Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 244 Multinational Corporations
"Thanks to our company's initial high-end strategy and long-term commitment to hard performance and product quality, our company's Zhiyun brand value has now been established!"

"This also led to a large number of old users returning to purchase our new products when they were released, and a large number of new users coming to buy them because of their reputation."

"To be frank, Zhiyun is undoubtedly a high-end brand in the field of consumer electronics. The only brand value that can be compared with us is Apple. Even Four Star is slightly inferior to us now."

When Ji Chenghe talked about the recent good sales performance of S12, he couldn't hide the smile on his face.

"Thanks to our good sales performance, the stock price that fell some time ago has risen again, and even exceeded the stock price before the decline. The current market value of the company has returned to 580 billion US dollars, and it has once again become the company with the highest market value in the world!"

Xu Shenxue is naturally aware of the recent fluctuations in the company’s stock price!

In the second half of last year, Zhiyun Technology's stock price continued to rise due to the hot sales of the S11 mobile phone, the continued stability of the A and C series mobile phones in the mid-to-low-end market, and the full development of notebooks and tablets.

During this process, although Zhiyun Technology's huge investments in semiconductor design, manufacturing and supply chain, as well as small profits or even losses in some semiconductor businesses, have dragged down the company's shareholder dividends to a certain extent, these large investments have also increased the company's fixed and intangible assets, increased the controllability of the industrial chain, and increased overall profits, so the impact on the company's overall profitability is not very large.

On this basis, from the second half of last year to the first few months of this year, Zhiyun Technology's stock price rose sharply, from more than 400 billion US dollars to over 500 billion US dollars, and then continued to climb to break through the 600 billion US dollar mark.

In the process, it also surpassed ExxonMobil to become the company with the highest market value in the world!

It is worth mentioning that the share price of the neighboring fruit company has also risen sharply, breaking through the 500 billion mark last year and then soaring all the way, following closely behind Zhiyun.

After the news came in May that the United States was going to impose sanctions on Zhiyun, Zhiyun Technology's stock price began to fluctuate, and after June it continued to fall, while Fruit's stock price rose against the trend, breaking through the 600 billion US dollar mark.

By the time Zhiyun released its new phone, Apple's market value had reached an exaggerated $610 billion, while Zhiyun's market value was only over $530 billion.

As a result, Fruit surpassed Zhiyun and became the world's most valuable company.

The reason why the market value of these two companies is similar and they are in a situation of chasing each other is mainly because they both occupy the absolute high-end market share in their respective home markets.

Zhiyun occupies almost 80% of the market share in China's high-end mobile phone market, while Fruit only occupies more than 10% of the market share.

In the United States, the situation is the opposite. Zhiyun only occupies more than 10% of the local high-end market, while Fruit is the only one in the North American high-end market, occupying more than 80%.

Because of previous sanctions, in order to avoid subsequent troubles, Zhiyun Technology also castrated the networking function of the artificial intelligence Xiaoyun in the US market, retaining only the basic local voice assistant function.

You are given good things to use, but you are still complaining so much. Zhiyun Technology might as well castrate the core functions of artificial intelligence and not let them use them.

At the same time, the patent war between the two sides around the world has come to an end. The most likely follow-up is that you compensate me and I compensate you, and then we continue to live together in the global village.

It is impossible to kill the opponent completely.

They are all global multinational giants. It is not so easy for them to fall down, and it is difficult to even cause serious damage to each other.

After this wave of operations, when Zhiyun released its new mobile phone, the capital market saw that the new mobile phone was still selling so well and was not greatly affected. The sales volume even reached a new high. So one by one, they began to overestimate Zhiyun's stock price.

Soon the market value climbed to 560 billion US dollars.

On the other hand, the fruit company's stock price has fallen back to just over 530 billion US dollars due to its previous inflated price.

So by late June, Zhiyun regained the title of the world's most valuable company, with Apple ranking second and oil giant ExxonMobil third.

Following them are a bunch of high-tech giants with a value of two or three hundred billion US dollars, such as Google, Microsoft, and StarHub.

In fact, in recent years, stimulated by the growth of mobile Internet and the influence of factors such as global economic expansion, the market value of a large number of high-tech giants has increased significantly, and high-tech companies with a market value of one or two hundred billion are everywhere.

Even the market capitalization of several domestic Internet giants is very high.

Both Fruit and Zhiyun have reached the 600 billion US dollar mark. Although their share prices have now fallen back to over 500 billion, it still proves that the high-tech field has continued to be sought after by investors in recent years.

Watching the company's stock price rise, Xu Shenxue was thinking about a new round of cashing out plan!
At the beginning of the year, he cashed out more than 10 billion US dollars when the stock price was at its peak. Now that the stock price has risen again, it is a good time to cash out again.

Anyway, he holds a lot of shares in Zhiyun Technology and has 20 voting rights for AB shares. Even if he cashes out another 100 billion or 200 billion US dollars, it will not affect his control over Zhiyun Technology.

After cashing out, the money can be used in other areas.

Nowadays, Xu Shenxue has too many industries under his control, and there are many places to spend money, especially basic industries such as semiconductors, precision machinery, and material research and development, which require huge R&D investment, so the demand for cash is almost endless.

Xu Shenxue, who was in a good mood, was just about to cash out, but Ji Chenghe reported that the company was involved in another lawsuit!
But this time it’s not the United States, but the European Union!

Ji Chenghe said: "The EU is preparing to fine us 500 million euros for violating EU law on fair competition!"

Xu Shenxue said, "Didn't we just fight an antitrust case against the company in the first half of the year? Are we fighting again?"

Ji Chenghe said: "I guess they saw that our company's stock price was rising again, and one of their organizations had a few new committee members. I guess they wanted to get some benefits!"

Xu Shenxue was helpless after hearing this: "These Europeans want to make extra money every day. You have to arrange this matter. If the money is not much, then send it away. If the money is too much, then you can do it yourself. Send it in if it should be sent in, and send it out if it should be sent out."

Ji Chenghe said: "I think these people are going to have a big appetite this time. Not only us, but also Apple has been sued, as well as Google and Microsoft. After learning more through the middleman, they have offered a high price!"

"It looks like he wants to make a fortune and retire!"

Xu Shenxue said, "Retire with money? Are these people mentally ill? They are asking for a lot of money from us and can retire peacefully? Who gives them the confidence?"

Xu Shenxue couldn't understand the train of thought of these people... It is understandable that a new official would make some extra money to support his family. Zhiyun, like other multinational companies, is very sensible in this regard and will give what is due.

This is even considered an international practice. Major multinational companies are very aware of the rules and will give what is due!
It's just a drop in the bucket anyway, and all of this is included in the operating costs of doing business locally.

Zhiyun Technology’s annual public relations expenditure is huge!

But if you want to ask for too much and eat too much at once... do you really think that multinational giants are easy to deal with?

Don’t even think about taking a penny of what you shouldn’t give!
This time, the other party is attacking so many multinational giants at the same time. He is probably a young and inexperienced person who has never seen money in his life.

Even without Zhiyun's help, the other companies would probably be able to arrange the car accident properly.

Xu Shenxue said: "You arrange people to contact the other companies and see what the situation is. If you can get rid of them with a small amount of money, then do it. If you can't get rid of them with a small amount of money, then see what their attitude is. In this matter, we still need more communication and cooperation!"

"Although we have conflicts with these companies in many aspects, conflicts are dead, but people are alive. We still need to cooperate in areas where we should cooperate!"

"Then try to suppress this matter, don't make a big fuss, and then embarrass everyone!"

Xu Shenxue has seen a lot of things in the past few years of running his business. It is inevitable to encounter such things when entering markets in various countries. Some are young and inexperienced who have not figured out the international business rules, some are purely for money, and some are more lofty and want votes. In short, there are all kinds of purposes, and they all treat Zhiyun as a cash cow and try to make money.

It's not just Zhiyun. Other multinational companies will encounter this kind of thing to a greater or lesser extent. The treatment of neighboring fruits in these markets is not much better than Zhiyun!
This kind of thing is nothing new to these multinational giants, and they have a whole set of standard procedures for dealing with it.

This time, the other party had a huge appetite and was bold enough to set up so many companies at once... Xu Shenxue couldn't help but sigh: "He is so obsessed with money, he wants money more than life!"

Sure enough, a few days later, Ji Chenghe reported: "The EU lawsuit has been resolved in a low-key manner. No news has leaked out, it has not been reported in the newspapers, and there has been no lawsuit. This matter is over!"

"This time, we all worked together, so it can be considered a collaboration!"

Xu Shenxue nodded after hearing this: "Cooperation is the only way to achieve a win-win situation!"

Xu Shenxue was not interested in hearing what means Ji Chenghe used to resolve the problem, nor was he interested in knowing what means the other companies used. Anyway, as long as the problem was resolved, it was fine.

It’s just that this kind of thing happens too many times throughout the year, and many of them cannot be solved with money or unconventional means.

For example, the tax fine case that Zhiyun faced recently in Europe. There was no room for easing from the beginning. The other party was not after the money, but made the choice based on the overall environment. Therefore, it was reported publicly from the beginning, and then Zhiyun was forced to respond publicly... Now that the lawsuit has started, many methods can no longer be used.

This kind of thing is actually more troublesome!

Private problems can be solved privately and at a low cost, but once they become public, it will become very troublesome and you may be fined hundreds of millions or even billions of euros.

In the past two years, Zhiyun, Fruit, Google, Microsoft and other multinational giants have all been targeted by the European Union, accusing them of monopoly, information security, violation of fair competition, tax evasion, and all kinds of excuses for fines.

The recent trouble Zhiyun faces is a tax case.

Zhiyun set up the main office of its European branch in Ireland... Well, in fact, this is a common practice among multinational giants. Among one hundred high-tech companies, ninety-nine will set up the headquarters of the branch responsible for European business in Ireland because the local tax rate is relatively low.

Originally, multinational companies could avoid high taxes by setting up their headquarters in Ireland.

The local area can obtain investment from large enterprises with low taxes, obtain employment and tax revenue, and everyone is happy. But this is the European Union... The European Union is an overall market. When a country has low taxes, a tax depression will appear, and other countries in the European Union will feel very unhappy.

Therefore, a lawsuit is being filed against Zhiyun, requiring Zhiyun to pay more than 1.5 billion euros in taxes to Ireland.

This kind of thing is not a private matter and there is no way to solve it privately. We can only confront it openly!

For this reason, Zhiyun and Ireland are actively responding to the lawsuit...

What do you mean Ireland is also actively responding to the lawsuit?

Because they don't want to collect this tax... They are in business and rely on low taxes to increase tax revenue and create jobs, but the EU insists on forcing them to collect taxes, which is tantamount to cutting off their livelihood.

What the EU is doing is like forcing a poisoned apple on Ireland. If they eat it, they will be doomed... All major multinational companies will have to run away!
Therefore, the Irish side is more anxious than Zhiyun and responds very actively!
Coincidentally, big companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft are basically facing similar problems, with various reasons, but they are all subject to high fines!
Why is this happening?

Because Europe no longer has an electronic consumer industry chain or an Internet industry... they have missed an entire era.

Therefore, Europe is actually trying its best to protect the few remaining local companies. If it is impossible to protect them, then it will just impose fines directly... It has to get some benefits and can't be stupid enough to be a pure dumping area for electronic consumption and the Internet!
That is the treatment of colonies, but they Europeans don’t think of themselves as colonies!

So fine them whenever you get the chance!
So don’t think that Zhiyun, Apple, Google and other American companies are fighting each other to the death. When they go to Europe, they start to cooperate privately.

These professional lobbyists from big companies travel around the EU and share what they have with each other.

Fruit is very concerned about the case where Zhiyun was sued by the European Union and demanded to pay more than 1.5 billion euros in back taxes... Why?
Because they are also facing the same lawsuit. If Zhiyun loses first, the next move by the Europeans will be directly aimed at the fruit.

In this regard, major multinational companies actually cooperate a lot.

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It is difficult to explain the complexity between large multinational companies in a few words.

So, don’t take sides easily!

Perhaps, the party you support is colluding with the party you oppose and trying to grab the market share from third parties together. For example, Zhiyun and Fruit in Europe, India, ASEAN, and South America... In these markets, these two companies are generally recognized to be colluding with each other, playing the clearing game and suppressing other mobile phone manufacturers.

In this regard, a large number of traditional mobile phone companies that have already declined, such as Ounuoya and Motorola, have expressed their agreement!

It's because of these two disgusting things that they were competing with each other tacitly that we suffered so much!

Therefore, a considerable number of people in the EU now firmly believe that the tacit behavior between Zhiyun and Fruit has been suspected of joint market manipulation.

Well, this is also one of the reasons why Zhiyun and Fruit are subject to antitrust investigations in the EU...

If these things were directly reported back to the domestic Internet media without analysis, a group of netizens who were previously worried about Zhiyun Technology being sanctioned by the United States and then encouraged by Zhiyun’s publicity department to call on users to express their support for Zhiyun with actual orders would probably be stunned for a long time!
You told me that you and fruit are irreconcilable...

But outsiders are saying that you and the fruit industry are colluding with each other, and they are suing you for jointly and maliciously manipulating the market.

Who should I believe?
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Not only Zhiyun and fruits have a tacit understanding!
Zhiyun and Qualcomm also have a tacit understanding in the fields of SOC and communication baseband.

If you want to buy the communication basebands of these two companies separately or get patent authorization, it is really shady.

You want to ask for the price from Zhiyun and then use Qualcomm's quotation to lower the price, but that's impossible... As soon as you ask for the price, the two parties have already communicated with each other, and then they came to a gentleman's agreement: this is the price, and no one is allowed to lower the price!

According to some people, the world's third-party mobile phone SOC market is too small and can only accommodate two manufacturers!
Which two?
Of course it’s Qualcomm and Zhiyun!
The others are basically dead. After being abandoned by Zhiyun, Texas Instruments is now half-dead and is already in talks with Nvidia to sell this part of its business.

Nvidia has invested heavily in its SOC business, but has suffered even greater losses, and is now planning to exit this market.

STMicroelectronics was already finished.

It’s not easy to enter the mobile phone SOC field...a communication baseband patent issue will hold you back.

Currently, there are four relatively large mobile phone SOC companies left in the world: Apple, Samsung, Zhiyun, and Qualcomm.

The SOC of Fruit is only for its own use. Currently, they have a long-term cooperation agreement with Qualcomm. Since they can obtain relatively cheap communication baseband from Qualcomm, they are not affected for the time being.

Although SIX Star's SOC business is also sold to the outside world, basically no one uses it because they do not have a communication baseband. If mobile phone manufacturers want to use SIX Star's SOC, they still need to find Zhiyun or Qualcomm to purchase a single baseband.

The prices of the single-mount basebands from these two companies are so low that everyone who has bought them says they are cheating!
Even Sixing itself has considered giving up on developing its own SOC... It's so sad to want to play with mobile phone SOC without its own communication baseband.

Then only Zhiyun and Qualcomm are left.

Part of Zhiyun's SOC business is for self-use, and part is open to export. This export SOC business has already captured a considerable market share, mainly SOC orders for domestic mobile phones.

As for Qualcomm, although it lost Zhiyun, a super big customer, they still have a lot of customers from other mobile phone manufacturers, Lenovo and Xiaomi are their customers. Qualcomm is also actively trying to win over four stars and try to make them fully join Qualcomm's camp.

In the end, it is estimated that only Zhiyun, Qualcomm and a half-cooked rice fruit will be left.

Why did it end up like this?
Because Zhiyun and Qualcomm are too shady and have too severe a monopoly in the field of communication baseband, these two companies are the only ones in the world that have patents for CDMA2000.

In the 4G field, Zhiyun relied on spending money to forcibly acquire patents in the early stage, and now it controls a large number of TD-LTE communication baseband patents, thus forming a de facto monopoly; Qualcomm also has a large number of patents in the FDD-LTE field.

Both companies follow the same path: relying on their monopoly position in communication basebands, they forcefully promote their own mobile phone SOC chips!
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There are also Zhiyun and GUGO. Although they have conflicts over artificial intelligence, in fact, the two companies are still extremely close global strategic partners.

The current Android was developed by these two companies together, and they are almost inseparable from each other.

Today's Android open source system has been dotted with too many landmines by these two companies. Not to mention that outsiders can't understand it, even if these two companies want to abandon one of them and continue to develop this open source Android version alone, it is impossible: they have left many hidden landmines for each other!

If these two companies fall out over the Android open source system business, subsequent updates of Android's open source version will come to a standstill!
It’s not that easy to break up!

In order to expand its mobile Internet business, Google provides Zhiyun with a large amount of software pre-installation and channel fees every year.

The relationship between these large multinational companies is very complex and contradictory, and their attitudes towards different things are also different.

They have different opinions on some things and even fight to the death.

But on some things, they work together.

At least that was the case before the international environment changed drastically!
As for the future, things may be different due to changes in the overall environment.

And now, there is still some cooperation in the competition.

Even Four Star is now negotiating with Zhiyun to purchase mobile phone SOCs... Without the TD-LTE communication baseband that comes with Zhiyun's SOC, they can't even enter China's 4G market.

In order to make money, it is natural for Zhiyun to cooperate.

Apple, on the other hand, is more tough and is determined not to use other companies' SOCs. It doesn't even use Qualcomm's, let alone Zhiyun's.

Now, Fruit continues to use Qualcomm's FDD-LTE and 3G communication basebands, relying on the patent agreement it signed with Qualcomm. As for the TD-LTE communication baseband, Zhiyun is unwilling to sell it at a low price, so they just refuse to use it.

Anyway, in the current Chinese market, the market share of Apple phones is very small... They have been suppressed so severely by Zhiyun that the revenue in the Chinese region accounts for a very small proportion of their total global revenue.

Anyway, they didn't make much money from you, so naturally they wouldn't accept your nonsense, so Guoguo had the confidence to reject Zhiyun.

But four stars don't have...

Although Big Four's high-end phones have little market share in China, they still have a market share of several percentage points. At the same time, the sales of their mid- and low-end phones in China are still not small. If possible, they are unwilling to give up this part of the market.

Anyway, they are bound to be cut in the field of communication baseband, either by Qualcomm or by Zhiyun. Therefore, in order to maintain the Chinese market, they are ready to fully adopt Zhiyun Semiconductor's SOC for the domestic mobile phones sold in the Chinese market to support the Chinese 4G standard.

For the four-star brand, making money is not shameful... Anyway, in the 3G era, the domestic version of their mobile phones were purchased from Zhiyun with a single-mounted mobile baseband, so it is normal to upgrade to use SOC now.

And this is the significance of Zhiyun's strong promotion of TD-LTE technical standards in China this year, and even spending money to help build test networks, conduct various research and development, and cooperate all the way!
This thing can really get stuck in someone's neck!
Having tasted success in the communication baseband field, Zhiyun has also made great efforts in various research and development and patent layout in 5G communication technology.

(End of this chapter)