​OPPO also wants to build cars, and cross-border cooperation among mobile phone manufacturers is inevitable!

“The core difficulty lies in the mastery of key autonomous driving technologies and the combination of traditional technical experience.”

Another big manufacturer may enter the car manufacturing industry!

Today, a media outlet broke the news that an insider who has contacted OPPO's senior executives said: OPPO is also going to start making cars! In response, netizens said: "Xiaomi just announced that it would make cars, and OPPO followed suit", "The car industry is getting more and more lively", and "The war between mobile phone brands has reached the car market."

It was revealed that the person who pushed OPPO's car-making plan was OPPO founder Chen Mingyong, and Chen Mingyong has already surveyed and investigated the resources and talents of the industry chain. In recent weeks, Chen Mingyong met with Zhu Wei, president of CATL's China passenger vehicle business unit, and it is said that the two sides chatted for several hours. CATL is one of the first domestic power battery manufacturers with international competitiveness.

An insider said: "OPPO is indeed conducting research and understanding, but has not yet officially launched the project."

In addition, Chen Mingyong took the initiative to visit China Automotive Research Institute and other institutions with his team. At the executive level, OPPO Vice President of Software Engineering Wu Henggang also participated.

Regarding the report on whether OPPO is making cars, Beijing News Beike Finance contacted OPPO for verification. OPPO said that there is currently no internal response.

However, according to public information, OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. disclosed an invention patent called "Vehicle Network Communication Equipment and Methods Thereof", with an application date of September 2018. The patent mainly provides a vehicle network (V2X) communication equipment and methods therefor.

In fact, in December 2019, Chen Mingyong said at the "OPPO Future Technology Conference" in Shenzhen that he had been thinking about making cars. However, he also said, "If the automotive industry cannot make cars well in the next ten years, OPPO may make cars" and "It seems that this is not possible at present."

Unexpectedly, just one year later, OPPO was rumored to have started planning to build cars, and it was revealed online that OPPO's automotive business unit was located in Chengdu.

1. Major manufacturers have entered the car manufacturing industry

There has been a lot of news about car manufacturing recently, such as from companies such as Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu, 360, and DJI.

Alibaba

Last year, Alibaba Group, SAIC Motor and Pudong New Area jointly created the high-end smart electric car project "IM Motors". On January 13, 2021, IM Motors launched two mass-produced cars, a smart electric sedan and a smart electric SUV, as well as the "IM 智己" brand.

Baidu

At the beginning of this year, Baidu and Geely Holding Group reached a strategic cooperation and jointly established a smart electric vehicle company - Jidu. Previously, Baidu has been committed to the development of technology in the field of autonomous driving. The establishment of Jidu also means that Baidu's identity has transformed from a software service provider to a vehicle manufacturer, and its core business has also transformed from To B to To C.

At the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2021, Baidu Apollo appeared as an independent exhibitor for the first time and launched the "Four Intelligences" smart car solution, namely: "Smart Driving", "Smart Cabin", "Smart Map" and "Smart Cloud".

360

Another company that has joined the game is 360. According to Qichacha, on April 26, Nezha Auto announced that it had launched its D round of financing, with a financing amount of approximately RMB 3 billion. Internet security company 360 strategically led this round of financing, but the specific amount was not disclosed. After completing all investments, 360 is expected to become the second largest shareholder of Nezha Auto.

DJI

At the Shanghai Auto Show on April 19, DJI released related products, including smart solutions for driving scenarios such as DJI Smart Driving D80/D80+, DJI Smart Driving D130/D130+, and DJI Smart Parking. This was DJI's first public appearance after officially announcing its entry into the field of intelligent connected vehicles.

Skyworth Group

Skyworth Group, a leading company in the TV field, held a press conference on April 27 to officially announce that Tianmei Auto will be renamed Skyworth Auto and will use the English name "Skyworth". This is the first time that Skyworth has discussed the development trend of smart cars and looked forward to the future of the industry.

Huawei

Just recently at the Shanghai Auto Show, Huawei launched the Alpha S Huawei HI version. Its smart cockpit, smart electric, smart networking, radar , computing platform and other components and systems are all provided by Huawei.

On April 20, at the Huawei flagship store, Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business, announced that Huawei Smart Selection officially started selling the Seres SF5, which will be available in Huawei stores and flagship stores. Regarding the sale of the car, Richard Yu said that the Seres SF5 is not a PPT car and will be delivered in May.

Millet

At this year's Xiaomi spring conference, the official announcement of car manufacturing attracted everyone's attention.

At the end of March this year, Xiaomi officially announced that it would build a car, with an initial investment of 10 billion yuan and an estimated investment of 10 billion US dollars in the next 10 years. On April 11, during the live broadcast of Xiaomi's 11th anniversary "Mi Fan Festival", Lei Jun responded to the news of Xiaomi's car-building in the live broadcast room, and also answered questions that fans were very interested in about car-building, such as what exactly Xiaomi's first car would be.

Regarding Xiaomi's car manufacturing, Lei Jun said that Xiaomi has a certain amount of accumulation in the automotive field, but the car project has just been launched, so it will take at least three years for Xiaomi's first car to be delivered to consumers.

Recently, regarding the question of whether Tencent will build cars, Tencent Senior Executive Vice President Tang Daosheng publicly gave the final explanation: "Tencent has some things to do and some things not to do. In the early years, we did not make mobile phones, and now we will not make complete cars, but we will provide support to car companies in terms of software."

2. Mobile phone manufacturers need new business growth points

In recent years, the world's leading mobile phone brands Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, vivo, and OPPO have occupied most of the global smartphone market, and the shipment volume of other brands is far behind them.

The global mobile phone shipment report for the first quarter of 2021 released by Strategy Analytics recently showed that the total shipments of smartphones reached 340 million units, a year-on-year increase of 24%. The shipments of the top five mobile phone brands all increased to a certain extent, but "Others" declined by 23%.

For mobile phone manufacturers, actual profits are not only a factor of market share but also a factor of consideration.

On April 26, at the Huawei Developer Conference, Yang Haisong, vice president of Huawei's consumer business software department, said that Apple's market share was 13% and its profit was 66%, Samsung's market share was 20% and its profit was 17%. The market share of Chinese and other manufacturers was 67% and their profit was only 17%.

LG mobile phones used to be very successful. In 2008, LG's annual sales of mobile phones exceeded 100 million units; in 2013, LG's mobile phones reached their peak business, with a global market share ranking third, second only to Samsung and Apple.

However, public data shows that LG's mobile phone business has not been profitable since the first quarter of 2015. In the past six years, LG Electronics has accumulated losses of nearly 5 trillion won (about 29.31 billion yuan). In order to stop the losses, LG Electronics has adopted a variety of methods to recover profits, such as withdrawing from the domestic market in 2016 and shrinking its global market layout. On April 5, LG announced that it would gradually shut down its mobile phone business, which is expected to be completed on July 31 this year.

Industry insiders said that for mobile phone manufacturers, affected by various factors such as the epidemic, chip shortages, and the development of new technologies, pure mobile phone manufacturers need to have new breakthroughs if they want to continue to develop, and they need to find more new business growth points beyond the smartphone business.

3. Why do they choose to build cars?

Nowadays, users' focus on cars is different from before, and the automotive industry is also moving towards electrification, intelligence, networking, and sharing, which means there is more market space and development opportunities.

Lei Jun once said in a live broadcast that many parts of Xiaomi's ecological chain are related to user experience, so this is a great advantage for Xiaomi Auto. At that time, Lei Jun also listed several of his associations with the future applications of Xiaomi Auto:

Installing fresh air air conditioning in the car

Put a humidifier in the car

Car comes with air purifier

Direct ice water in the car

The People's Daily once published an article titled "Cross-border car manufacturing, looking forward to taking a new path", stating that there are three main driving forces for large manufacturers to make cross-border cars: capital, timing and conditions.

Wang Yu, executive vice secretary-general of the China Productivity Promotion Center Association, once told China Electronics News that automobiles are typical technology- and capital-intensive consumable products with high technological content and can bring higher added value. Breakthroughs in this field are more likely to attract capital attention and achieve financing and fault tolerance.