Geely May Launch New High-End Smartphone Brand
Xingji Technology, founded by Chinese automaker Geely’s Chairman Eric Li, recently acquired a smartphone brand called Meizu. On July 5, an auto industry blogger revealed that Geely and Meizu will launch an independent new brand in the future while retaining the Meizu brand, which will focus on high-end smartphones priced at 6,000-9,000 yuan ($895 – $1,342).
According to the contract signed between the two parties, Xingji Technology held 79.09% of Meizu’s shares, gaining independent control of the company. Shen Ziyu, the vice chairman of Xingji Technology, serves as the chairman of Meizu. “The brand will continue to maintain its independent brand and team, and will release new products next year,” Shen said.
The car blogger thought that establishing this new brand is a “bold move.” After all, even Huawei, vivo and OPPO have just gained a firm foothold in the high-end market with products priced over 5,000 yuan ($746). However, the market of 8,000-9,000 yuan ($1,193 – $1,342) is controlled by Apple and Samsung.
At the same time, the blogger said that the company’s self-developed application processor (AP) chip for smartphones is currently a 7nm process, while a 4nm process chip is under R&D, which is expected to be put into production in the second half of 2024. In addition, the company will produce AR glasses with an independently developed system.
The blogger said that smartphone giants are all entering the car-making industry, while auto giant Geely had added a smartphone factory to its products system. Everyone wants to get through the whole path of mobile intelligent interconnection. Compared with smartphone manufacturers turning into car-makers, Geely may find it easier to make smartphones, since it has complete business lines such as making chips, vehicles, smartphones and engaging in interaction.
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Correspondingly, Xiaomi previously announced that it would manufacture vehicles. Regarding the progress of Xiaomi Auto, Wang Xiang, President of Xiaomi, said at a financial report meeting held in May that the company is continuously investing resources in core technology R&D. At present, the firm’s original delivery plan remains unchanged, and every effort is being made to proceed as planned. Although Huawei claims not to build complete vehicles, it has been actively providing its intelligent network solutions applied to vehicles for car companies to help them develop high-quality products. On July 4, the AITO M7 model – equipped with Huawei’s Harmony OS intelligent cockpit – was officially released, and the first batch will be delivered in August, priced at 319,800 yuan ($47,682) and above.
