Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 2102 Handheld Computer
For a whole morning, Duan Yun basically visited all the main exhibition areas at this CES exhibition, including the booths of European, American and Japanese multinational technology giants such as Sony, Toshiba, and Ericsson, and got a lot of product information.

Compared with last year's exhibition, the scale and manufacturers of this year's CES exhibition have indeed improved qualitatively. On the one hand, this reflects the degree of international attention to high-tech products, and on the other hand, it also reflects the strong national strength of the United States.

Moreover, compared with the regular visitors of previous CES exhibitions, at this year's CES exhibition, many new technology startups appeared, most of which came from Silicon Valley in the United States, and there were also some European manufacturers, mainly from France and Germany. Many exhibitors have also been added.

In fact, in the current United States, the economic strength is unprecedentedly strong, and its GDP has basically accounted for 1/3 of the world. Wall Street capital holds a lot of capital and hot money. Traditional industries can no longer attract their interest, so investing in start-up technology companies , has become a new investment hotspot, and the threshold for funding and financing has also dropped significantly. Even as long as you have a relevant, complete and feasible business plan, and your own assets and credit are good, after some evaluation, then you can easily It is easy to get a sum of money from relevant banks to start a business, which makes many ordinary Americans also have the opportunity to start a business.

In fact, like other businesses, this kind of entrepreneurial loan also has a certain degree of risk, but for those Wall Street capital giants, all risks are under control, and to invest in ten such technological innovation companies, you only need to have If a family can stand up and use related financial means, such as going public or transferring shares, they can earn back the money with interest. Because of this, the US technology industry has once again achieved unprecedented prosperity.

When Duan Yun visited the booths of these new technology start-up companies, he found that there were indeed many eye-catching products. With the help of the US foundation and a developed technology industry, the products and technologies of these start-up companies stood at a very high level from the very beginning. The starting point, and there are many categories of products, including commercial and civilian products, full of imagination and creativity.

However, according to Duan Yun, although the products of these new American start-up companies have their own bright spots, in fact, most of the products have the problems of single performance and high cost, and the market commercial potential is very limited, or simply a A product with little commercial value.

From the aspect of product design, we can see the gap between large companies and these new startups. In fact, these small and medium-sized technology companies in the United States also have certain strength in terms of research and development capabilities. After all, in Silicon Valley, Gathering the world's top scientific and technological talents, their technical and creative capabilities should not be underestimated. However, because some technical products are often thought out with a snap of their heads, there is a lack of overall technical coordination system and lack of support for such products. Due to the sufficient market research and insufficient technical background, the cost of the manufactured products is indeed too high and lacks widespread practicability, which makes it difficult for these small companies to commercialize their products on a large scale, and they eventually Fate, the good ones will be fully acquired or controlled by large companies, and the bad ones will go bankrupt directly after burning out the investment funds. Therefore, in the United States, a large number of new companies are born almost every day, and a large number of companies go bankrupt at the same time. , Survival of the fittest has been vividly demonstrated in the American scientific and technological circles.

Although most of the new products of American small and medium-sized companies do not have much commercial value in Duan Yun's view, they did bring him some ideas for technological innovation, especially the miniaturization design ideas of these companies for some electronic products. Duan Yun was a great inspiration.

In addition, at this year's exhibition, handheld computers became the focus of Duan Yun's focus, and he carefully studied the design plans and ideas of some exhibits.

In fact, in 1993, handheld computers had already appeared at CES. In 1993, integrated circuits and miniaturization vigorously promoted the development of the industry. A major focus of CES in 1993 was handheld computers (PDAs).

These handheld devices are essentially early smartphones without telephony capabilities.Casio used the show to introduce its XL-7000 handheld, otherwise known as the Tandy Zoomer.

Another handheld computer was manufactured by Apple Computer in 1993. Its electronic design and manufacturing were in charge of Sharp in Japan (Sharp had launched an early compatible model), and Taiwan's Inventec Group also used to OEM MP130.

The original Newton used an ARM 610 RISC CPU and featured a touchscreen, infrared, handwriting input (even supports cursive), and more.The operating system used is Newton OS.And its handwriting recognition function is a major feature.Apple's official name for it is "MessagePad", and "Newton" is Apple's name for the operating system it uses (Newton OS).

However, because newton could not find its position in the market and the demand was low, it stopped developing and stopped production in 1997.

This also shows that in fact, many high-tech products are facing the situation of "applause but not popular", because of the high cost and the inability to be widely demanded by consumers, which leads to the fact that this product can only end without a problem. There are indeed great innovations in terms of technology, and they can even become epoch-making technological breakthroughs.

The reason why Duan Yun is interested in handheld computers is because many of the technologies can be applied to smart phones in the future, and how to integrate handheld computers and mobile phones into one, and achieve low cost and miniaturization is a great challenge for Tianyin Group. It will be a very big challenge for our R&D department.

In general, in order to make a real smartphone, Duan Yun needs to invest more funds and talents to develop related chips and software, and this process will be very difficult. The prototype in Duan Yun's impression will take at least 2 to 3 years.

During the noon break, Duan Yun had lunch with the staff, and at two o'clock in the afternoon, the entire venue ushered in a wave of people. The reason was that Bill Gates appeared in front of the Microsoft booth.

As the hottest and richest man in the world, Bill Gates had a very large appearance, surrounded by a team of professional bodyguards consisting of more than a dozen people. Hundreds of reporters also raised their cameras at this time, and the flashing spotlights made the whole The hall is extraordinarily dazzling.

"Here we come, here we come!" Li Yun, who was standing next to Duan Yun at this time, was also excited when she saw Bill Gates appear, and turned her head and said to Duan Yun.

(End of this chapter)