NIO Inc., who has entered the mobile phone industry, is speeding up recruitment and team building.

The Future Automobile Daily learned from a number of independent sources that Yi Wei, former senior vice president of Meitu Mobile, has joined NIO Inc. 's mobile team as head of the software department. A source said that at present, Yi Wei "can not see the specific (rank) in NIO Inc., only the code name."

"NIO Inc. 's mobile phone team has more than 300 people, including OPPO, Meitu and Huawei," a person familiar with the matter told Future Automobile Daily.

According to the recruitment website, NIO Inc. has posted a large number of positions strongly related to the mobile phone business, including Camera App development engineer, Android engineer, smartwatch product manager and so on. The salary offered by NIO Inc. to the mobile phone team is "up by 10 per cent and 20 per cent", the person said.

In response to the above information, NIO Inc. responded that he would not comment on personnel information.

Yi Wei is a veteran in the field of mobile communications, working in the mobile phone industry for more than ten years. He has served as Senior Vice President of Meitu Mobile and General Manager of the emerging Mobile Terminal Division of OPPO. In February this year, 36Kr Holdings reported exclusively that Yin Shuijun, former president of Meitu Mobile phone, joined NIO Inc. to take the lead in his mobile phone business.

As the stalls are gradually rolled out, there is more progress about NIO Inc. 's mobile phone.

According to App, NIO Inc. Mobile Technology Co., Ltd. was established with legal representative Qin Lihong with a registered capital of US $100 million. its business scope includes information system integration services, mechanical equipment research and development, mobile terminal equipment sales, artificial intelligence application software development, communication equipment sales, wearable smart device sales, smart vehicle device sales, etc. Shareholder information shows that the company is wholly owned by NIO NEXTEV LIMITED.

Earlier, it was reported that Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO Inc. Automobile, revealed when communicating with users at the end of July that NIO Inc. 's mobile phone was being promoted, learning from Apple Inc and planning to develop a mobile phone every year. After that, it revealed more details about NIO Inc. 's mobile phone: the flagship model above 7000 yuan, the straight board with non-curved screen, will be the best phone to match NIO Inc. 's car, and it is expected to be available in a year.

NIO Inc. 's first high-end flagship model may be equipped with a Qualcomm Inc Snapdragon 8-series processor, GSM Arena reported. The report pointed out that NIO Inc. chose Qualcomm Inc, first, because Qualcomm Inc was recognized by the industry in the high-end market, and second, because NIO Inc. used Qualcomm Inc chips on his car, and Qualcomm Inc on his mobile phone was also more convenient to test and adjust.

A person in the mobile phone industry said that the degree of intelligence of mobile phones was far ahead of cars. "for example, the Qualcomm Inc Snapdragon 8155 chip used by many car companies was used on mobile phones as early as around 2019," and was deeply involved in the research and development of smart phones. can feed the research and development of smart cars, "from the overall brand point of view, it is not a loss."

The current mobile phone industry has a mature supply chain and is a highly standardized and integrated industry, and "it is not difficult to build a mobile phone from scratch," the person said. But building a good mobile phone is "the most difficult of all".

According to Li Bin's idea, unlike purely being a mobile phone brand, NIO Inc. takes the car as the center to do IoT equipment to meet the unmet needs of NIO Inc. users. We are not thinking from the perspective of commercial success, but whether users need a NIO Inc. mobile phone.

It believes that the mobile phone is the most important device for NIO Inc. users to connect to the car. NIO Inc. users who open the car door and control the car are more and more dependent on mobile phones, while more than half of NIO Inc. users use Apple Inc mobile phones, but the iOS system is very closed to the automobile industry.

One example is that all the Lai II models come standard with UWB, but Apple Inc is not willing to open the interface to this, so NIO Inc. users who use Apple Inc's mobile phone cannot use wireless charging in the car. Li Bin once said, "not building a mobile phone is equivalent to having the key in the hands of the opponent."

Nowadays, NIO Inc. is not the only one who makes mobile phones.

In September 2021, Geely's Star Times announced its entry into the mobile phone industry, and Li Shufu personally became the chairman of Star Times. Compared with the self-research approach adopted by NIO Inc., Star Age officially took 79% control of Meizu Technology on July 4 this year. According to Shen Ziyu, vice chairman of Star Times, his team is nearly 1000 people.

According to the Future Automobile Daily, a number of senior executives of Star Times have been in place, including Wang Wenjun, former chief architect of XIAOMI MIUI, who served as vice president of Star Times. In addition, the management team also includes Zhang Xiangrong, director of the Industrial Design Department, Chen Haijun, director of the AI product department, Xie Lingfei, director of the XR product planning department, and Chen Kai, director of the XR Applied Ecology Department.

Although the mobile phone business is very imaginative, car companies still face many tests in the face of reality.

For NIO Inc., even if the owner of Xilai car has a NIO Inc. mobile phone, based on the cumulative delivery volume of 227000 vehicles as of July 31, 2022, it is still "negligible" in front of the "100 million" shipments calculated by head mobile phone players. In 2021, the shipments of Apple Inc, XIAOMI and OPPO are 230 million, 190 million and 140 million respectively.

For mobile phone manufacturers, mobile phone shipments are directly linked to the discourse power and stability of the supply chain.

"from the supplier's point of view, if the customer's shipments are small, they can't get a good price for chips and components from the original factory (electronic components manufacturer)," said a person in the mobile phone supply chain. "there is a decimal point difference between 10k/ year and 1000k/ year." For example, if the resistance forecast demand 10K/ year, the price is 0.60 yuan per unit, 1000K may be 0.06 yuan or less.

In addition to self-research mobile phones, NIO Inc. 's business territory is still expanding. Including self-developed battery, self-developed self-driving technology (including hardware, operating system, algorithm and lidar deep customization), layout of the third brand and mass market brand, each business requires a lot of money and manpower. With the gradual expansion of the stall, how to balance the development of core business and improve operational efficiency has become the next issue for NIO Inc. to think about.