Text/Di Lin Audit/Zi Yang Correction/Zhi Qiu
Since 2022, in addition to Microsoft's huge investment in the acquisition of Activision Blizzard has attracted great attention from the global game industry, the author is most curious about the news of the acquisition of mobile phone brands by two major domestic industry giants.
One of them is Tencent's plan to acquire Xiaomi's Black Shark game phone brand, which is obviously to better deploy the game business. Another is Geely Group's acquisition of Meizu, which is "small and beautiful".
Meizu mobile phones have entered a cold winter period
In mid-January, the news of Geely Group's proposed acquisition of Meizu quickly spread throughout the internet, although neither side officially made a clear statement, but it still attracted widespread attention inside and outside the industry.
According to 36Kr, at present, the mobile phone company under Geely Group is in contact with Meizu and negotiating acquisitions.
In addition, the author understands that although the news that Geely plans to spend 10 billion yuan is reported on the Internet, the purchase price cannot be determined immediately because the transaction has not yet been completed.
However, in the author's opinion, if Geely Group does prepare 10 billion yuan, it should be enough, after all, Meizu mobile phones have already entered the cold winter period, and Meizu's winter is colder than expected.
Although Meizu mobile phones are still insisting on launching new models, looking at the entire Chinese smartphone market, Meizu is much different from the head enterprises in terms of popularity, user base and brand influence.
The domestic share is only 0.1%
According to the data released by the market research agency BCI, in January 2021, Meizu's market share in China was only 0.1%.
As we all know, since the battery door incident in 2016, when Samsung Electronics was at its worst, its market share also reached more than 0.5%.
Meizu, which has not touched the bottom line of Chinese consumers, is not even as good as Samsung Electronics, which is indeed a result that the author did not imagine.
In addition, Meizu has made a lot of jokes in order to save the situation, and what impressed the author the most is the so-called 0 advertisement, 0 pre-installation and 0 push "three zero mobile phone" launched by Meizu in the first half of 2021.
This mobile phone did achieve "three zeros" at the beginning of the listing, providing consumers with the purest smart phone, and has become a clear stream in the Chinese mobile phone market.
However, on December 14, 2021, Zhuhai Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. was fined more than 25,000 yuan by the local municipal supervision bureau for the advertising push in its "30 mobile phone".
It is true that Meizu previously deleted the publicity of "three zero mobile phones" and said that it maintained a consistent operating strategy with the industry. But at the same time, the company has also promised that the meizu 18/pro models will not be affected by the adjustment.
Therefore, Meizu was not unjustly punished, and the reason why the company changed its face so quickly was mainly because of a lack of money.
As early as 2020, Meizu has experienced layoffs, infighting, executive departures, and a large number of offline stores. The reason for a series of storms is precisely because Meizu has lost its hematopoietic ability, in order to compress costs and reduce losses as much as possible, Meizu has to shrink the front.
It was once valued at $10 billion
Back in 2009, Meizu became popular with the M8 smart machine, not only called the Chinese version of Apple, but also the market valuation once reached $10 billion.
In 2015, Meizu received a $590 million strategic investment from Alibaba. On the other hand, today, the brands that once swept the country can't even do "small and beautiful".
As for the reasons, the author believes that the main reason is the strategic mistakes, lack of management and inaccurate positioning of Meizu mobile phones in the early stage.
At the beginning, Meizu frequently held new product launches in order to expand like no money and no research and development time; the charm blue that spent a lot of effort to create was closed after being pushed by the main, and then restarted after closing.
With money, take the road of "big and complete", and without money, you will flaunt yourself as "small and beautiful".
Some Meizu loyal fans still compare Meizu to Apple at the level of "never asking for a spokesperson", but Apple does not need to find a spokesperson, and Meizu does not find a spokesperson, there is no money.
Write at the end
Therefore, as far as the current situation is concerned, Meizu, whose profitability is almost negligible, wants to survive, and I am afraid that the only way to be acquired can go.