20 years of restarting life

Chapter 3627 Mina's Lament

As for Mina's claims about how many boyfriends she'd had and how she'd been sexually harassed by several superiors, Zhao Chang'an didn't care at all.

He had no intention of making her his long-term lover. Their current situation was simply because the woman needed a man, and Zhao Chang'an didn't mind taking advantage of this beautiful woman and showing her warmth as an outstanding female employee, so as to motivate her to work hard for the Nanotechnology Department.

After all, it was still winter in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year in France, and the nights were very cold. Although there was heating in the room, it could not dispel the loneliness and coldness in one's heart during the long winter nights, and people needed to comfort each other.

After feeling refreshed, the two of them cuddled together, neither of them sleepy, and chatted for a while.

As for sweet talk, both of them knew that their current relationship was just about having a meal together and there was no real affection between them. So Mina talked to Zhao Chang'an about work.

"Ericsson wants our phones manufactured in China to use their 2.5G and 3G standards. As for the technology licensing fees, we can discuss them. There are also CDMA phones. Currently, there are nineteen companies in China that have obtained this production license. Eighteen of them are domestic companies, including Potevio, which is a joint venture with Ericsson. The only foreign company is Motorola. Ericsson hopes to leverage your influence in China to obtain CDMA phones and doesn't mind discussing joint ventures."

Mina felt Zhao Chang'an's strength. Although she was a little tired, she still got up from Zhao Chang'an's arms, frowned and sat on him, then leaned weakly back into his arms, breathing slightly.

"Their Putian Jinling Panda had sales of $15 billion and net profit of over 70 million last year. Compared to many domestic mobile phone manufacturers, both sales and profits are quite good, ranking only after Nokia and Motorola in China. Of course, they only have a 52% stake, so the money they actually received was only 35-36 million, which isn't much."

Zhao Chang'an didn't understand why these mobile phone manufacturers were so eager to gamble on CDMA. GSM was already very mature in the 2.5 and 3G fields, and the coverage of GSM in China was far superior to that of CDMA, which only started issuing numbers at the end of last year.

Currently, CDMA in China claims to cover 300 cities, but there are more than 2,800 cities (county-level) in China, so the coverage rate is less than one-ninth. Moreover, these so-called covered cities are basically urban areas, and there is little to no signal in the suburbs, let alone when leaving one city to go to another, where there is basically no signal on the road.

Moreover, CDMA does not offer roaming outside the province; you have to buy a new SIM card if you leave the province.

As for the advertised advantages of CDMA, such as stable mobile phone calls, high connection rate, voice quality comparable to landlines, no radiation, and being lighter and more energy-efficient, these are completely fabricated lies and a scam to rip you off.

It's understandable that domestic mobile phone manufacturers want to use this new standard to achieve a leapfrog development, but why is a foreign company following suit?

Zhao Chang'an voiced his question.

"After the establishment of Sony Ericsson, Ericsson's share in Panda TV was only 26% after conversion. For Ericsson, they no longer seem to have high expectations for Panda TV. They believe that RIM phones are worth a bet, and technical standards and patent licensing are what they want to achieve in cooperation."

With her eyes sparkling, Mina said, "They believe that China will definitely allocate more resources to CDMA, and in the future, the number of CDMA users may be greater than that of GSM, which is also an opportunity for them."

Zhao Chang'an understood Mina's meaning: Ericsson not only wanted Yimi Zhengshi mobile phone factory to use their GSM2.5 and 3G standards, but also probably realized that Jinling Panda was struggling to compete with other mobile phone manufacturers. In order to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket, they wanted to put their CDMA technology license in another basket.

Ericsson's first CDMA phone is under development. The prototype is the GSM model they plan to launch this fall. They haven't revealed the specific appearance of the model yet, but I've obtained the specifications for this GSM phone. It's a tri-band GSM phone (900/1800/1900), supports EMS picture and voice SMS, WAP internet access, weighs 60 grams, and is 20mm thick. That's about it. However, their CDMA model should have some technological upgrades.

Zhao Chang'an was greatly disappointed. No wonder this mobile phone manufacturer wouldn't last another two years. This so-called new model, aside from being lighter and slightly thinner, and having EMS voice messaging, was otherwise as unremarkable as ever. "What about Bluetooth? Didn't they use Bluetooth in the T39MC last year? And the IrDA (infrared) data command transmission interface. Even if they don't use Bluetooth anymore, they should at least keep that, right? It doesn't drain the battery."

Zhao Chang'an found it unbelievable that they would willingly castrate such important accessories. Were they really planning to practice the Sunflower Manual?

Mina nodded and said, "In my opinion, Bluetooth technology and the IrDA interface are, at least on current Ericsson phones, really unnecessary. Apart from the ability to transmit phonebook numbers between phones and send EMS pictures and sounds, they are not very useful."

"If you deny my point of view, why are you nodding?"

Zhao Chang'an didn't understand.

"Because it feels so good!"

Mina had clearly gone off-topic, her eyes glazed over as she sighed.

-

Zhao Chang'an and his group rested in Paris for a day, spending the day with Yang Yixin visiting tourist attractions and shopping. At first, Yang Yixin was a little jealous and asked Zhao Chang'an with a curious look how the foreign woman was having fun.

However, when he suddenly grabbed her in a public tourist spot and gave her a long, deep kiss, Yang Yixin blushed and cursed him for being shameless. But then she happily hummed a little tune, thus letting bygones be bygones of last night's events.

In the evening, the local Chinese Business Association invited Zhao Chang'an to a banquet, something that had been arranged beforehand.

When the Ye family branch arrived in Europe, they first settled in France, where they were soon devastated by the fire and suffered heavy losses.

In the decades that followed, the Ye family established itself on traditional Chinese medicine, dividing the market into three branches to prevent a repeat of the tragedy of being wiped out in one fell swoop.

As the clan leader, Ye Pingshan's branch was based in France, occupying the most lucrative markets in England, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland. Ye Pingbai and his sister Ye Pingju were based in Germany, responsible for the Benelux markets as well as Central European markets such as Poland and Austria-Hungary.

With his leg broken, Ye Pinghe could only take a few younger relatives to the snow-covered Nordic countries, and the market he found was limited to just the five Nordic countries.

The problem is that the polar bears in the five Nordic countries have a different meaning than those here, and the business can only be carried out in four small countries with small populations: Norway, Switzerland, Finland, and Denmark.

When Ye Pinghe took his family to Norway, everyone harbored resentment at being exiled. Decades later, this branch, now fully grown, was no longer content to be confined to Northern Europe, but they endured it in their hearts due to previous agreements.

It wasn't until the polar bear solved the problem that they were given a golden opportunity.