According to the informed source inside the industry, MTK has made investment to Meizu, but the ratio of its shares wasn’t clear. This is the second time that Meizu obtained investment after the strategic investment from Alibaba. At present, Meizu hasn’t made official respond.
On February 9th, 2015, Alibaba announced an investment of $590 million (about CNY 3.6 billion) to Meizu, at the same time, Haitong Kaiyuan Fund would also invest $60 million (about CNY 360 million) to Meizu. This was the first time that Meizu introduced strategic investors, and also the biggest investment of Alibaba since it became listed.
Rumor goes that there is a VAM attached to the investment agreement of Alibaba and Meizu, which requires that the shipments of Meizu should reach 20 million in 2015. If the sales target isn’t achieved by the end of 2015, Alibaba will obtain the right to get further acquisition of Meizu’s shares, if the shipments exceed 20 million, then Meizu mobile phone will be installed with Alibaba YunOS operating system, it’s obvious that Alibaba chose Meizu to expand its ecosystem.
Analyst believes that MTK invested in Meizu just like Qualcomm made investment in Xiaomi in the old days. What’s more, in the numerous mobile phone enterprises in China, only Meizu doesn’t adopt the solutions of Qualcomm. According to the Secretary of Mobile phone China Alliance Lao Yao, Meizu hasn’t signed patent licensing with Qualcomm, so it cannot be ignored that after the investment of MTK, Meizu may turn to MTK platform and become its core customer.