Meizu ∞ LinkedIn Unlimited Ecological Conference was opened to the cheers of a group of "Meizu friends", which is not only the first conference of Meizu after being taken into the possession of Geely, but also the first cross-border conference of mobile phones and cars. Meizu's new logo gives up the classic color of the original blue factory and changes to a faster red color. The big "M" is quite similar to BMW's "M-Power", which also makes FlymeAuto, which is equipped with LinkedIn 08, attract much attention.
At the press conference, Meizu said that "auto manufacturers without mobile phone will fall behind", which seems biased, but in fact, it not only conforms to FlymeAuto's positioning, but also vaguely coincides with the development path of mobile OS at this stage.
It has to be said that creating a "new concept" is the key skill of mobile phone manufacturers. At the press conference, Meizu created a "mobile phone domain" after the power domain, chassis domain, cockpit domain, autopilot domain and body domain. The biggest feature of FlymeAuto is the linkage between mobile phone and smart cockpit.
In fact, this linkage is not the first of Meizu, but FlymeAuto makes the integration of mobile phone and cockpit deeper. For example, the interaction gestures of mobile phone and cockpit large screen are completely consistent, the mobile phone screen can be seamlessly transferred to the car screen and achieve application relay, the mobile phone application can be displayed in a small window on the car, and even the mobile phone can be used as a handle for large screen games in the car, In addition, there are functions such as mobile phone assisted OTA, mobile phone car searching, etc. To put it simply, the functions available on a Meizu mobile phone can be realized on FlymeAuto, and both of them constitute a complete interactive system.
Mobile phone manufacturers are more considerate than car manufacturers
To be fair, mobile phone manufacturers actually know more about consumers in the Internet era, not to mention Meizu starts from the community. They are all in a tight grip on how to play fan economy and how to grasp audience psychology. The fans of Meizu in those days have also become the mainstay of this society, so what Meizu gives is probably what mainstream consumers like today. In addition, Meizu is very good at adding some pleasant details to the system, which has a sense of temperature brought by technology. For example, this Ruran engine, one mirror to the end, multi dynamic desktop and other functions.
On the other hand, many car factories have a "straight man of steel" mentality. They tend to give consumers products that only pay attention to functionality rather than aesthetics. Their performance is particularly balanced, and they have strong traces of "mass production". They often look cold at first sight. Today, personalization and customization are popular, The traditional thinking of many large factories has lost its market.
With the popularity of the concept of "the third space", consumers' consideration of the technology, comfort and entertainment of the cockpit has become an important dimension in their purchase of cars. If they still use the old seller's market thinking of "what I have, you can buy" to build cars, it will be a disaster. Therefore, the combination of Geely and Meizu is not simply cross-border, but also an industrial progress.
"Back Stab" not counting back stab
However, there was also a small episode in this combination: on March 19, LinkedIn released its own vehicle operating system, LYNK OS N. Although the network was not very popular, except for the host, Li Dahui, who was waving flags and shouting slogans, few people participated in the discussion online, which formed a sharp contrast with Meizu's press conference. Even so, many people will still be at a loss for a while - didn't they agree to use FlymeAuto? Why is there a new OS?
From the actual UI interface, functions and experience, LYNK OS N is like a car factory trying to learn the skills of mobile phone manufacturers. For example, LYNK OS N learned the negative screen and pull-down menu functions of mobile phones. The desktop pull-down can open the control center and notification bar, slide right to open the life center, and slide left to open the application center. Of course, the result of this may be that when users use it, they must remember whether they can find the application they need by sliding right or left, which is not intuitive enough. The desktop is also relatively monotonous. In the era of large screen interaction, it is a bit wasteful to keep a slightly monotonous desktop. Unlike FlymeAuto, there are multiple forms of desktop that can be displayed.
Of course, this may be a bit picky. After all, in addition to "click", "press" and "slide", there are voice and gesture interactions in the interactive mode of smart cars. As a car OS, LYNK OS N is already "available", but not so smart. Smart cars, to some extent, are not a single individual. They are a part of intelligent life. Their value should be more highlighted in a complete intelligent ecosystem. This is also an important reason why Meizu has not only improved the interaction between mobile phones and mobile phones, but also made efforts to build its own smart home.
It is easy to see from this small episode that Geely's cooperation with Meizu has left behind. The integration between car manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers is far less peaceful than it seems. A person familiar with Meizu said that although Geely acquired Meizu, there have been many differences and even serious disputes between the two sides in terms of OS, and LYNK OS N is the product of the dispute. But it can be seen clearly that FlymeAuto is better. It is the right way to let professional people do professional things and avoid unnecessary internal friction and waste of resources, even if it is as big as Geely.
Fanwai: Will Meizu become the strong enemy of Huawei's car BU?
Since Meizu announced the research and development of FlymeAuto, many people believe that Huawei BU will meet a strong competitor. But in fact, there is no comparability between the two:
Although Huawei has no choice but to step down from the top position in the domestic mobile phone market due to well-known reasons, its overall size is actually much larger than Meizu. Apart from consumer electronics, Huawei also has communication services, cloud technology, computing services and many industrial solutions. In contrast, Meizu, which used to focus on the mobile phone 3C industry, is more used to calling it "Zhuhai Small Factory". It is said that in the early years, Meizu had to pay the factory rent to its founder Huang Zhang every month.
Although the two companies currently belong to the "Other" echelon in terms of mobile phone shipments, Huawei, once the No. 1 in the market and a pioneer in communication technology, has already adopted the "1+8+N" strategy to create a whole scene ecology covering smart office, smart life and smart travel, and has made considerable investment in this regard, and achieved good results. The car can be said to be a part of the "1+8+N" strategy from the beginning. It is not a "last resort". At best, it can only be regarded as an advance of the original plan, just like the advent of HarmonyOS and HMS.
In addition, Huawei has released more than 30 electronic products, including 4D radar, MDC computing platform, headrest audio, AR-HUD, and announced that it will not build cars. To a large extent, it is "learning from a fall" and does not want the painful experience on mobile phones to reappear in cars. So Huawei's current strategy is to be the so-called "bottom technology supplier", extending its branches to various industries and fields, and taking root deep enough.
As for Meizu, the "Zhuhai Small Factory", FlymeOS can be said to be the foundation of its important standing. It has a clean and beautiful UI interface, small functions that condense ingenuity, smooth animation, and the research and development team is also willing to listen to user feedback and iterate in time. All of the above, together with the founder Huang Zhang's meticulous attention to the products, have created Meizu's reputation as "small and beautiful" in the industry.
Meizu also said that it "doesn't build cars", but backed by Geely, Meizu really doesn't build cars. For many years, Meizu has always given the impression that it has focused on repeatedly polishing the product until they think it has been improved. Meizu has also missed the best launch opportunity, which directly affects the sales of mobile phones.
Fortunately, a car is not a mobile phone, its life cycle is far longer than that of a mobile phone, which also makes the smart cockpit free from the usual practice of crazy stacking like a mobile phone. Some new functions can be completely realized through OTA, and Meizu mobile phones can also share hardware capabilities with the car phone. In view of this, Meizu only needs to concentrate on polishing FlymeAuto, the "vehicle version" of FlymeOS. At the same time, it should be Meizu's next main work to do a good job in the interaction between mobile phones and mobile phones and improve the entire ecology. This not only allows Meizu to fully display its ability, but also will not "exceed the outline". As for Huawei, it will not and should not be the rival of Meizu.
epilogue
It should be said that the crossover of Meizu and LinkedIn has a certain degree of enlightenment for both industries: the mobile phone industry has therefore "broken the circle" and started to empower smart cars to maximize its own value; At the key node of automobile intellectualization, traditional automobile enterprises can quickly make up for their shortcomings and achieve leapfrog development with the help of mobile phone manufacturers; From the perspective of consumers, smart cars purchased by themselves can bring further improvement in the sense of technology, user experience and other dimensions. From the results, this is a win-win result, and also the optimal solution at this stage.
In view of this, mobile phone manufacturers and car companies should dispel their doubts and carry out more and more extensive cooperation without worrying about the insufficient score of the cake. As a practitioner of the automobile industry said, this industry is very large, and every subdivision contains unlimited business opportunities. Perhaps the cross-border cooperation between mobile phone manufacturers and car manufacturers will draw a curtain from now on.
