The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 188 Product Linkage (6K)

Mphone is spreading across the United States in a slow and steady manner.

It will be released in American on New Year's Day and is expected to be released in Europe and Maple Leaf countries in the second quarter.After the end of the first week of release, the goods can already be bought from scalpers in Maple Leaf Country.As word-of-mouth fermented, more and more Mphones were circulating in Maple Leaf Country from the black market.

Unlike many countries in Europe, the passage of any bill involves the wrangling of more than a dozen countries, and the implementation of electronic payment requires lengthy approval. Maple Leaf Country passed a bill called NBPSP at the end of 2000.

There is no strict supervision on electronic payment providers, and electronic payment channels can also provide bank-like services. NewPay's license is already in the process of application. With the promotion of Wall Street financial institutions, NewPay's maple leaf country license is about to be approved.

That is to say, after NewPay is approved in Maple Leaf Country, consumers in Maple Leaf Country can get a complete user experience for Mphones bought on the black market, instead of being castrated as it is now.

Why are Google's Pixel series phones difficult to use in China?Because the Google ecology it depends on has been castrated in China, and the completely castrated ecology is really difficult to attract users.

"Newman, Mphone is very innovative. I like this product very much. It is so different from other mobile phones." Jobs said.

Since the release of the Mphone, Jobs always came to Matrix to find him, and Zhou Xin was a little tired of it.

Zhou Xin admired Jobs very much, appreciated his persistence in industrial aesthetics, innovative spirit, perfectionism, and created the era of mobile Internet by himself.

But this does not mean that Zhou Xin likes to meet with Jobs two or three times a week.

Zhou Xin replied: "Mphone is the carrier of applications, and the importance of application experience should be higher than that of hardware.

Every detail must be perfect, from the grip of the hand to the positive feedback of typing, to the delicateness of the screen, I have high requirements for the details of the Mphone hardware.

But what is more demanding is the software. I require them to be as concise as possible, both concise and clear, and to lower the user's threshold of use as much as possible. "

Just now Jobs said that he likes this product very much. Zhou Xin does not doubt this, because he has borrowed the design language of the future iPhone.

And Zhou Xin is sure that Jobs must be using Mphone.As an entrepreneur who also wants to make a mobile phone, he will experience a lot of Mphone just from the perspective of understanding competing products.

It's just that Zhou Xin searched on Twitter, but he couldn't find Jobs' Twitter account. He knew that the other party had a Twitter account, but he didn't do the real-name verification.

That is to say, the other party didn't want to borrow his fame for Mphone, and Zhou Xin knew Jobs's careful thoughts like the back of his hand.

"Many magazines refer to Mphone as a smart phone, Newman, what do you think of the smart phone ecology.

Whether to rely entirely on the enterprise itself to develop applications, or to cooperate with other enterprises to develop applications together.

Open ports to these enterprises? ’ asked Jobs.

This is because at present, the number of applications will not be very large, and the hardware does not support too many applications on one mobile phone.

This is like when the personal PC was first popular in the 80s, the Macintosh computer was only pre-loaded with spreadsheet software, and it was able to be very popular in the market.In the 90s, the Internet Explorer browser pre-installed in Microsoft's Windows operating system was widely criticized.

No matter how powerful a person is, it is difficult to escape the limitations of history.

The same is true of Jobs. He sees that Mphone applications are all self-developed, and there is no open license to other Internet companies, and there is no news of cooperation with other Internet companies.

In Jobs' view, Mphone can cooperate with Yahoo, so that there will be more audiences.

So he asked this question to find out whether there is any benefit in developing completely in-house.

Zhou Xin thought for a while and said, "I think it's better to develop all by myself.

This way you can keep track of the progress of each application.The memory and storage space of mobile phones are limited, and each application is very precious, and each application eats up a lot of memory and storage space.

I prefer to be able to control all the details.

Take Weibo as an example. If other Internet companies were to do Weibo, the cooperation between me and them would not be detailed, and the number of words in each Weibo would be limited.

And if I do this by myself, then I can control all the details, from the limit of 140 words per Weibo, to how to adjust the page layout, and how to plan each button more reasonably.

What I'm talking about is just the situation of Mphone. If other Internet companies do the application, I really don't feel at ease. "

Zhou Xin paused for a moment and continued: "Why is 140 words in a Weibo so important?
Because of the limitation of the mobile phone screen, we decided that when we were restricting the number of characters, we required each Weibo to be read with at most one swipe.No more.

The more you need to swipe a Weibo, then it is not a mobile application, but an application on the computer terminal that is poorly translated to the mobile phone. "

Zhou Xin said that Jobs was in his heart. As an entrepreneur with a strong desire for control, Jobs also wanted to master all the details.

This kind of self-management of all APPs seems so cool to Jobs, and this is the model he wants.

Jobs nodded again and again: "It is true, very few Internet companies can understand what you mean.

Even after repeated communication back and forth, there is still a gap in their understanding of what you want to achieve.

However, the tacit understanding in the development process takes a long time to develop, and it is indeed more appropriate to lead the development of mobile phone applications by yourself. "

Zhou Xin said: "Yes, in my opinion, the biggest difference from the previous mobile phone to the Mphone is the driving method.

In the past, mobile phones attracted users because of hardware, but now it is software. To put it bluntly, the main reason why Mphone can be sold at a higher price than other mobile phones is ecology.

The ecology composed of Weibo, WeChat and NewPay has jointly built an ecology that is sufficiently attractive to users.

Therefore, the importance of mobile phone software has been raised to an unprecedented level. The more important the mobile phone software is, the more it is necessary to personally control the presentation of the software. "

Jobs took out a white box and handed it to Zhou Xin: "Apple's upcoming music player has a built-in decoding chip designed by Xinxin Semiconductor.

Here is a prototype, you can try it.

We named it IPod internally. "

After finishing talking, Jobs took out another IPod and put it on the table together with the Mphone: "The silver Mphone and IPod feel like a series.

I think Mphone can do a linkage with IPod, and put these two products together for sale.

Offer the user the option to buy in packages. The Mphone is priced at $599, and the iPod is priced at maybe $199. If users buy both products at the same time, they only need to pay $699. "

Zhou Xin looked at the iPod, which was very similar to what he remembered, and said, "Good idea, the iPod can be sold in Matrix stores, and the Mphone can also be sold in Apple's offline stores.

Mphone and IPod can also be sold on each other's official website.We need to make full use of their respective advantages in the target population to promote IPod and Mphone. "

Zhou Xin's proficiency in reading IPod made Jobs doubt whether the other party would carefully read every board document of Apple.

"In addition, Apple is talking about cooperation with NewPay. We will launch a music store based on iTunes in the future. Users can purchase songs in Apple's music store and download them after purchasing." Jobs said.

Originally, Apple's music store, that is, the store function of iTunes, was to be launched in 2003, and the electronic payment solution was very mature in 03.

When using the iTunes music store, the user only needs to have a valid credit card with an American billing address. Apple will bind the credit card to the Apple ID, and after binding, the payment can be completed directly through the Apple ID.

In countries without an Apple ID, the method of purchasing Apple point cards is adopted. For example, early consumers of Neon can only complete payment by purchasing iTunes Japan point cards.

Now that there is such a mature payment tool as NewPay on the market, for Jobs and Apple, there is no need for users to bind credit cards and Apple IDs. It is only necessary to add NewPay payment options to music stores.

Zhou Xin said: "No problem, NewPay has very rich experience in supporting Internet services and becoming a payment channel for Internet services, which has become a standardized process within NewPay.

We are already very proficient in this, and NewPay does not refuse all similar requests. Since its establishment, NewPay has always treated each of our partners with the mentality of a service provider. "

Because of this, other electronic payment companies are not the enemy of NewPay.When your competitor is much stronger than you and has a better service attitude than you, it will be difficult for you to defeat him.

If it is not for avoiding being kidnapped by a certain electronic payment company and being coerced by NewPay, other electronic payment companies will have no room for survival.

E-commerce companies such as Amazon, eBay, or Internet service providers such as Yahoo, AOL, and MySpace are worried that only NewPay is an electronic payment option, and then being bundled by NewPay makes Musk’s X.com another electronic payment channel. .

Jobs looked at Zhou Xin with piercing eyes and said: "In fact, there can be more in-depth cooperation between IPod and Mphone.

For example, Mphone has built-in Apple's music store and music software, and users can share songs on Weibo.

Then users can purchase music through the Apple Music Store on the Mphone, download the songs directly through the Mphone after purchasing the music, and then transfer them to the iPod via Bluetooth. "

After Zhou Xin listened to it, he found that Jobs had already realized one of the essences of the mobile Internet—sharing. Sharing among users is the main mode of advertising in the mobile Internet era.

Bloggers share their product preferences through various forms such as short videos, graphic texts, and long videos, and then sell them to consumers.

Sharing is the essence, and the superficial manifestation is to add song links on Weibo, and users can click to buy.

Zhou Xin thought that the other party should have thought of jumping from the WeChat link to NewPay to get coupons. Since WeChat, NewPay and mobile browsers can jump to each other, then other built-in applications can also jump to Weibo.

"I think such cooperation is feasible," Zhou Xin said.

There are only some problems, that is, the download speed is limited. At present, the download speed of Mphone's 2G network is more than ten kb, and a song is as little as a few mb. According to the format of a CD, a song is 60MB. This download speed too slow.

After the Mphone finishes downloading, it will be even slower to sync to the IPod through the Bluetooth function.

It can't reflect the efficiency advantage at all. "

Jobs said: "I thought about this problem. For the user, he doesn't need to stare at the Mphone all the time. He can download songs while walking, and then transmit them via Bluetooth when he gets to the place.

The Bluetooth transmission rate is 128KB per second. We have adopted a new encoding method. The song files purchased from the Apple Music Store will be smaller than the traditional music files, about 3 to 5mb.

如果是3到5mb的话，下载速度无非是300秒到500秒，对用户来说五到10分钟的时间不算久。

Plus Bluetooth transmission time will not exceed 10 minutes. "

Jobs would have such an idea, a large part of the reason is that Silicon Valley's thinking on products has changed.

To be precise, since Zhou Xin came to Silicon Valley to do things, people have become more and more systematic in their thinking about Internet products.

In the past, people's systematization of Internet products was simply stacking, such as stacking portals, email systems, search engines, blogs, etc., and there was no correlation between them.

And after Zhou Xin perfectly kneaded quora and NewPay together, Internet practitioners realized that there can be connections between products.

After the launch of Mphone this year, the linkage between WeChat, Enterprise QQ, NewPay and WeChat has further given Internet companies new ideas. They have begun to have the concept of product matrix. Internet products should be able to have a positive impact on each other. Through The way of linkage enriches the experience.

Jobs' thinking about the cooperation between Mphone and IPod is also based on this trend of thought.

Jobs continued: "If it's just a discount on price, you can enjoy a discount of $50 or $100 when you buy two products, iPod and Mphone. In my opinion, the effect of such a promotion is relatively limited.

On the contrary, if a software relationship can be formed, just like WeChat and NewPay, then this combination will be more attractive to users.

For Mphone, Mphone has no music player function, and IPod can be a good supplementary part of Mphone. "

After Zhou Xin listened to it, he thought about it. This is also a path, a feasible path.

Before Apple launched the iPhone, Matrix and IPod could be a cooperative relationship. Even if Apple launches the iPhone in the future, he himself is a major shareholder of Apple, so it can also be a cooperative relationship.

It's just that the degree of cooperation has gradually decreased, not deepened.

Zhou Xin said: "I think it is feasible, but there is one point, that is, Apple's music store needs to give each song a rating system.

That is to say, after the user purchases the song, he can rate and write a review for the song in the Apple Music Store on the Mphone, similar to the scoring system of the fist game.

In this way, the user can have a better experience. If he spends money, if the purchased song does not satisfy him, then he can at least have the right to evaluate it. "

Jobs nodded: "Yes, I have thought about it before."

Zhou Xin said: "The specific cooperation depends on the Mphone's internal memory. It takes time for Apple to develop applications, and the iPod has not yet been introduced to the market.

We need to decide when to let the Apple Music Store land on the Mphone according to the user's usage of memory and storage.

If the memory situation of this generation is not optimistic, then the Apple Music Store will become a built-in application on the next generation Mphone. "

When Jobs was actively seeking to cooperate with Matrix, other electronic payment companies were wailing.

Because they found that the gap between their products and NewPay is not getting smaller and smaller over time, but is getting bigger and bigger.

The electronic payment software launched by Amazon and eBay is difficult to cooperate with retailers, because online shopping platforms are vying for the offline shopping market. As a direct competition, retailers are not able to accept this kind of capital. Behavior.

Not to mention that there are not many users of Amazon Pay and eBay Pay, and they don't have the point of attracting retailers at all.

For other electronic payment companies without e-commerce companies behind them, like Musk's X.com and Square, it is also difficult for them to negotiate.

Because when negotiating with a retailer, you need to have hardware equipment and a payment method.

The QR code is just one way of offline payment, and it is the solution jointly given by Mphone and NewPay. In fact, there are more than one solution.

For example, Confinity developed by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin supports transfer and payment between handheld computers. This is also a solution, but this solution is not very friendly.

Because there are a small number of merchants with handheld computers.

For other small electronic payment manufacturers without a big tree behind them, it is too difficult for them to expand offline electronic payment channels, and it is almost impossible.

With the launch of Mphone, NewPay is also showing a trend of sweeping the world and dominating the world on the electronic payment track.

Musk specially invited Peter Thiel to dinner, hoping to hear his advice.

Musk and Peter Thiel knew each other. If he didn't know the original space-time Confinity, he wouldn't have merged with X.com to form paypal.

"Peter, congratulations, when I was having dinner with a Goldman Sachs vice president recently, I heard him tell me that Wall Street has valued NewPay at more than 500 billion US dollars.

If it was before the Nasdaq bubble burst, the valuation of NewPay could exceed $1000 billion.

It was a correct choice for Confiniti to be acquired by NewPay. said Musk.

Peter Thiel was secretly proud, because his shares in NewPay accounted for nearly 1%, according to the valuation of 500 billion US dollars, which means that the value of NewPay shares in his hands is 5 million US dollars.

And he knows that if he is willing to sell, some companies are willing to buy shares of NewPay at a higher premium.

The shareholder representatives behind NewPay alone have expressed this willingness to him more than once.

Peter Thiel replied: "The main reason is that Newman has far more insight into products than ordinary people.

When we didn't know how to promote electronic payment, Newman had found a large number of payment scenarios to drive the promotion of NewPay.

Compared with Newman, I only need to manage the business well, which is the least difficult thing in the process of starting a business. "

After Peter Thiel finished speaking, Musk smiled bitterly in his heart. It was precisely because the competitor he was facing was not Peter Thiel, but Newman, that he had no confidence at all.

If NewPay is Peter Thiel's business, then Musk is confident that he will break the wrist with him, even if NewPay takes the initiative on the scene.

As for Newman, Musk is rarely confident. To be precise, he was full of confidence at the beginning. As two years passed, he became less and less confident.

When you are in the market, when you set up, the other party already has more than 100 million users.When you have 100 million users, the other party's users have exceeded 2000 million.

When you go to the Internet companies that have worked with each other to discuss cooperation one by one, and want to get a share of the pie one by one, the other party has already opened up offline payment channels, and even made a special piece of hardware to promote electronic payment.

In Musk's view, a large part of Mphone's purpose is to promote NewPay.

It was the dynamics of things that made Musk lose confidence.

"Yes, Newman is a well-deserved No.1 in the product field, with an imagination that we can't understand." Musk said.

Now Silicon Valley does not say that Zhou Xin has insight, because insight alone cannot do this at all. They think it is imagination, imagination that is unconstrained and can be perfectly implemented.

No matter how insightful it is, I can't think of instant messaging tools to send coupons, and then use the coupons through mobile electronic payment.

Peter Thiel said: "I sometimes think back to when Newman and I first met.

At that time, Confiniti was just established, and NewPay was just an electronic payment software for the fist game store.I think at that time, Newman should already have a complete blueprint for how electronic payment will develop in the future.

From online to offline, from computer payment to mobile payment, Newman did not hesitate at all. He told us directly that it would be good to do so.

He never discussed with us whether we should choose method A or method B. He always told us with confidence that it was right to do so.

Before working at Confinity, my teaching experience at Yale gave me the opportunity to chat with many entrepreneurs, most of whom were students of Yale.

The problem they generally respond to is that starting a business is like walking in a fog. It is difficult for you to know which direction to go. You will not step on traps or encounter wild animals, but you will be able to pick sweet fruits.

During the more than two years of working at NewPay, I never felt like I was in the fog. Newman is our compass. "

Musk showed envious eyes after listening, and then said helplessly, "With NewPay in front, X.com also has no foggy feeling in the process of development.

Because we just need to follow the way NewPay came out.

The problem is that NewPay has picked all the fruits, leaving only leaves and branches to X.com, and X.com has not enjoyed the slightest advantage in the field of electronic payment.

This is luck and misfortune. "

Peter Thiel said: "Thinking about it from another angle, X.com is already the second largest electronic payment company in terms of market share.

It means you are doing a good job. "

Musk shook his head: "No, NewPay is valued at more than $500 billion, and X.com's valuation is not even $5 million."

　It’s still 6k today, and it’s not easy to get 6k with a part-time job. Please call me Diligent Crow!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)