The Chinese carmaker, which owns ASCII.jp Volvo, will buy mobile phone maker Meizuqi this time. The relationship between cars and smartphones

The combination of cars and smartphones that have been completely unconnected for 10, no, 15 years has come as no surprise. Perhaps the latest trend is Chinese auto company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely= Geely, Zhejiang Geely holding Group). There are also reports that action is being taken to acquire Meizu, a Chinese handset maker.

The example of a mobile phone maker's foray into the car industry is obvious, but this time the automaker wants to buy a mobile phone maker!?

Geely, which bought Volvo from Ford in 2010

Zhejiang Geely holding Group, in addition to Geely Auto, owns Volvo passenger car division acquired from Ford, Volvo EV brand Polestar, etc., and is a regular customer of Fortune Global500 on the list every year since 2012.

Meizu, a Chinese manufacturer familiar with smartphones, began offering Android terminals in 2011. I was personally impressed by the "Ubuntu" installation, which claimed to be the third mobile operating system in 2014-16. In the Chinese market, Vivo, OPPO, Honor, Shaomi and Apple are the top five, but his position is to catch up with it.

This means that Geely is targeting that Meizu, but smartphones are not the first move for Geely. Last September, the company founded a smartphone business as Hubei Xingji Shidai Technology (Xingji). It has been reported that the company will invest 10 billion yuan (180 billion yen) in this area, targeting high-end smartphones.

Eric Lee, founder of Geely, said in a statement at the time that he could make full use of design, research and development, intelligent manufacturing of high-end terminals, industrial chain integration, automotive intelligence, software development, and so on. "Smart car driving is closely related to smartphone technology."

Talents have been gathered from ZTE, Xia Aomei and other places.

Chinese media 36Krypton reported on January 21 that Geely is in talks to acquire Meizu (https://www.36kr.com/p/1577952337464066). Xingji completed its private strategic fundraising work in December last year, the report said.

It is worth mentioning that Xingji's CEO is said to have been held by Wang Yong, who used to be in charge of smartphones at ZTE. In addition, he has joined former ZTE executives and even system software developers who have accumulated careers at Shaomi and OPPO. He also pointed out that smartphones have applied for relevant patents.

By adding Meizu, human resources and know-how, taking into account the possibility of facing such a supply chain, can be said to be a reasonable strategy. The recent release of Meizu's new product is very mature, but in fact it seems to be very difficult to purchase parts.

Last March, "Meizu 18" and "Meizu 18 Pro" were released. Meizu 18s was also released in September. Snapdragon888 (18s is a flagship aircraft with Snapdragon888+) that supports 5G. The short-listed "Meizu 10" was launched at the beginning of the year.