Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 194 Multinational Corporations
In May, at Guangcheng University, Xu Shenxue, who has always been relatively low-key in the eyes of the outside world, appeared on this campus.

Afterwards, witnessed by a group of media, he signed his name on the Zhiyun Technology-Guangcheng University Industry-Research Strategic Cooperation Project Book.

Then he told a group of visiting reporters: "We at Zhiyun Technology have always attached great importance to the production and research cooperation with various universities."

"Guangcheng University has a large number of high-quality talents and a solid theoretical research and development foundation, especially its strong faculty in the fields of computer science, microelectronics, and precision machinery. Zhiyun has sufficient funds and the ability to industrialize technology."

"There is great potential for industrial and research cooperation between the two sides. I am very optimistic and look forward to it!"

"As a student of Guangcheng University, I have spent four wonderful years here and gained the most valuable knowledge and life experience. Now that I have achieved some success in my career, I hope to give back to my alma mater and provide a broad employment and development space for future generations!"

"Therefore, after consultation with Guangcheng, we decided to donate 1 billion yuan to Guangcheng University to be used for scientific research support funds and scholarships for outstanding students!"

"At the same time, we will also establish several joint laboratories with Guangzhou University to explore and research cutting-edge technologies in the fields of computers, microelectronics, and precision machinery. The total investment is expected to be no less than 2 billion yuan."

As Xu Shenxue was speaking, the president of Guangcheng University next to him had a smile on his face!
Who could have thought that one of the students of my school could become the world's richest man, and a man who is good at high-tech, whose products sell well all over the world and who enjoys an outstanding reputation all over the world!

If it's just some ordinary industries, such as real estate, finance, and other ordinary industries, the world's richest people, to be honest, are just that...

Basically, if we get some donations and recruit more students, we can almost solve the employment rate problem.

But Xu Shenxue is different...he uses high technology!

For the school, Xu Shenxue can not only bring a large amount of donations, but more importantly, the industry-research cooperation brought by Xu Shenxue will greatly increase the academic appeal of their school... The cooperative laboratory has first-class equipment and sufficient experimental funds, and can carry out numerous research and development projects.

This is quite attractive to many high-quality academic personnel of the younger generation!

At worst, I can still write a few papers with the help of the advanced equipment in the laboratory!
With a top-notch device, even if you use a pile of shit to run various tests, you can still write a few papers!
The huge donations and extensive industry-research cooperation plans not only give their university face, but also substance.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been smiling from morning till now...he would be happy.

As for Xu Shenxue, this time he returned to his alma mater, Guangcheng University, to make some donations for the purpose of establishing his personal image and doing public relations.

As the richest man in the world, it would be unreasonable not to donate some money to my alma mater...and since I have donated money, it must be effective!

Money can’t be given for free!

Therefore, appropriate public relations articles should still be issued.

Then, we also took the opportunity to gather the excellent teaching staff of several advantageous majors in Guangcheng University... a strategic cooperation integrating production and research.

To put it bluntly, they are paid to conduct research and development, and in a sense, they are non-staff R&D employees...

Today, the Zhiyun system, the Xiannvshan system, and some other relatively independent companies have huge demands for various types of R&D personnel, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of quality.

The high-tech industry has a huge demand for high-quality talents.

To this end, Zhiyun Technology and other companies of Xu Shenxue conduct conventional social recruitment and campus recruitment to recruit talents, and also carry out extensive cooperation with some famous domestic universities in the integration of production and research.

Xu Shenxue provides funds and equipment, and the school provides R&D personnel, and they work together on research and development. Xu Shenxue obtains commercial results, such as patents, while the school obtains academic results.

The scale of the entire cooperation is very large. Various cooperations have been carried out with dozens of top domestic universities, and the funds spent on this have reached billions every year.

These measures can effectively enhance the R&D efficiency of Zhiyun Technology and other companies.

The most typical R&D project is the previous development of the aluminum alloy body.

In order to carry out research and development of aluminum alloy materials and processing technology, Anlong Precision, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Technology, found more than a dozen domestic universities for cooperative research and development, and almost gathered all the top aluminum alloy material research and development teams in the country at that time, and provided a large amount of research and development funds for research and development.

Therefore, in a sense, this aluminum alloy material is not something that Zhiyun Technology has developed directly, but it was developed through large-scale research and development based on the existing mature aluminum alloy material research and development and team in China.

To a certain extent, this is the result of the whole country's efforts.

Of course, it is not promoted in an administrative way, but through cooperation between production and research.

This R&D model is actually more common abroad. Many large companies cooperate with laboratories of various universities in R&D, and many technological achievements that are applied commercially were also initially developed in universities.

For example, in wireless charging technology, the first team to develop resonant wireless charging technology was the research and development team at MIT.

The R&D capabilities of universities are very important. A successful or qualified high-tech giant must be good at utilizing the R&D capabilities of universities.

This is the path that Zhiyun Technology is taking now, making up for the lack of manpower in its own R&D team through large-scale industry-research cooperation.

After leaving Guangcheng, Xu Shenxue did not return directly to Shenzhen but went to Zhiyun Microelectronics in Tongcheng.

Zhiyun Microelectronics, as a chip foundry subsidiary of Zhiyun Group, has rapidly grown into the largest chip foundry company in China with the strong investment of Zhiyun Group, especially the support of orders. The revenue of chip foundry business in the first quarter of 11 has reached million US dollars.

The amount may seem small, but it actually ranks fifth in the world.

It ranks behind TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, and Four Star.

And SMIC ranked sixth.

Because the chip foundry industry is a highly inward-looking industry with a very strong head effect, the ranked manufacturers rely on advanced process technology to take up almost all of the cake.

For example, TSMC occupies more than 40% of the market share in the chip foundry industry, almost twice as much as the second-ranked GlobalFoundries in the United States.

The following UMC and Four Star are actually not very good, of course... they are still much better than Zhiyun Microelectronics.

These are mainly the four companies mentioned above, all of which rely on advanced processes, especially the 45-nanometer process, which is the most mainstream advanced process at present.

Zhiyun Microelectronics and SMIC are a little worse off, relying mainly on the 65-nanometer and 90-nanometer processes. Even a considerable portion of their business revenue comes from the seemingly backward 130-nanometer and 150-nanometer processes.

The reason why Zhiyun Microelectronics has been able to rely on these backward technologies to reach the fifth place in the world is that, on the one hand, domestic chip foundries are generally not very good, and half-baked ones like Zhiyun and SMIC are already considered first-class, and they also have an advantage in price.

Therefore, many domestic chip design companies, when looking for foundry services after developing chips, often choose between these two companies.

It’s not a sentimental factor, as long as it’s cheap... If the price is a little higher, people will turn around and look for those big international manufacturers in front... These big international manufacturers also have factories in mainland China.

But more importantly, Zhiyun Microelectronics' rapid rise is still based on the large number of chip foundry orders from Zhiyun Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group.

Zhiyun Semiconductor not only designs mobile phone SOCs and develops some high-end CPUs, GPUs... it also has memory and flash memory businesses, as well as a large number of low-process functional chips.

Zhiyun and Weiku's ecological chain products require a large number of such low-process functional chips, and many of these chips are provided by Zhiyun Semiconductor.

As for all the chips of Zhiyun Semiconductor, those with a process of 65 nanometers or above are outsourced to Zhiyun Microelectronics. Only the 45 nanometer logic chips and 40 nanometer memory chips that Zhiyun Microelectronics cannot produce will be looked for by external foundries such as TSMC and UMC.

But relying on outsiders all the time is not a good idea, so Zhiyun Microelectronics has never given up on the development of technology and has invested heavily in it.

The huge amount of investment injected by Zhiyun Group into Zhiyun Microelectronics is used not only to purchase equipment, establish manufacturers, expand production lines, and build new wafer fabs.

A considerable portion of it is used for various technology research and development, especially the research and development of the most core advanced processes.

In September 10, with the efforts of all parties, the DUV immersion lithography machines ordered by Zhiyun Microelectronics arrived one after another. After several months of installation and debugging, in December last year, Zhiyun Microelectronics, under the leadership of Professor Wu Deyi, a top expert in the field of chip technology, launched the final charge towards the -nanometer process.

Professor Wu Deyi's research and development team actually already had very mature experience and even technology in the 45-nanometer process... According to them, if patent issues were not taken into consideration, they would be able to develop the 45-nanometer process on the spot.

In fact, they were not bragging. After the equipment was successfully installed and debugged, it didn’t take long for them to develop a 45-nanometer process!

The time point is January!

However, this entire set of processes was copied from others, seriously infringing on the patents of STMicroelectronics and even some other chip manufacturers.

This kind of technology, which seriously infringes on patents, can be used secretly, but it is impossible to use it for large-scale commercial purposes.

Zhiyun Group is a serious multinational high-tech giant, and in most cases, rules still need to be followed.

Furthermore, Zhiyun is not a small enterprise but a multinational giant. Patents are in most cases a weapon of Zhiyun Group, a weapon used to strangle others.

Otherwise, why haven’t other mobile phone manufacturers developed fingerprint recognition yet?
For example, Apple, StarHub and other technology giants... Do you really think they can't even copy? If Zhiyun hadn't established a complete patent around capacitive fingerprint technology, they would have copied it for you long ago.

But the patent is stuck there, so even if they can produce it, they can't use it commercially.

Patents are a kind of rules. They are useful only when everyone abides by them. If no one abides by them, then they are useless.

So even in the spring, Zhiyun Microelectronics already had the production capacity of 45-nanometer process, and even secretly produced some special-purpose chips for some special companies... but it still could not accept external orders.

Of course, you won’t find any official documents stating that Zhiyun Microelectronics manufactures these chips.

Because Zhiyun Microelectronics directly laid off a part of its employees and established a new chip company that has nothing to do with Zhiyun Microelectronics in any legal sense, and then specialized in these special orders.

This is to avoid any potential trouble!
A multinational consumer electronics company generally would not be foolish enough to take orders from various countries on its own, as this often means trouble and unpredictable risks.

For example, if a company accepts an order from an African country and then the local ruler changes, well, you will most likely be banned from entering the local market forever.

There is a conflict between Country A and Country B. If you accept an order from Country A, you will have no chance of entering the market of Country B.

But big companies can never avoid these things, some of which are for profit, and some of which are for obligations.

At the same time, these multinational companies are unwilling to give up the market of any country.

How to do?
The common practice of multinational companies is to set up new companies that have nothing to do with themselves. For some particularly sensitive businesses, they will directly cancel the new company after completing the business.

One business, one new company!

Zhiyun also adopts a similar approach.

Therefore, new companies are often established quietly, and then they are cancelled after completing a business deal. However, these companies have nothing to do with Zhiyun.

At the same time, in order to avoid trouble, they will go around in circles and put the orders into many layers of shells of shell companies, disguised as low-process chip orders for ordinary home appliances.

This kind of operation is routine for all major multinational companies...very common.

And these special chips will not be released to the market, so no one knows about them... Even if these chips are found, there is no Zhiyun logo printed on the chip, and then use an electron microscope to analyze... Guess what? You will find that the process looks very similar to the process technology of STMicroelectronics and TSMC!
What does this have to do with me, Zhiyun!

If you are looking for trouble, go to STMicroelectronics and TSMC!
(End of this chapter)