Huawei Bets on “ATIO SELECTED”

Recently, Huawei issued an announcement on car business decisions, once again stressing that Huawei does not build cars with an effective period of five years and will take serious steps to tackle Huawei brand abuse.  

From the beginning of this March, AITO started to use the new slogan “HUAWEI Wenjie” or “HUAWEI AITO” in the promotional posters and videos employed on its official Weibo, public account and other platforms as well as in the offline shops, bringing about a new round of discussion in the industry about Huawei’s leading role in building cars.

And at Huawei’s Spring Flagship Product Launch event on March 23, Yu Chengdong announced that the advanced intelligent driving editions of Huawei AITO M5 and AITO M5 EV would be released in April, when the name “Huawei AITO” was mentioned for the first time.

But now, Ren Zhengfei has put forward strict requirements on the display of HUAWEI logo in the car design, emphasizing that HUAWEI can not be presented in vehicle promotion and appearance, and specifically pointing out that “Huawei Wenjie” and “HUAWEI AITO” can not be used.

Xu Zhijun, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, also voiced, “Some departments and partners are abusing the Huawei brand, which we are keeping investigating and dealing with. We will not allow HUAWEI to be abused. Huawei does not make cars, nor does it have any brand of cars. ”

Photo credit: the Internet 

In the latest document, Huawei has made clear requirements that it is strictly forbidden that the Huawei brand appears in front of or as a car brand. Xu Zhijun once again stressed, “We will clean up and reorganize all materials in all flagship shops and sales outlets, and return to our strategic positioning.”

This is the clearest answer yet of Huawei’s attitude toward “To build cars or not”.

Huawei has three cooperation models with auto enterprises, namely, parts suppliers, Huawei Inside and Huawei smart selection. Among them, Huawei smart selection enjoys the deepest cooperation with full coverage from design to sales, and only AITO, so far, has adopted this cooperation scheme, which inevitably strikes outsiders as an ambiguous attitude whether Huawei is building cars or not.

After the public opinion storm of “HUAWEI AITO”, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director, CEO of the Consumer BG and CEO of the Intelligent Automotive Solution BU of Huawei, talked about the initial intention, “The new slogan ‘HUAWEI AITO’ was initially launched to utilize AITO as an ecological brand for cross-border cooperation so as to reduce the cost of Huawei’s cooperation with car companies and establish a unified brand identity. Though Huawei/HUAWEI logo has to be taken off from the marketing and promotion, the essence remains unchanged.”

With increasing consumer rationality, both online and offline sales have entered a stage where winners assure success by efficiency and service, especially in terms of car purchase---one of the areas of bulk stock. The smart selection mode created by Huawei is similar to “XX SELECTED” mode that enables e-merchants to reduce procurement costs by shortening the supply chain, and even collaborate with manufactures to develop exclusive products, significantly improving channel efficiency.

Similarly, Huawei, as a large “platform”, takes its own advantages to participate in the “Selection”. Meanwhile, various car companies, with Huawei’s brand empowerment, swiftly manufacture competitive products and boost To C sales through Huawei’s offline shops, not only earning themselves a rapid rise in sales, but bringing Huawei significant “profits”.

In fact, in the time of intelligence, in addition to technologies, Huawei needs to offer business models, product definition and capabilities. The way things are at the moment, Huawei has already blocked its way of building cars,  with the remaining Huawei Smart Selection mode being its top priority. As long as the mode is well done, it is no longer important whether Huawei will build cars on its own.

Translator：Wei Xiong           

Reviser：Yan Luo