Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 127 The Dawn of Fingerprint Recognition

In October 09, Apple entered the Chinese market in a high-profile manner, and Zhiyun would naturally not sit idly by... Before Apple entered the domestic market, it had already used its powerful marketing and public relations capabilities to carry out various negative publicity and smear campaigns against Apple phones.

After fruits officially entered the Chinese market, Zhiyun Technology's targeted public opinion marketing became even more intense, slandering fruits every other day.

And the fruit companies are no pushovers either... In fact, they have extensive experience in fighting Zhiyun around the world.

He started by using various combos to fight back, and the fight was back and forth.

As a result of the fierce conflict and competition between Zhiyun and Fruit in the Chinese market, Zhiyun S9's domestic sales hit a new high, reaching an astonishing one million units in October.

Although Fruit has just entered the Chinese market and has been strongly attacked by Zhiyun, it still stubbornly achieved a monthly sales volume of more than 300,000 units.

Where do these additional sales come from?

Naturally, it was 'contributed' by a large number of traditional international mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, etc.!

Before, when Zhiyun was the only mobile phone manufacturer in the Chinese market, mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia could still barely occupy some smartphone sales share by relying on the trust of some old users, information asymmetry, brand, usage habits, etc.

But after the fruit entered the Chinese market, a fierce conflict broke out between Zhiyun and the fruit...

In this conflict, traditional international mobile phone manufacturers led by Nokia have lost most of their smartphone market share, and now the total share is estimated to be only 5 or 6 percentage points.

The most important thing is that they not only lost the high-end market of more than 4,000 yuan, but also the mid-to-high-end market of 2,500 to 4,000 yuan.

Because at this price point there is a strong competitor from the Zhiyun C series of mobile phones!
Finally, in order to struggle to survive, many of their mobile phones began to plummet in price after the embarrassing situation of no one being interested in them in the early days of their launch.

Many items that previously sold for 2999 are now only or , or even .

It originally sold for 3,900 yuan, but now it only costs a little over 3,000 yuan.

But as ruthless as they are, domestic mobile phone manufacturers are even more ruthless!

Weiku Electronics hasn't made any moves yet...Huawei next door has already started to sell at a bargain price. The Android phone that originally sold for 1999 or 1 yuan has now been reduced to yuan... It's even cheaper than the Xiaolan ...

After seeing this, several international giants also jumped on the bandwagon and directly lowered the prices of Android phones to just over 2,000 yuan or even below 2,000 yuan!

Then, more than a dozen mobile phone manufacturers launched Android phones, and they fought fiercely around the price of around 2,000 yuan... This made Bai Qiwen of Weiku Electronics very angry...

My low-end and mid-range mobile phones are doing very well...how come you international brands are suddenly coming here to snatch the market from me!

Damn it! Just because you can’t beat Zhiyun Mobile, which is led by my boss himself, you lower your status to bully me, your little brother... It’s unfair.

Moreover, do you really think that I, Bai Qiwen, am easy to bully?
Soon, Weiku Electronics also launched price reduction measures, reducing prices across the board by one to two hundred yuan!

Among them, the price of the Little Blue M1 was even reduced to 1499... This is the first capacitive touch screen smartphone in history with a price below 1500 yuan.

The price of Little Blue 1 has been reduced to 1899.

For a time, the market for smartphones priced around 2,000 yuan was extremely fierce. First, international manufacturers and Weiku Electronics fought each other, and then some domestic mobile phone manufacturers quickly adjusted their plans and prepared to join in after the beginning of the year.

As for the higher-priced market of over 2,500 yuan!

This is not a good competition!

A group of domestic mobile phone manufacturers would rather engage in price wars with traditional international mobile phone manufacturers at a price of 2,000 yuan or even lower, than go head-on with the Zhiyun C series at a price of more than 2,500 yuan or even 3,000 yuan... They don't even know how they died.

As for the price range above 4,000 yuan, don't even think about it, as that is the exclusive domain of the Zhiyun S series and Apple's new flagship products.

Just as the smartphone market entered a more fierce competition after October, Xu Shenxue seemed relatively calm!

Sales of smartphones from its three major brands are rising steadily, so he doesn't need to worry too much.

After October, Xu Shenxue has shifted his work focus to the research and development of new technologies.

It is not just the technical research and development of mobile phone technology, but more about the technical research and development of some core components.

On November 15th, Xu Shenxue once again came to Zhiyun Semiconductor.

Fu Zhengyang, the newly hired general manager of Zhiyun Semiconductor, accompanied Xu Shenxue on the inspection and made a report.

This time, Xu Shenxue finally did not understand or hear anything during his previous inspections at Zhiyun Semiconductor!
Fu Zhengyang is a person who understands technology and management. As a product manager, he is able to translate the professional terms used by technical personnel into popular terms and explain them to Xu Shenxue.

At the same time, we can also convert some of Xu Shenxue's requirements for new chips from some vague text descriptions into technical parameters, and then pass them on for research and development.

"At present, our chip research in various aspects is progressing well overall, especially the key project power management chip. We have invested a lot of resources in it and have made key progress. It is expected that the first tape-out will be carried out after the new year. The overall performance level has reached the first-class level and can be used as the power management chip of Zhiyun Technology."

"In addition, we have made initial progress on the first SOC chip 'Intelligent Core S100' based on the ARM architecture. The overall design architecture is good, and its performance is expected to be comparable to that of the 7227. It also uses the most advanced 750nm process!" "The main frequency is expected to be MHZ!"

"We will be able to conduct the first tape-out in April, and then after some testing, if everything goes well, we will be able to go into mass production in June..."

"We have invested a lot in developing this S100 chip, and I am afraid it will be difficult to recover the cost!"

Xu Shenxue said, "How to recover the cost? You don't need to think about it for now. At least you don't need to think about it. You only have one mission, which is to develop more advanced top-level chips that can be used in our flagship phones in the future!"

"During the previous stage of technology accumulation, cost is not something you need to consider, it is something I need to consider!"

Xu Shenxue said: "Don't worry, as long as the chip you make is usable, you can also make a model with Weiku Electronics. At worst, you can sell it at a loss. There will be no situation where it is useless!"

"The same goes for power management chips. If they can be used, use them first in Vico Electronics and the C series!"

Xu Shenxue is quite satisfied with the progress made by Zhiyun Semiconductor... With the support of the scientific research system, the work efficiency of these chip design and development engineers is very good.

Except for the communication baseband, which is restricted by patents and has made slow progress, other projects have made great progress.

It’s worth it for Xu Shenxue to invest so much money in Zhiyun Semiconductor every month.

Today, Zhiyun Semiconductor has more than 2,000 R&D personnel. Although it has been established for less than a year, it has become the largest chip design company in China.

In addition to chip design, we are also developing various chip design and development software for our own use.

After leaving Zhiyun Semiconductor, Xu Shenxue also took time to inspect the R&D projects of some other subsidiaries of Zhiyun Technology.

Among them is the fingerprint unlocking project that he has been paying more attention to recently.

At the beginning of the year, just after receiving financing, Xu Shenxue had already acquired Wanjin Technology, a company engaged in fingerprint recognition.

After acquiring the company, Xu Shenxue immediately cut off the company's original access control and security businesses as well as the messy friction fingerprint recognition research and development without saying a word.

Let the company focus on the research and development of capacitive fingerprint unlocking solutions...

After two months of work, Xu Shenxue found that his own technology was not good enough, so he turned his attention to the world... He found an overseas fingerprint recognition company and directly spent nearly 300 million US dollars to acquire a company called AuthenTec.

This company is engaged in fingerprint recognition, and its main customers are Fujitsu and Lianxiang. They have actually developed capacitive sensing press-type fingerprint recognition technology and have been trying to promote it... But unfortunately, all the major mobile phone manufacturers and computer hardware manufacturers have rejected them...

Until they found Zhiyun Technology.

Then Xu Shenxue discovered such a treasure company... In this case, what else is there to say? Just spend money to acquire it!
After successfully acquiring this company, Zhiyun Technology instantly possessed a large number of technologies and patents in the field of capacitive fingerprint recognition...enough to monopolize the market for many years.

The company was subsequently delisted and injected into Wanjin Technology.

After October, Wanjin Technology, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Technology, officially launched the capacitive press-type fingerprint recognition project for mobile phones.

This project is a joint R&D project between Wanjin Technology's headquarter R&D center and its overseas TEC R&D center. It aims to develop a compact, highly secure, easy-to-use and accurate smartphone fingerprint recognition module.

Xu Shenxue attaches great importance to this technology!
This will be the unique selling point of Zhiyun’s future flagship phones after the aluminum alloy body, and it will be a selling point with great technological advantages.

To make high-end mobile phones, I want to have what others have, and I also have what others don’t have…

What we want is something unique, eye-catching, and different from other companies' products.

This is true for the aluminum alloy body, and the same is true for the fingerprint recognition technology.

Even fingerprint recognition technology is more important.

After arriving at the R&D building of Wanjin Technology Company, Xu Shenxue saw experimental samples that were still in the R&D stage!
However, it is not small at all. It is still quite large and cannot be put into a mobile phone.

However, after Xu Shenxue tried it, he found that the fingerprint recognition was accurate, but the reaction speed, that is, the sensitivity, was still a little lacking.

Another problem is that the fingerprint recognition module is too large to be installed in the mobile phone... Later, these technicians will have to find ways to reduce the size and weight of this thing so that it can be installed and used.

According to the optimistic estimate of Wanjin Technology's R&D director: "We hope to solve the main technical problems before March next year, and then conduct testing and trial production, so that we can catch up with the release of the next generation of flagship phones!"

Xu Shenxue looked at this thing and took out the S9 mobile phone in his hand!

Now, is it better to use a round fingerprint button, or an oval fingerprint button... or even a flat round fingerprint button?

For these three technical layout plans, Zhiyun Technology has registered complete patents in advance, so any one of them can be used.

There are so many options available, it’s annoying!
(End of this chapter)