.

According to the public information, Xingji Times has signed an agreement with Meizu Technology and the shareholders involved in the transaction, and Xingji Times plans to acquire 79.09% of the shares of Zhuhai Meizu. According to Tianyancha data, Geely Group (hereinafter referred to as: Geely) is the major shareholder of Xingji Times, holding 32.3% of its shares. Geely founder Li Shufu also holds 6.15% of Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd. shares.

Previously, the news that Xingji Times and Meizu were negotiating acquisitions was once clamorous, but Geely responded that it “does not comment on market rumors”, and Meizu also said that “there is no relevant news.” However, after waiting for 5 months, Geely’s acquisition of Meizu was finally settled.

Regarding the acquisition by Geely, a number of Meizu fans expressed to the “Bullets of Fortune” that, based on the current situation and size of Meizu, it is only a matter of time before the business can go on. Continuation, “it may not be a wise move to withdraw in time”.

One of the reasons why Meizu fans agree is that Meizu’s performance in the mobile phone market has been unsatisfactory in recent years. In September 2021, Meizu held a press conference for the Meizu 18S series online. Among them, the starting price of the Meizu 18S series was 3699 yuan, while the previous month, Honor released the Honor Magic3 series with a starting price of 4599 yuan. The Xiaomi Mi MIX4 with a starting price of 4,999 yuan was released.

In terms of horizontal comparison, the three series of models are all equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 888Plus processor, and the configuration is similar, but as of June, according to the sales statistics of various JD.com official flagship stores, the cumulative sales of Honor Magic3 and Magic3 Pro were More than 50,000 and more than 20,000 units, the cumulative sales of Xiaomi MIX4 is more than 100,000 units, while the cumulative sales of Meizu 18S and Meizu 18S Pro are more than 20,000 and more than 5,000 units respectively, which are obviously at a disadvantage.

“From an outsider’s point of view, the acquisition of Meizu by Geely is a win-win situation.” A person from a mobile phone channel revealed to “Bullet Finance View” that Meizu’s market volume has been very weak, and being acquired is the most secure way to end the decline. Although the product sales are not good, the software and hardware teams are ready-made, and the control of the supply chain is relatively complete. Meizu itself is also developing the Flyme for Car in-vehicle system, as well as some related patents, which can be seamlessly integrated into the system. Geely’s strategy.

Meizu, which has become a niche mobile phone brand, urgently needs the rescue of external funds and resources, and Geely, which has started a “borderless war”, needs Meizu to revitalize its mobile phone business and open up its ecosystem, but can this plan really come true?

The drunkard’s intention is not the wine

In fact, the horn of Geely’s entry into the mobile phone track has already sounded.

In September 2021, Geely subsidiary Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, officially announcing to invest 10 billion yuan to enter the mobile phone industry, positioning high-end smartphones, and will “integrate global technology and resources, Serving Global Markets”.

The news that Geely made a mobile phone caused an uproar, and even made it to the Weibo hot search list for a time, but to the outside world, Geely’s move is more or less a joke, after all, the current mobile phone market is sluggish and extremely introverted. The public has lost confidence in it.

The mobile phone market tracking report for the second quarter of 2021 released by the International Data Group IDC shows that in the second quarter of 2021, China’s mobile phone market shipments are about 78.1 million units, down 11% year-on-year, which is also the lowest quarterly data since 2012. .

IDG believes that in the first half of 2021, although the top four mobile phone manufacturers have increased significantly compared with the same period last year, they still cannot make up for the overall trend of sharp decline in mobile phone shipments.

Choosing to buck the trend and enter the mobile phone track at this node, Geely’s behavior is very confusing. Some people commented on social platforms, “Li Shufu dares to enter this bloody market because of how hesitant he is”, “Geely wants a gold nugget phone, it is very difficult.”

However, the outside world obviously underestimated Geely’s determination to make mobile phones. In October 2021, Geely’s mobile phone R&D center will officially be located in Shanghai, and the mobile phone project headquarters will be located in Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone.

Geely’s very firm attitude towards making mobile phones stems from the fact that in Li Shufu’s plan, mobile phones are a key part of Geely’s ecosystem.

Li Shufu once said publicly: “Mobile phones are portable mobile terminals with rapid iteration, and can transfer some safe and reliable results to automobile applications, realizing the close interaction between automobile and mobile phone software technology. In the future, to build a user ecological chain across borders, mobile phone It can link to the Internet of Vehicles and satellite Internet to create rich consumption scenarios.”

Wu Lei, a person in the mobile phone industry, also expressed to the “Bullet Finance Concept” that building an ecosystem with its own main business as the core has become the consensus of current technology companies, such as Xiaomi’s “mobile phone + AIoT” dual-engine strategy, Huawei’s “1+8+” N” full-scenario smart life strategy, Konka’s “1+3+N” strategy, and TCL’s “AI×IoT” strategy, etc.

“In the era of the Internet of Everything, there will no longer be a technology company that sticks to a single business.” Wu Lei analyzed that the laws and trends that jumped out of the professional field also apply to Geely, “Whether it is a mobile phone manufacturer or an auto manufacturer, its business has changed. It is no longer pure, and the business scope is constantly expanding, and in this process, new opportunities and increments will be released.”

In fact, Geely is not just laying out the mobile phone business.

In 2007, Geely invested heavily in the acquisition of Terrafugia, a flying car manufacturing company. Taking Terrafugia as the main body, Geely established Wofei Changkong in September 2020. Its main business is the research and development, production and operation of various drones and flying car products.

In September 2021, Geely announced that the first trial production satellite of its Taizhou Satellite Gigafactory will be off the assembly line. The factory will have an annual production capacity of 500 satellites. In addition, Geely’s Time-Space Daoyu also plans to provide global instantaneous centimeter-level positioning services in 2026.

In June 2022, nine satellites in the first orbit of Geely’s “Geely Future Mobility Constellation” were successfully launched at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the form of “one arrow and nine stars”. Through the construction of “Geely’s Future Travel Constellation”, Geely will build a high-precision space-time information system integrating heaven and earth.

In addition, Geely has also deployed automotive chips, auto finance and insurance, education, and smart wearable devices including smart watches and smart glasses.

There are various signs that Li Shufu is trying to build a Geely ecosystem around the Internet of Everything. In this ecosystem, the mobile phone will play a pivotal role as a smart hub and key.

Yang Xin, a person in the auto industry, analyzed the “Bullet Finance Concept”. From the perspective of entering the mobile phone track and acquiring Meizu, Geely hopes to firmly control the entire ecosystem in its own hands, so as to take the initiative, “From this perspective It seems that Geely’s mobile phone is not designed to directly compete with other mobile phone manufacturers, but to achieve collaboration and data sharing between products and services in the ecosystem.”

It is difficult for niche mobile phones to be independent

At a time when the trend of cross-border integration is becoming more and more obvious, Geely needs Meizu to speed up the construction and improvement of its ecosystem. From the perspective of Meizu, it urgently needs the dual support of funds and resources; in addition, the more critical point is that , it is difficult for niche mobile phone brands to develop independently in a mature and involutionary market.

According to IDC data, in the first quarter of 2022, China’s smartphone market shipped approximately 74.2 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 14.1%, and an 11.0% decrease from 83.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Among them, the top five smartphone manufacturers in China’s smartphone market are OPPO, Honor, vivo, Apple and Xiaomi, with market shares of 18.5%, 18.2%, 17.9%, 16.7% and 14.9% respectively.

The top five occupy a total of 86.2% of the market share, which means that the Matthew effect in the mobile phone industry is becoming more and more obvious, and the living space for niche mobile phone manufacturers is getting narrower and narrower.

According to official data from Meizu, in 2016 and 2017, the shipments of Meizu mobile phones were 22 million and 20 million respectively. Since 2018, the shipments of Meizu mobile phones have fallen off a cliff. According to IDC data, in the whole year of 2018, Meizu shipped only 4.05 million units.

As of January 31st, according to the statistics of professional consulting firm BCI, Meizu’s market share is only 0.1%. It can be seen that Meizu’s decline has become a general trend and its recovery is weak.

The most obvious perception of this is the Meizu dealer. A former Meizu dealer told “Bullets of Fortune” that the profitability of Meizu stores is not good, and they even lose money every month. shop.”

The decline in shipments year after year caused Meizu to encounter a large-scale “wave of store withdrawals” in 2019. At present, searching for “Meizu” on Baidu Maps, there are only one Meizu authorized store in Dongcheng District and one Meizu authorized service experience center in Fengtai District in the entire Beijing area.

It is an indisputable fact that Meizu has been kicked out of the ranks of mainstream mobile phone manufacturers, but Meizu is not an exception.

At the beginning of 2022, the news that Tencent plans to acquire the gaming mobile phone company Black Shark has reignited the outside world’s scrutiny of the survival of niche mobile phones.

Black Shark is the main game mobile phone, and it has always been difficult to tear off the label of “niche mobile phone”. Public data shows that the shipment of Black Shark’s first gaming phone is only a few hundred thousand units. In 2020, the shipment of Black Shark’s mobile phone is only about 1 million units, which is not even a fraction of the mainstream mobile phone shipments. .

The niche mobile phones that are also going to the end are the Hammer mobile phones. In January 2019, ByteDance acquired some patents of Hammer Technology and established the “New Stone Laboratory” to continue to develop smartphones and educational hardware products. After two years of hard support, ByteDance once again announced that the original Hammer Technology was merged into the education hardware team, and since then it will no longer develop unrelated products such as smartphones and TNT monitors.

“A mobile phone manufacturer’s ability to control the supply chain and bargaining power is largely determined by its own size and shipment volume. The annual shipment of mainstream mobile phones can reach hundreds of millions of units, while the market of niche mobile phones The volume of goods is only one million, and the supply chain will naturally give priority to supplying mainstream mobile phones, which forms a vicious circle.” Wu Lei said.

“In the future, it is difficult for the mobile phone market to have increments for development. Under the crushing of absolute strength, the living space of niche mobile phones will only be further squeezed, and there is little chance of independent development and breakthrough.” ” said, “Geely’s acquisition of Meizu is a good thing for the latter, whether it is maintaining independent operations or abandoning the Meizu brand to switch to car-machine interconnection.”

Cross-border mobile phones are more likely to fail

Geely is a latecomer when it comes to making mobile phones across borders. Gree Group, Qihoo 360, LeTV, Alibaba, etc. have all had cross-border experiences, but due to various reasons, they failed to get much response in the end.

Among them, Geely’s motivation for making mobile phones coincides with that of Gree Group.

In 2013, at the CCTV Economic Person of the Year Awards Ceremony, Lei Jun took the initiative to propose that Xiaomi’s turnover would exceed Gree’s within 5 years. If so, I hope Dong Mingzhu can lose one yuan to him. And Dong Mingzhu responded domineeringly and was willing to pay 1 billion yuan if he lost. Later, Dong Mingzhu even released the rhetoric of “killing Xiaomi” and “selling 100 million units”.

Video / NetEase Technology (Tik Tok: tech163)

However, this bet also made Gree Group realize a serious problem. At that time, the trend of the smart home industry came. If Gree Group wanted to deploy the smart home ecology, the mobile phone became the super entrance. If it is unable to develop its own mobile phone, Gree Group may only play a supporting role in the entire smart home ecosystem, handing over users and data to others.

Similar to Geely’s logic of building an ecosystem around the Internet of Everything, Gree Group also wants to use mobile phones to open up the smart home ecosystem. Dong Mingzhu once emphasized that “Gree mobile phones must be made, and must be done. If there is no mobile phone to completely control the smart home, it will not work.”

In March 2015, Dong Mingzhu was invited to give a speech at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. In the interactive exchange at the end of the speech, she lightly announced that the Gree mobile phone had been made and appeared with a Gree mobile phone.

In June of the same year, Dong Mingzhu said in a speech that Gree’s mobile phone is characterized by “intelligent Internet of Things”, and a wireless module is implanted in the mobile phone, which can remotely monitor and control electrical appliances, and even design software for enterprises. Gree mobile phone can solve it.

However, Gree’s first-generation mobile phone has no advantages in appearance, system, chip and imaging system, resulting in its dismal sales. At that time, it was reported that Gree’s first-generation mobile phone shipments were around 100,000 units. Later, Gree Group successively launched Gree II, Gree Sejie, Gree III and Dasong G5, but the shipments were also bleak, and there were even repeated news that internal employees were required to purchase and “digest” as prizes.

Today, Gree mobile phones are still on the fringes, but Gree Group has never given up on the mobile phone business. In November 2021, Gree Group released the Dasong G7, but sales are still hard to say optimistic. In order to drive the mobile phone business, Gree Group has also launched joint promotions. For example, consumers can enjoy preferential price policies by purchasing joint products such as Dasong G7+Gree sweeping robot and Dasong G7+ electric hot pot on Gree Mall.

A number of digital enthusiasts told “Bullets of Finance” that Dasong G7’s configuration, system and other aspects are not excellent, and there are not enough innovations in the highly competitive mobile phone market. And this also provides a lesson for Geely. “Whether Geely’s entry into the mobile phone business will fail is still uncertain, but it is certain that for Geely, the mobile phone business will be a tough nut to crack.” Wu Lei said.

*Note: All names in the text are pseudonyms. The title picture in the article comes from: Vision China, based on the RF protocol.

This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-06-14/doc-imizirau8433837.shtml
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.