20 years of restarting life

Chapter 2845 Zhao Changan's Pro Concept

Previously at Blackberry in Waterloo, Zhao Changan had not fully explained many things to Qi Xidong, Qiao Hang and others.

Just as Qi Xidong said at the dinner party at home, 'RIM6230professional gets rid of too many restrictive elements of the original BlackBerry phone, and will not even follow the QWERTY full keyboard, shortcut keys, and BlackBerry OS operating system', which caused strong dissatisfaction from Mike and Doug.

  In their words, is this RIMpro phone still a RIM phone?

So Zhao Changan had no choice but to separate and split Pro and RIM. Although the two are affiliated, the products are completely independent. Mike and Doug do not need to worry about the physical products of Pro, nor do they need to take responsibility for it.

In this way, pro is just a clever move, borrowing the brand effect of RIM, and using the abbreviation of pro to distinguish RIM.

And the pro, in terms of design and manufacturing, will fade away from RIM.

It's just that because it is a subsidiary of BlackBerry, it can choose to use RIM's own and paid-for technologies and patents, as well as various services.

In Zhao Changan's opinion, for the BlackBerry OS operating system, pro is definitely necessary.

However, the pro6230 is still a traditional mobile phone, and the operating system does not need to be too advanced. The first generation of BlackBerry OS is enough to realize most of the functions, but some adaptive additions and subtractions may be needed.

However, RIM's shortcut key commands are too complicated, cumbersome and numerous, and are not suitable for those complacent old hands. He still hopes to simplify it a bit, reduce some unnecessary shortcut key commands, and use trackball or scroll wheel to operate and execute.

Currently, mobile phones on the market all use four navigation keys, up, down, left and right, to select functional modules on the screen interface.

Even some higher-end resistive pen touch-screen phones will have these four basic keys on the keyboard, taking into account the convenience of using shortcuts and the possibility of not being able to find the stylus temporarily.

Like the latest Ericsson R380, it has a flip-open mobile phone keyboard outside the large rectangular screen.

When the keyboard is closed, the lower half of the monochrome LCD screen is exposed. When you type on the keyboard, the keyboard will transfer the clicks to the LCD screen below, realizing non-touch pen operation.

Zhao Changan hopes to use a scroll wheel or trackball to replace the functions of these four buttons and completely abandon the four navigation direction keys: up, down, left and right.

The technical requirements for the roller are relatively lower and the cost is lower, but the sensitivity is also slightly lower.

The combination of the trackball's magnetism and the Hall sensor makes the trackball as sensitive as a mouse, but it is more difficult to clean a trackball than an interface navigation wheel once it gets dirty.

As for the QWERTY full keyboard, Zhao Changan has made a firm decision to completely abandon it on the pro phone and adopt the mainstream nine-character grid keypad on the market.

This is also Zhao Changan’s most difficult decision.

Even when BlackBerry was at its peak, dominating the North American market with a 48% market share, and owning the 7000 (Charm) series and the 8000 (Electron, Pearl, Curve) series, covering the mid-range, mid-to-high-end, and high-end mobile phone markets, and having more than 1000 million paying cloud service users.

It has never been able to penetrate or shake the remaining 52% of the market share, which has been successfully divided up by mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Ericsson, Sony, etc.

Their own home base has never been able to break through the 50% market advantage, and in the global mobile phone market, they are either simply shut out, or, if they are allowed in, they are controlled and blocked in various ways, occupying a marginalized and invisible position.

As late as 06, BlackBerry phones still had to be imported through improper channels in many countries. The phones that BlackBerry fans got were called parallel imports. Not only did they not have the email push service through a dedicated channel, they couldn't even guarantee whether the phones were high-quality imitations or refurbished phones.

This of course also includes China, the world's largest emerging market.

In India, the second most populous country, and the wealthy Persian Gulf countries, their development is restricted. Zhao Changan's idea is that since the whole world is opposed to the confidentiality of BlackBerry phones, he will develop a series of phones that are not strictly confidential.

Since 52% of users in the North American market still don't like the QWERTY full keyboard layout, he just followed the trend and made a mainstream nine-grid keyboard on the market.

BlackBerry in Waterloo is still continuing its heritage, while the pro R&D center in Seattle is competing with the nine-grid mobile phones for the market.

The idea is good, but the question is whether the market will buy it and whether Yinnano can independently produce such a popular mobile phone. These are all unknown questions.

In order to avoid strong resistance from BlackBerry fans when launching the new model, Zhao Changan thought over and over again for a long time before deciding to offer a pro phone to those who are willing to try out the different pro phones, so that they would know that this phone is different from the mechanical conservatism of the original RIM series, and is more advanced than the mainstream mobile phone products on the market.

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When they arrived in Seattle, at the general meeting of senior executives, Zhao Changan frankly stated his basic and rigid requirements for pro6230.

Candy bar model, built-in antenna, color screen, self-compiled ringtones, GSM/GPRS2.5G network, WAP Internet access, nine-grid keyboard, BlackBerry OS operating system, enough and good built-in stand-alone games, large memory, scroll wheel/trackball function, deletion of unnecessary and cumbersome shortcut keys, weight not exceeding 119 grams, volume not larger than the currently hot-selling Nokia 3310, and the manufacturing cost of the prototype in North America shall not exceed US$.

Only by controlling the manufacturing cost of the prototype here below one hundred and fifty US dollars, can Zhao Changan be sure to reduce the cost to below one hundred US dollars in China, so that the final sales price at the mobile phone sales terminal can be controlled at least around two hundred and thirty US dollars.

It is 1900 RMB.

Compared with the domestic selling price of Nokia 3310 of 1500 yuan, this price is still 400 yuan higher.

However, the color screen alone can make up for the price.

It also has GPRS 2.5G network and WAP Internet access. Zhao Changan is confident that in terms of technology and design, pro6230 can easily crush Nokia 3310.

Of course, Nokia also has GPRS 2.5G network and WAP Internet access mobile phone models, but the prices are easily two to three thousand.

As for the final price of pro6230, Zhao Changan has not made any decision yet, and it is far from the time to discuss this topic, but he is determined to keep the final sales price of the mobile phone terminal below RMB 2300.

In order to make everyone understand some of his requirements more clearly, Zhao Changan specifically described the scroll wheel/trackball function.

However, this description is relatively easy to achieve, but it is not easy technically. Take the magnetic sphere of the trackball and the four small micro induction motors, which are all technical challenges that are not easy to achieve.

After Zhao Changan put forward his request, Qiao Hang remained silent for a long time. He did not discuss these technical issues too much until the end of the meeting.

Zhao Changan could certainly understand Qiao Hang's silence, but the design requirements of the scroll wheel/trackball function were three or four years ahead of the development of mobile phones of that era. It could be said that it was the first time that the people present had heard of this technology and design.

This involves technical issues beyond the mobile phone industry, namely whether there are companies that can produce products with this level of precision and volume and weight.

And after the ball and motor are made, their sensitivity and durability can be guaranteed.

One more thing, what’s the price?