Source: Securities Times
Author: An Yufei

On September 21, at NIO IN 2023 NIO Innovation and Technology Day, NIO Phone was officially unveiled, positioning itself as the flagship phone. Why was a mobile phone made? Li Bin, founder, chairman, and CEO of NIO, said that it's not because mobile phone companies all build cars, nor because NIO doesn't make money and uses mobile phones to make profit, but that NIO users need a mobile phone that is seamlessly connected to NIO. He said, “With the NIO Phone, I really don't need to use car keys anymore.”

In addition to this, NIO also launched its first self-developed chip product, “Yang Jian,” a lidar main control chip, and Tianshu SkyOS, a global operating system for smart electric vehicles. This year's Innovation and Technology Day can be described as “full of dry goods.”

NIO “does not post ads” on mobile phones, pioneering “car control keys”

According to Li Bin, the NIO Phone is positioned as a flagship phone. It is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen2 leading version. The maximum 16GB+1T memory combination is optional. It is equipped with a 6.81-inch screen, supports a variable refresh rate of 1-120Hz, and is equipped with 50 million wide-angle+ultra-wide-angle+periscope telephoto rear-facing cameras.

Compared to other Android phones, the NIO Phone announced “no ads” and achieved “0 system ads, 0 commercial pre-installation.” Li Bin said, “In today's Android ecosystem, for various reasons, internet revenue is a very important source of revenue (source) for them. But this incident is definitely going to take up more mobile phone resources and system resources. We don't have this kind of burden, and our team doesn't have the idea of using ads to make money.”

According to information, the NIO Phone is divided into three versions: Performance Edition (12GB+512GB), Ultimate Edition (12GB+1TB), and ePEdition (16GB+1TB). The starting prices are 6499 yuan, 6899 yuan, and 7499 yuan respectively. It was immediately sold on the NIO App Store, and delivery began on September 28. On the spot, when an audience shouted “far ahead,” Li Bin smiled and responded, “It's not far ahead, but it's very easy to use.”

Why does NIO, as a car company, want to build mobile phones across borders? Li Bin said that NIO users need a mobile phone that is seamlessly connected to NIO. In an interview with the media earlier, Li Bin also said, “When we make mobile phones, we don't want to (compete) with Xiaomi and Huawei; the logic is not the same. You can understand Cheng Wei Lai's NIO Life. We don't want to be a clothing company or food company, but rather focus on user needs and meet their usage scenarios based on our connections with users.”

Li Bin once said that the price of a car is almost 100 times that of a mobile phone, which is equivalent to the difference between stars and planets. The logic should revolve around stars to define planets, and mobile phones are “planets.”

So, as the “planet” of automobiles, how can NIO phones achieve a seamless connection with cars? According to Li Bin, the NIO mobile phone pioneered a “car control button” in the world, which enables direct one-click access to 30 functions, including: starting the vehicle, vehicle summoning, remote parking, guard mode, vehicle status inquiry, and trunk control.

According to reports, the NIO Phone has also implemented in-car control functions. As long as you sit in a NIO car while holding the phone, the phone can accurately identify whether the owner is sitting as the main driver, co-pilot, or back row, and achieve precise vehicle control. Li Bin said, “We need to make multiple cars; we only make one mobile phone.”

Today, it has become a major trend for car companies to cross borders in the mobile phone sector. Geely buys Meizu, Huawei and Wenjie have connected the Hongmeng system... The degree of connectivity between mobile phones and cars is constantly deepening.

Release the “Yang Jian” chip to boost the operating system

The seamless connection between NIO Phone and NIO Auto also benefits from Tianshu SkyOS, the global operating system for smart electric vehicles released by NIO. According to reports, Tianshu SkyOS is the underlying operating system for NIO vehicles, and it is also the first smart electric vehicle operating system in China.

Li Bin said that Tianshu SkyOS has built a “1+4+N” technology cluster, covering various fields such as vehicle control, smart driving, cockpit, mobile internet, etc., and has become a comprehensive and leading intelligent digital technology base, so that various devices can be organically integrated to achieve efficient collaborative work, and full-function mass production of Tianshu SkyOS will be realized on NT3 platform models.

In addition to the operating system, NIO also released “Yang Jian,” the first self-developed lidar main control chip. The chip will be mass-produced in October. According to Li Bin, the “Yang Jian” chip is the first self-developed chip released by NIO's smart hardware team. The 8-core 64-bit processor is equipped with 8 9-bit AD modulus sampling. Each channel has a sampling frequency of up to 1 GHz, which can efficiently capture laser echo signals.

Li Bin believes that in the era of smart electric vehicles, it is difficult for car companies to gain lasting competitiveness if they do not do low-level positive development. In the future, NIO's business layout is smart electric vehicles, user companies, and global operations.

Currently, competition for NEV sales is heating up. In April and May of this year, NIO's sales volume continued to fall below 7,000 vehicles. Li Bin once laughed, “Assuming the next monthly sales volume is 10,000 units, I and Qin Lihong (co-founder of NIO Auto) will have to find jobs.”

However, since June, NIO's sales have gradually picked up. In July, NIO delivered 205,000 new vehicles, up 103.6% year on year and 91.1% month on month, a record high. In August of this year, NIO sold 19,300 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 5.5% and a year-on-year increase of 81%.

In the results conference call for the second quarter of 2023, NIO revealed that in June, it was discovered that the sales capacity could not meet the demand to sell 7-8 models at the same time. Since July, the sales capacity has been comprehensively improved. The goal is to lock up sales capacity of 30,000 vehicles per month. The construction of this sales capacity will be completed by the end of September, and the results of sales capacity building will begin to gradually show up starting in October. Li Bin said, “NIO is very confident that it will achieve the target of an average monthly sales of more than 20,000 vehicles in the second half of the year.”

Looking at the industry as a whole, in August of this year, BYD's sales volume of new energy vehicles reached 274,400 units, another record high, an increase of 56.87% over the previous year. Ideal Auto delivered 34,900 vehicles in August, an increase of 663.8% over the previous year. Xiaopeng Motor delivered 13,600 vehicles in August, up 24% from the previous month and 43% from the previous year. For two consecutive months, the delivery volume exceeded 10,000 vehicles.

In the context of increasingly fierce sales competition in the NEV industry, NIO chose to make additional efforts in the fields of mobile phones, underlying technology, etc., or it may be a path to breaking the game.

Editor/Jeffy