On the first day of work in the Year of the Horse, the rumor that "Meizu is going to shut down its mobile phone business" exploded in Tony's circle of friends and information stream. What is being uploaded online probably means that the mobile phone department has been completely abolished, the Meizu 23, which has not yet been released, has been essentially suspended, Flyme Auto is owned by Yikatong, and all personnel adjustments will be completed in March.
In fact, Tony would hear news about "Meizu's bankruptcy" every few months, and he was somewhat immune to such news.But this time after seeing Meizu’s current CMO Wan Zhiqiang’s meaningful Weibo and the verification from many former Meizu employees, I suddenly felt that this was becoming more and more true...
Today, Tony also mobilized his contacts to inquire, but we never got a positive answer. As for the news that "Meizu mobile phones will be officially delisted in March" published by many media, Meizu officials did not respond.
Okay, let’s just ignore whether this is true or not today. Tony just wants to show you the current Meizu as an old Meizu friend.
In fact, the Meizu in the hearts of Mei friends may be gone long ago.
As a hardcore kerosene, Tony's favorite words before were "Meizu M8", "Homemade Light", and "Xiaomi Master". It can be said that its previous glory and pride have indeed given Meizu friends the confidence to brag -
Take the MX3 of that year as an example. In 2013 and 2014, when all the friends around me were using Xiaomi, Coolpad, and Samsung, if you used Meizu, it would be a breath of fresh air.
The minimalist design, small dots, and fresh system color matching greatly satisfied the vanity of young people at that time who pursued a niche, paid attention to style, and wanted to be a "literary youth."
This unique user portrait has allowed Meizu to accumulate a group of loyal fans in the past few years, and it has been able to keep pace with Xiaomi in terms of pricing and sales. However, Meizu’s development story later became a bit confusing...
It started with Qualcomm. In 2016, Qualcomm sued Meizu for patent infringement, claiming 520 million yuan. Meizu's Li Nan also called Qualcomm a "patent troll." The patent dispute between the two resulted in almost all of Meizu's products being launched on the MediaTek platform around 2016.
You must know that Meilan was still engaged in machine-sea tactics at that time, but it turned out that a Helio P10 processor could be passed down to three generations, which made Tony feel dizzy.
Meizu Note 3 with P10 processor
The most terrible thing is that when it comes to Pro 7, Meizu's top management is blindly confident. Not only did they make a joke about "smart windows", but they also caught up with Fa Ge's failure to make a profit that year, resulting in a large backlog of products. This is also considered by many Meizu fans as the turning point for Meizu's decline.
I believe everyone knows what happened next. Although Meizu 15th and 16th have restored some reputation after Huang Zhang came out, the situation is over...
First, Meizu was cut off, and its sales moat disappeared; second, Meizu closed too many offline stores in those years, and its offline advantages no longer existed; third, in the face of Huami OV's respective brand ecosystem establishment, Meizu, which almost only had mobile phone products, has always been lacking in ecosystem.
Not to mention that OV took advantage of this time to poach many Meizu employees. Hong Hansheng, an employee of Meizu at the time, broke the news that OV poached at least 2/3 of Meizu’s employees with twice the annual salary, and he himself later went to OPPO...
Hong Hansheng’s comeback on Weibo after many years
There are some overturning things about the product itself that Tony didn’t even bother to mention. For example, we previously wrote that Meizu 18 violated the “Three Zeros” promise by stuffing ads into the phone, and was fined in the end.
After persisting like this for a few years, the market space was quickly squeezed by competitors and Meizu became the "others" and had no choice but to devote itself to Geely.
I know that after reading the development history of Meizu above, some friends will think that everything is the fault of Pro 7, but Tony feels that this is not the core reason.The real reason may be that the era of relying on personal charm and geek spirit to make products is over.
Take Meizu 18 as an example. Many people attribute its failure to the poor performance of Snapdragon 888, but Tony thinks it is still too paranoid——
The ultimate feel, small size, more expensive ultrasonic fingerprint recognition, and no advertising design (although it did not last long). These seemingly "advantages" brought worse battery life and a more expensive price. These are also the "disadvantages" that made it popular but not popular.
However, what will be the result of waiting until the volume declines and then compromising to the market?
After being acquired by Geely, Meizu has launched three series of flagship mobile phones, Meizu 20, Meizu 21 and Meizu 22. Almost every generation has its flaws...
Let’s talk about Meizu 20 first. The screen quality of the standard version is relatively poor, with a resolution of only 1080p. Many users complain that it is a “blind screen.” Although Meizu 21 has improved the screen, the image is still almost the same and can only be scanned. As for Meizu 22, because it uses the sub-flagship Snapdragon 8s Gen4 released half a year ago, the performance is unsatisfactory.
Geely gave Meizu a blood transfusion in the hope that Meizu could deliver a satisfactory answer. However, before the acquisition, Meizu no longer had the ability to deliver a satisfactory answer.
One of the very important reasons is the brain drain of Meizu as we mentioned above.
In those few years, domestic manufacturers were busy optimizing their systems. Some manufacturers had thousands of people in their imaging teams. However, Meizu had already been hollowed out. How could it still have the manpower to do research and development?
In addition, the balance of interests of many parties also prevents Meizu from making those "extreme" mobile phones in the past. This has also caused Meizu to almost lose its last moat - the old Meizu.
Weibo blogger @肉大魔王 yesterday announced their survey data. Not only does Meizu mobile phone have little appeal to new users, 57% of old users also said they would not choose Meizu for their next mobile phone.
Alas, the core collapsed brother.
And even as a Geely car key, Meizu is almost useless... The UWB function of the Meizu 20 and 21 generations has been cut off again and again. By the time Meizu 22 is even equipped with it, only the top-end models are equipped; the Lynk & Co Phone and Ploestar Phone made for Lynk & Co and Polestar have not even had a few system updates...
Let’s talk about the 22 released by Meizu at the end of last year. To be honest, except for the white panel, it is difficult for Tony to see the original shadow of Meizu on this product, and the system function is really lame. In the past, Flyme was leading in both interactive design and functions, but now it lags behind Huami OV——
Although Meizu has invested a lot of energy in improving Flyme AIOS 2, it is impossible to catch up with this gap for a while...
It's like picking up a pen in a high school math class with your head down, and then raising your head to listen to the lecture, but you can't understand it no matter what.
So in the final analysis, if there will no longer be Meizu mobile phones in the future, as an old Meizu friend, should Tony be sad?
As one of the originators of Chinese smartphones, Meizu carries the youth and love of too many people, and its withdrawal is indeed a pity.
But Tony feels that after Meizu is acquired in 2022, it will be difficult to call it Meizu in the true sense.
Why did Tony say this? Because since Meizu was acquired by Geely, Meizu has taken over the responsibility of Flyme Auto and devoted all its energy to developing cars and machines. To make matters worse, Meizu has been exposed to layoffs and cost reductions in the past two years. The result of wanting everything is likely to be that nothing can be done well.
On one side is the unprofitable mobile phone business, and on the other side is the car machine business that it wanted to develop from the beginning. Guess which one Geely wants to protect more when such a situation arises?
Not long ago, Meizu executive Li Nan also posted on Weibo today to talk about this matter, saying that he had designed a "revitalization plan for Meizu" before, which included drastic layoffs and All in AI devices. Although it looked decent, in essence, he still gave up his car to save his handsomeness. Meizu's mobile phone business still cannot be saved...
Tony doesn't know what Meizu's situation will be like if this combination of punches comes to fruition, but it is obvious that after a company with a small but beautiful label commits to a large enterprise, it will inevitably lose its original temperament.
Meizu is right, Geely is right, everyone gets what they want, but in the final analysis, today’s market is no longer one that can endure a series of bad experiences for the sake of faith.
As a charm friend, I will miss that era when mobile phone manufacturers were flourishing and full of whims.
But memories are always beautified, and people always tend to forget pain and instead keep some good things in their minds. When we look back, we still have to embrace our current needs and life.
Perhaps it would be better to keep the freshness that Meizu once brought us in our memory.