AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)07/04 Report--

On the evening of July 2, Cyrus Group announced that its holding subsidiary, Selis Motor, intends to acquire 919 registered or applied text and graphics trademarks held by Huawei Technology Co., Ltd. and 44 related design patents for a total of 2.5 billion yuan.

Cyrus said that some of the objects of this transaction are trademarks and design patents that have been registered and are being applied for overseas, and the application for registration or approval of transfer of the relevant subject matter must be in accordance with the requirements of the relevant laws and regulations of the locality. There is uncertainty, but it does not affect the company's continued exclusive exercise of all rights of the relevant trademarks and patents. However, Cyrus also said that the transaction does not affect the joint business of the two sides, and the two sides will further deepen the cooperative relationship. Based on the consistency of product and brand market perception, the underlying assets related to this transaction will be dedicated to the joint business of both parties.

This means that if the acquisition is completed, the Mengjie trademark and related vehicle design patents will belong to Cyrus. Huawei also responded to the acquisition by transferring a series of trademarks such as QQ to Selis, and will continue to support Selis in creating and selling QQ. Huawei has always insisted on not building cars, but using the leading intelligent network connected automobile technology to continue to help car companies build and sell good cars.

In the view of Automotive Industry concern, Huawei transferred the relevant trademarks and vehicle design patents to Selis Automobile in order to further separate it from Huawei Automobile.

In March 2023, Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, issued an internal announcement once again emphasizing that "Huawei does not build cars" and extended the validity period for five years. In this internal announcement, in addition to emphasizing that "Huawei does not build cars", Ren Zhengfei also put forward strict requirements for the exposure of Huawei logo in car design. Ren Zhengfei stressed that models launched in cooperation with Huawei should not be promoted by Huawei / HUAWEI, and stressed that "Huawei Jijie" and "HUAWEI AITO'" logos should not be used.

At that time, before the internal announcement, the AITO official poster directly used the new slogan "HUAWEI ask the boundary" instead of the previous "AITO question". Especially at the 2023 Huawei spring press conference, Yu Chengdong, as the keynote speaker, also used "Huawei ask the boundary" to directly express the products launched in cooperation with Cyrus. This series of moves led the industry to speculate that Huawei may be speeding up the layout of its automobile business. Or Huawei will further dominate the development of AITO cars. Obviously, the transfer of Huawei's series of trademarks to Cyrus is to further separate the Huawei brand from the car trademark and reaffirm the market decision not to build cars.

In fact, from the consumer's point of view, the models under the AITO brand are launched by Huawei, and its products are basically presided over by Yu Chengdong, and their products also appear in major Huawei stores. On the contrary, the senior executives of Cyrus Group seldom promote AITO products. So it doesn't matter whether Huawei builds cars or not, but at the corporate level, it is also necessary to strengthen the market decision of "not building cars".

At present, there are three main modes of cooperation between Huawei and automobile companies: the first is to sell standardized auto parts products; the second is the Huawei Inside model (referred to as "HI mode"), which provides full-stack intelligent car solutions; and the third is the smart car selection mode (Hongmeng Zhihang), which is deeply involved in product, vehicle design and sales network channels.

Historically, Huawei has successively cooperated with Cyrus, Chery and BAIC to launch QQ, Wisdom and Huan respectively. Jianghuai will become the fourth cooperative car company, but the brand name with which it launched is temporarily unknown. Due to the first layout of the market and Yu Chengdong's hard work, it is already well-known. It has launched models including M5, M7, M9, and will launch M8 models this year, positioning between M7 and M9.

From April onwards, AITO no longer announced sales separately, but took Hongmeng Zhixing as the brand official. Official figures show that Hongmeng delivered 46141 vehicles in June, of which 43146 were delivered by the world and 2995 by the intelligence community. Among the brands, the M9 delivered 17241, the new M7 18493 and the new M5 7046. By the end of June, Hongmeng Zhihang had delivered a total of 194207 vehicles, making it the number one new power brand in sales in the first half of the year.

In the case of strengthening the separation between Huawei brand and automobile trademark, it remains to be seen whether the "boundary line" brand jointly created by Huawei and car companies can gain consumers' recognition of Huawei brand. At present, apart from asking the boundary, the performance of the Zhijie brand is fairly mediocre. The first model in the sharing world is priced at more than 500000, and the number of brands cooperating with Jianghuai will be as high as one million. It is very difficult for these brands to provide a large market increment for Hongmeng Zhixing.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat