Rumors Say Geely Holdings to Produce Mobile Phones, Setting up Offices in Wuhan and Shanghai

According to Caijing Automobile, Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely Holdings, is determined to produce mobile phones. According to the media outlet, the project is progressing rapidly and Geely has begun to recruit employees for the new endeavor.

A source said to Caijing Automobile that Li Shufu is indeed preparing to enter the mobile phone industry. The company will set up several offices in China, including in Wuhan and Shanghai, and possibly extend their reach overseas.

Geely has already laid out intelligent connection between cars and mobile phones. Established in 2016 by Li Shufu and Chinese entrepreneur Shen Ziyu, ECARX is an independently-operated developer of products such as vehicle chipsets, intelligent cockpits and driving solutions, in addition to high-definition maps. At a press conference in 2018, ECARX put forward its own idea for a smart car: Based on the global online cloud service, mobile phones and cars can identify each other and share data through the same account. Until August this year, ECARX used Galaxy OS, the vehicle operating system, on Geely’s Xingyue L model.

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On September 6th, Geely Holdings announced that its automobile sales volume in August was 88,348 units, a 22% decrease from the same period last year and about 11% lower than that in July. In August, its export volume of automobiles decreased by about 2% year-on-year to 6,225 units. Its total sales volume in Chinese market was 82,123 vehicles, down 23% compared to the same time last year.