The road to car-machine interconnection encounters obstacles: Geely's Meizu Star is reported to have laid off employees, and R&D has become the hardest hit area

According to a Maimai user, Geely's Star Meizu has carried out four rounds of layoffs since March 2023. The user said that the recent layoffs may be for the IPO service in the second quarter of 2024 to make the financial data look better.

It is reported that the layoffs of Meizu were only notified by phone, without written notice. The company will provide N+1+1 compensation to the laid-off employees, with the latter +1 being a signing fee. The originally promised 15th salary will not be compensated, nor will annual leave and adjusted leave.

The user said that the R&D team was the hardest hit by the layoffs, accounting for more than 40%. Judging from the layoffs, most of them were former Xingji employees, and almost all of them were laid off in Shanghai and Wuhan.

In July 2022, StarJi Times and Meizu Technology merged into StarJi Meizu Group, headquartered in Wuhan, with branches in Zhuhai, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and other places. The former Meizu founder Huang Zhang serves as chief consultant.

At its peak, Meizu had a total of over 5,000 employees, of which over 60% were R&D personnel.

Coincidentally, NIO also laid off employees in its mobile phone and battery departments some time ago, resulting in about 2,700 people losing their jobs before the New Year.

91che believes that whether it is Meizu or NIO, both companies have cut into the mobile phone business, indicating that the future direction of car-machine interconnection may have new changes.

The mobile phone businesses of Meizu and NIO have the same mission: to connect the car with the machine and enhance the user experience of car owners.

In the era of electric and intelligent transformation of automobiles, all car companies hope to connect cars and computers, so as to improve user experience and obtain more user data, build their own smart ecosystem, and ultimately improve user stickiness. Just like Apple has locked a large number of mobile phone users with the iOS ecosystem, car companies also hope to lock in car owners with their own ecosystems.

Not only car companies, but mobile phone companies are also eyeing this piece of cake.

Xiaomi's SU7 electric car claims to make cars an important part of Xiaomi's ecological chain.

Huawei's own intelligent solution, HiCar, has long been Huawei's vanguard in vehicle-machine interconnection systems.

Apple released CarPlay as early as 2014 to replace car companies' own interconnection systems.

In addition, Apple whistleblower Mark Gurman revealed that Apple plans to release a car with L2+ autonomous driving capabilities in 2028.

However, while car companies and technology companies are scrambling to grab market share in the field of vehicle-machine interconnection, Meizu and NIO have chosen to lay off employees at this time, and related businesses may be affected in the future.

First, the two companies' R&D capabilities in vehicle-machine interconnection technology will inevitably decline, which will make them face challenges in R&D and innovation. Second, their product experience may also be affected, leading to a decline in user experience and affecting their respective market competitiveness. Third, after this round of layoffs, the market's confidence in the two companies may also decline.

91che believes that for Meizu, their influence in the mobile phone field has been declining. After the merger with StarEdge, the Flyme Auto car operating system has become their new way out. The company also hoped to use this system to expand its business areas, but now the sudden layoffs may bring benefits to its IPO in the short term, but in the long run, it may make its transformation road more bumpy.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.