Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 248: Zhiyun Mobile Phones are Plagiarized
After the Zhiyun flagship phone launch in June, the global mobile phone industry continued to be turbulent. After Zhiyun launched the S12 series of mobile phones, a large number of mobile phone manufacturers held press conferences to launch their own new mobile phones.

Then many mobile phone manufacturers launched large-screen mobile phones or other elements related to Zhiyun phones.

In short, various comparisons with Zhiyun...

Xie Jianyong said to Xu Shenxue: "Now many of our peers, especially some small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers, are hastily modifying their designs and imitating our elements to increase the selling points of their mobile phones!"

"This is especially true for phones that are scheduled to be released in the next few months. Now everyone is working overtime to modify the design."

Ji Chenghe on the side also said: "Based on the current situation, a large number of large-screen mobile phones will emerge in the second half of this year and even in the first half of next year, and the network model screen will also become the standard configuration of the flagship phones of various mobile phone manufacturers."

Xu Shenxue nodded: "Starting this year, we have truly entered the era of large-screen video models!"

Apple first used a 3.5-inch reticulated screen, and Zhiyun followed suit last year with 4.3-inch and 4.7-inch reticulated screens.

In May this year, the four-star Galaxy 3 used a -inch reticulated screen.

In June, Zhiyun went a step further and came up with a 5.5-inch reticulated screen!
As a result, the three major mobile phone giants have fully applied reticulated screens to their flagship phones. At the same time, the cost of reticulated screens is gradually decreasing. Seeing this, other mobile phone manufacturers are also preparing to follow suit and apply them to their own flagship phones.

In addition, the many design styles of Zhiyun S12 and even some small functional changes in the system, such as gesture operation, will continue to lead the development trend of the entire smartphone industry.

----

Every year when Zhiyun releases the S series of mobile phones, it will drive changes in the entire mobile phone industry on a global scale and lead the changes in the entire mobile phone industry.

Zhiyun launched the S9 mobile phone with a four-inch screen and a very unique three-button capacitive sensing button interaction mode. As a result, a few months later, new mobile phones launched by various mobile phone manufacturers all had four-inch screens and three-button capacitive sensing buttons.

The original four-button mode and physical buttons have been completely abandoned, and we have officially entered the four-inch screen era.

After the release of Zhiyun S10, the phone adopted an aluminum alloy body for the first time... Well, they can't copy this thing for a while.

At the same time, the S10 is equipped with fingerprint recognition... This, they can't copy in a short time.

But the lack of fingerprint recognition doesn’t mean you can’t copy the HOME button!
In order to arrange this fingerprint recognition, Zhiyun created a unique interaction mode of a HOME button plus two capacitive touch buttons.

Then a number of Android manufacturers shamelessly launched the interactive mode of the Home button plus two capacitive touch buttons. To be honest, Xu Shenxue could not understand their actions: I had to have a Home button in order to have fingerprint recognition, otherwise three neat capacitive touch buttons would be so beautiful, and that would be in line with industrial aesthetics!
This three-button mode, with a capacitive sensing Home button in the middle, is designed to realize the fingerprint function, which is a compromise result after comprehensive consideration of many aspects!
You don’t have fingerprint recognition, why are you following me?

This reminded Xu Shenxue of the fruit in the original time and space. In order to carry out 3D facial recognition, it had to destroy the integrity of the screen and made an ugly notch screen.

As a result, a group of mobile phone manufacturers simply copied it and dug out a piece of their own screens to make notch screens!

They don’t have a bunch of sensors for 3D facial recognition, so why do they use a ridiculous notch screen... They are simply crazy!
At present, other mobile phone manufacturers are following Zhiyun's model of adding Home button and capacitive touch button, which is also the case: they are just copying, even if it is just copying the appearance.

Sixing copied so much that Zhiyun even filed a patent lawsuit against Sixing.

Many other mobile phone manufacturers have also been sued by Zhiyun, but in the end they all made modifications and reached settlements and compensation.

However, this patent infringement is currently still considered ordinary appearance infringement, and the situation is not too serious.

The situation will be even more serious when they also get fingerprint recognition technology.

Because the core of Zhiyun's series of appearance patents is not round buttons, flat round buttons or the like, but a complete set of patents based on fingerprint recognition technology, plus a unique three-button interaction mode.

If you put a useless Home button on it, you can still win the lawsuit, but if you also put fingerprint recognition on it, it will be a 100% infringement of Zhiyun's patent.

From round to oval, even flat round, none of them are acceptable!
The three buttons below the front screen have a built-in fingerprint unlocking module. This whole set of interactive modes is Zhiyun's core patented technology. Anyone who dares to use it will have to face Zhiyun's huge team of lawyers.

Then...what's even more interesting is that the fingerprint recognition technology on the back and the fingerprint recognition technology in the side power button are also Zhiyun's patented technologies.

Although Zhiyun doesn’t use it, it doesn’t mean you can use it!
However, even with Zhiyun's numerous appearance and technical patent restrictions, a large number of mobile phone manufacturers can still copy what they can...it's just that they can't copy most of the things in a short time.

----

After the S12 phone was released, many mobile phone manufacturers actually breathed a sigh of relief... Although the hardware of the Zhiyun S12 phone is still stacked to the point of despair, it even dares to use a -inch reflex model screen... It's simply inhumane.

The cost of this screen alone exceeds the hardware cost of the entire phone for most smartphones on the market!

Then other hardware of S12, such as SOC, memory and flash memory, are also the best at the moment, especially the S303 chip, which has more than million transistors, making many mobile phone manufacturers drool... This is the chip with the largest number of transistors among current mobile phone SOC chips.

It also has a powerful single-core main frequency of up to 1.8Ghz. In addition, it has four GPU cores, which provides strong support for large-scale software and games.

The most important thing is that the power consumption is surprisingly low.

Memory and flash memory are also very disappointing. Ordinary consumers may only look at the capacity of 2GB and 16GB, but industry insiders see the process and parameters.

This 2GB running memory is LPDDR2, which is the latest memory standard for mobile devices. It has high frequency and low power consumption. It is the current top low-power memory technology standard for mobile devices... What's so special about this new thing?
Expensive!

While other mobile phone manufacturers are still hesitating whether to use this new specification of memory, Zhiyun directly offers 2GB of running memory, as if the huge additional hardware costs do not exist.

Same goes for flash memory!
Before this, everyone used ordinary 2D flash memory, but Zhiyun actually used 3D NAND memory in its own mobile phones!

This thing has just appeared in the PC market, and because of its high price and high performance, this advanced technology memory is currently mainly used in the enterprise market, and is purchased by some wealthy Internet companies for use in servers.

Ordinary personal PCs are relatively rare, and only some DIY enthusiasts with plenty of money will spend a high price to buy this kind of solid-state drive for use.

As for Zhiyun, it directly used this thing on the S12 mobile phone!
Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many technology bloggers who say that Zhiyun is still the leader in the field of stacked hardware!
A large group of mobile phone assembly factories were criticized for only being able to pile up hardware but not having their own technology... They were piling up hardware, but in fact they couldn't even see the taillights of Zhiyun!

When it comes to stacking hardware, Zhiyun is the one that stacks the most!

Moreover, it is a comprehensive stack of hardware. In addition to the large core hardware, other spare parts, even the things that cannot be seen inside, are all stacked to the top level.

For example, in terms of speakers, vibration motors, microphones, flash lights, and even workmanship quality, which are often overlooked by many people, Zhiyun pursues the ultimate in all of them.

This has made a group of mobile phone manufacturers not even have the courage to follow suit... the cost is too high, and if they insist on following suit, they cannot sell at such a high price, and they will suffer losses and go bankrupt!
But... this year a large group of people said that Zhiyun's hardware is unique in the world. To some extent, this is also because many people think that this year's Zhiyun S12 does not have any major innovative technology.

Not to mention the black technology, there is not even a small innovation... The biggest change is the change of the antenna position!
This has made many mobile phone manufacturers inexplicably confident: the former giant Zhiyun is no longer as good as it used to be, and now is the good time for us to catch up!
Not to mention these ordinary mobile phone manufacturers, even the two main competitors next door, Apple and Four Star, many people in them breathed a sigh of relief.

Zhiyun has put too much pressure on them in the past few years... Not to mention the four-star team, even the fruit team seems to be being forcibly dragged away by Zhiyun.

The emergence of fingerprint technology alone has made the fruit industry feel a sense of crisis, and they are spending money like crazy!

Not long after the release of S10 that year, Apple turned around and acquired the world's second largest fingerprint recognition technology solution provider.

As for the world's number one...it had already been wholly acquired by Zhiyun, and even delisted and privatized, so how could anyone else have a share!

What's funny is that Zhiyun only spent 300 to 400 million euros to acquire the first-ranked manufacturer that had already developed capacitive sensing fingerprint recognition technology, while Fruit spent 700 to 800 million euros to acquire the second-ranked manufacturer that didn't even have this technology.

After acquiring the manufacturer, Apple spent a lot of money and recruited talents from all over the world to work hard to develop capacitive sensing fingerprint technology.

And now...nearly two years have passed, and they have finally reaped the rewards!
After entering July, some media reported that the new Apple mobile phones will adopt fingerprint recognition technology!
This gives people the feeling that... after two years of hard work, Fruit has finally caught up with Zhiyun!

This gives people a very ridiculous feeling!
Don’t think that eating fruit like this is low-class, in fact, it is already very good.

Other mobile phone manufacturers can’t keep up even if they want to
For mobile phone manufacturers other than Zhiyun and Fruit, fingerprint recognition technology still belongs to Zenith Star Technology. Many mobile phone manufacturers are developing it, and many third-party supplier manufacturers are also developing it, but the progress is extremely slow.

On the one hand, we are faced with practical technical problems, and on the other hand, and more importantly, there is the patent issue.

Zhiyun's fingerprint recognition technology and hardware have been disassembled and analyzed countless times. Its technical principles and even implementation process are difficult for ordinary people to understand, but technical experts in the industry already know them well.

But you can’t just copy it!

Surrounding it are a dense array of various technical patents.

Zhiyun already has enough patents.

While Apple has spent huge resources on developing fingerprint recognition technology in the past two years, it has also been continuously applying for various patents and then obtaining a large number of patents.

At the same time, some other manufacturers, such as Qianding Technology, are also applying for various patents, which means more patents are piling up.

By now, the patents for capacitive fingerprint recognition technology have become so strict that latecomers are daunted.

The four-star brand was so desperate that they announced that they would give up their self-developed capacitive fingerprint recognition technology and instead increase their R&D investment in new technologies such as pupil recognition and under-screen fingerprint recognition.

There are too many patents stuck and it’s really impossible to deal with it!
At the same time, they are still in contact with Qianding Technology, trying to obtain fingerprint recognition supplies from Qianding Technology...

Not only Four Star, but a large number of other mobile phone manufacturers, both domestic and foreign, are now hoping that Qianding Technology can break through the technical blockade of the two major mobile phone giants and come up with third-party fingerprint recognition technology.

Qianding Technology started working on fingerprint unlocking relatively early, mainly because they had a close relationship with Zhiyun. After learning that Zhiyun was working on fingerprint recognition, they also wanted to start research and development in advance with Yishou.

This advance has given them a lot of first-mover advantages.

Currently, apart from Zhiyun and Fruit, only Qianding Technology has a relatively reliable capacitive fingerprint recognition technology in the world.

Although the technology is not yet good enough and cannot be used commercially for the time being, it will most likely be usable in the future as long as it continues to be improved.

Relying solely on a fingerprint recognition technology that has not yet been commercialized and released, Qianding Technology has already become the sweetheart of many mobile phone manufacturers. All of them are chasing Qianding Technology to give money in order to obtain the first supply of Qianding Technology's fingerprint recognition products.

The field of fingerprint recognition is one of the key areas that has influenced the mobile phone industry and even the entire consumer electronics industry in recent years.

Without Zhiyun Technology's strong launch of fingerprint recognition technology, which triggered a global buying frenzy and made fingerprint recognition technology a standard technology for smartphones, other mobile phone manufacturers would not be so crazy.

However, not all mobile phone manufacturers will just follow Zhiyun!

In July, Zhiyun Group’s strategic analysis department obtained several hard-earned photos.

Several photos of the appearance of Apple's new generation flagship phone.

When seeing these photos, Xu Shenxue frowned slightly.

This thing looks a little strange. It doesn't look like the Fruit 5/5S in his memory, nor does it look like the Fruit 6/7.

Judging from this photo, the screen is still a relatively small four-inch screen. It has to be said that Apple has been very persistent in small screens in recent years, and always feels that small screens are most suitable for one-handed operation!

A lot of mobile phone manufacturers have been led by Zhiyun to develop large-screen mobile phones. I don’t know what they are still insisting on. It feels inexplicable!
It’s just that the screen of this new Apple phone is quite special… it actually uses a 2.5D screen with a very obvious curve on the edges!
Looking at this phone from the front, it looks exactly like the Fruit 6 in his memory!
Then the back is not a three-section aluminum alloy body, but a full aluminum alloy body!

To Xu Shenxue, this thing looked like a smaller version of Fruit 6 from the original time and space!

----

What Xu Shenxue didn't know was that in order to deal with the huge threat from Zhiyun, Apple has been very radical in the design of its new mobile phones in the past two years, which also seemed very embarrassing.

Apple actually started researching aluminum alloy bodies early on, and has accumulated good technical experience in three-section aluminum alloy bodies, but Zhiyun was the first to use this technology on the S9 phone.

By the time Apple developed the aluminum alloy technology, Zhiyun had already used it for two generations on S9 and S10, and even abandoned the three-section aluminum alloy body in its new models last year and this year.

The S9/10 developed by Xu Shenxue, in appearance, actually imitates the Fruit 5/5S in the original time and space, except for the different button mode.

If Fruit continues to use this solution, it will easily be mistaken for Zhiyun’s stock clearance phone... S11X!

The huge damage to the brand is irreparable.

Therefore, they had to abandon the more mature three-section aluminum alloy solution and directly adopt the all-aluminum alloy body solution.

Then, in order to gain some technological advantages, especially to reflect the differences with Zhiyun's S11, Fruit boldly adopted the 2.5D screen solution when developing this new flagship, integrating the screen edge and the body frame through clever design.

Then there is the fingerprint unlocking solution that cost a huge amount of money and took nearly two years to develop.

Finally, the appearance of the new Fruit flagship that Xu Shenxue sees now was formed: a smaller version of Fruit 6!

And I heard from people in the intelligence department that Apple has actually ordered a 4.7-inch reticulated screen and is also planning to launch a large-screen mobile phone.

Xu Shenxue estimated that they would also release a Fruit 5P, with a combination of large and small screens like Zhiyun.

The design of Fruit's new mobile phone was inevitably influenced by Zhiyun... On the one hand, it imitated Zhiyun, but on the other hand, it tried to create some of its own things.

Finally, this is the thing that came out!
But apart from anything else, this phone is pretty nice just looking at the photos!

----

This mobile phone only surprised Xu Shenxue slightly. As long as the fruit company did not suddenly come up with some black technology, it would not pose any fatal threat to Zhiyun.

At this stage, Zhiyun has formed its own unique style in the competition in mobile phone design, and the subsequent design of mobile phones is more influenced by various cutting-edge technologies rather than the influence of friendly competitors.

No matter what happens to Apple, OnePlus, or other mobile phone manufacturers, Zhiyun Technology will unswervingly follow the strategic development plan formulated by Xu Shenxue.

The strategic plans formulated by Xu Shenxue are all examples that have been successfully proven in the original time and space, and many technologies also have traces to follow. We only need to follow this technical route, and in the end we will be able to develop into a relatively complete full-screen mobile phone in the 1920s of the original time and space.

What other mobile phone manufacturers do is their business.

So after seeing the spy photos of this new Apple phone, Xu Shenxue said to a group of senior executives: "Keep our pace firm and don't be influenced by the outside world!"

"The core task at the moment is to do a good job in the sales of S12 mobile phones, prepare the second batch of listing plans as soon as possible, and seize the market first!"

Ji Chenghe said: "Due to the restrictions on stock quantity, production capacity and laws of various countries, the first batch of our mobile phone launch plan only covers 26 countries or regions. Some emerging markets and small and medium-sized markets have not yet been rolled out. Now we are actively preparing for the second batch of launch plans. The second batch of countries or regions will reach 53, covering major mobile phone markets around the world!"

"The rest will be rolled out in due course!"

Zhiyun Technology’s mobile phones and other smart terminal products have been sold globally since the C1, and covered major mobile phone markets by the time of the S9 mobile phone.

By the time the S10 was launched on the market, its phenomenal sales volume also pushed Zhiyun Mobile's tentacles further into almost every area where humans gather.

Even in Africa, Zhiyun product stores can be found in the few high-end shopping malls.

However, due to various influences, Zhiyun's new mobile phone S12 was launched on the market. It was said to be sold globally, but in fact it was sold in batches.

The first batch includes China, the United States, major European countries, Japan and other economically developed regions. The second batch includes places with less developed economies but greater market potential.

Later, there will be some small places that will slowly infiltrate.

The entire listing process often lasts for several months and is gradually rolled out globally.

In addition to Zhiyun's own and its sister company Weiku Trading's self-controlled channels, the entire process will also involve a large number of operators from all over the world and local channel dealers in various countries. The overall situation is actually very complicated.

For example, language adaptation is required. There are so many countries and languages ​​in the world, and Zhiyun phones have to adapt one by one. At the same time, different countries often have different legal standards, some taboos and the like.

When Zhiyun phones are put on the market for sale in these places, targeted modifications need to be made, deleting what needs to be deleted and blurring what needs to be blurred.

For example, the S12 mobile phone is now on the market in the United States. In order to pass local security supervision, the networking function of the artificial intelligence Xiaoyun needs to be castrated, and all data must be stored in the United States.

And this is not an isolated case...in fact, many countries have regulations of one kind or another.

The reason why the United States is brought up is...it's because they are big enough targets to attract people's attention.

In fact, there are more restrictions in many countries. For example, the situation is more complicated in West Asia and other regions. There are all kinds of inexplicable restrictions, and many functions or content need to be castrated or replaced.

If you want to sell a mobile phone all over the world, the adaptation work alone is very complicated and troublesome... There are almost no companies in China that recruit talents who speak almost all languages ​​like Zhiyun.

Many high-end talents in niche languages ​​know that if they want to find a job that matches their major after graduation, there are basically three employment options: either stay in school to teach, take a civil service exam and work in a foreign affairs department, or go to Zhiyun.

Zhiyun has the largest and most comprehensive language talent pool in the country... You can basically find any mainstream language. If you can't find it in Zhiyun, then don't expect to find it in other domestic companies.

It also has the most comprehensive international legal team in the country, especially in the field of patent law. When many domestic companies face overseas lawsuits, they have to contact Zhiyun to discuss borrowing Zhiyun's international legal team.

Given the complexity of the global market, to be honest, even if the S12 phone was given to other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, they would not be able to sell so many units... They can't even adapt, and it is difficult for them to circumvent the complicated, different, and even contradictory laws of various countries. It is easy for them to be banned for no reason.

Going out to sea is not an easy thing!

In the past two years, many domestic mobile phone manufacturers have followed Zhiyun to venture overseas, but only Zhongxing, Huawei, Lianxiang and TCL have done relatively well. The reason why these companies have done well is that they already have a large number of international businesses and can adapt to overseas markets.

It is very difficult for other mobile phone manufacturers. We often hear that a certain mobile phone manufacturer violates local laws and is banned.

Even the companies that are doing relatively well cannot truly spread their products across the global market like Zhiyun, and they cannot enter many regional markets.

Zhiyun is Zhiyun, and other domestic mobile phones are domestic mobile phones. These are two different things!
Especially for foreigners!

Zhiyun phones and other products represent the world's most cutting-edge high technology... and are famous enough.

Many times, Zhiyun does not need to take the initiative to open up the market. Local operators and large channel dealers have already come to it and cleared a lot of obstacles for Zhiyun mobile phones to enter.

But other domestic mobile phone manufacturers should not expect this treatment. They should just follow their rules!

Even because of the global nature of Zhiyun's products, it is a typical law-abiding and disciplined company around the world. Often, whether a country is open enough can be measured by whether it allows Zhiyun to enter.

Even in some markets that seem closed and exclusive to outsiders, although Zhiyun Technology cannot directly enter and set up branches to lay out sales channels, it can still enter and sell through some channel dealers.

A typical example is the Japanese market. The market here does not have any major restrictions, but it is xenophobic and has a strong admiration for the strong.

Zhiyun was able to easily enter the local market and gain a large amount of high-end market share.

Up to now, Zhiyun phones have occupied about 40% of the market share in Japan, and have almost absolute dominance.

Other domestic mobile phone manufacturers followed suit, but none of them made any waves.

In fact, many Japanese do not think that Zhiyun Technology is a Chinese company, but rather regard it as a global company... They are happy to accept and use Zhiyun, a global leading product.

But if you ask them to use mobile phones made by Chinese manufacturers, they will not be very happy!
The global market is not that easy to do business in!
----

July has passed, and as August has begun, many mobile phone manufacturers have released mobile phones.

Among them is rice!

They released the new generation of Mi 2, and what’s interesting about this phone is that it uses the W603 chip from Zhiyun Semiconductor.

This is an export version of the SOC chip developed by Zhiyun Semiconductor specifically for Wecoo Electronics and other mobile phone manufacturers. It does not have a large number of Zhiyun system-specific functional cores, but only integrates some general functional cores. It also uses four CPU cores at 1.5GHZ, and is equipped with AP70's dual GPU core to support 1080P high-definition video.

This is the first quad-core chip from Zhiyun Semiconductor, which targets the high-end chip market for export and competes with Qualcomm's quad-core chip and Texas Instruments' new chip in the third-party mobile phone SOC market.

It is also equipped with Zhiyun’s exclusive B4 full-network communication baseband, which seamlessly connects two 4G standards and three 3G standards.

This high-end chip, due to its unique communication baseband and the current special situation of 4G in China, has been purchased by many mobile phone manufacturers including Samsung and Xiaomi for use in their flagship mobile phones.

There is no way. Currently, there is only TD-LTE 4G in China, and the communication baseband for this 4G mode is currently only provided by Zhiyun, but Zhiyun does not provide stand-alone baseband.

Actually, it’s not that we can’t do it. You can just install a baseband by itself, but if you want to customize it, you have to take into account the design fee, tape-out fee, etc. The price is so high that even people in Qualcomm’s channel would have to exclaim: Awesome!
That price is more expensive than directly purchasing the W600 series chips with full network baseband!

Anyway, at the moment, if you want to support 4G network in China, you can only purchase Zhiyun's W600 series chips. There is no second choice!

Although the W600 series chips all use the new architecture of 32nm process, the 601 is an entry-level dual-core chip, the 602 and 603 are mid-to-high-end quad-core chips, and the 602 is a frequency-locked version.

There is also a 604 that supplies tablets or other similar devices.

At the same time, the above version also provides a baseband-free version, namely the WQ600 series. You can then pair it with a 3G baseband from Zhiyun, Qualcomm or other manufacturers.

Zhiyun Semiconductor is very dedicated to the chip business. The W600 series is a quad-core processor specifically designed to meet the needs of open source Android's multi-tasking system.

You should know that due to the particularity of the system, Zhiyun mobile phones do not pay much attention to multi-core performance, but focus more on single-core performance, high-speed cache and some other functional characteristics... The requirements for chips are also quite different from those of ordinary Android phones.

Based on these circumstances, many mobile phone manufacturers have begun to use Zhiyun Semiconductor's chips.

Even the big four have purchased this series of chips, intending to use them in some domestic mobile phones.

As for the flagship phones of other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, if they want to take advantage of the 4G reputation, they can basically only purchase this series of chips.

DaMi is the mobile phone company that acted the fastest and was the most determined, and it came to us a long time ago.

As soon as the W600 in the W603 series was successfully taped out, they began to make various adaptations impatiently until the W603 chip started small-scale mass production.

They couldn't wait to carry out small-scale mass production simultaneously, and then held a press conference!
Zhiyun Technology was also invited to attend the press conference, and Ji Chenghe attended the press conference as a representative!

Why did Ji Chenghe go?

Because in this Mi 2, the chip is from Zhiyun Semiconductor, the memory and flash memory are also from Zhiyun Semiconductor, the screen is from Huaxing Technology, and some of the suppliers of various other parts and components are holding subsidiaries of Zhiyun or have close ties with Zhiyun and have strategic investments.

In fact, this is a mobile phone that is built on the mature supply chain of Zhiyun/Weiku and is extremely cost-effective.

The profit that Dami can earn from this phone is less than half of what Zhiyun Technology can earn.

Therefore, the more Mi phones are sold, the more Zhiyun earns, even more than Mi!

In such a situation, it was natural to give face, and even Ji Chenghe was invited to the stage to say a few polite words.

I have to say that Xiaomi has made this phone really to the extreme. With the core components, especially the chip, being so expensive, they managed to keep the price of the phone to just 1999 yuan.

Although it is seriously simplified in many invisible places, its performance is actually quite good, even comparable to some so-called flagship phones around 4,000 yuan.

This kind of mobile phone with the ultimate cost-effectiveness has naturally caused a rush...but the sales volume in the early stage will be very small, and it will only be possible to supply it on a large scale after the costs in all aspects are reduced.

Large-scale shipments will probably have to wait until next year!

The W603 chips that Dami pre-ordered from Zhiyun Semiconductor are only one million pieces, and they will be delivered in installments, and all of them will not be delivered until the end of the year.

Why?

Because the more you sell at the beginning, the more you lose!
Zhiyun Semiconductor's S603 chip will not be sold to you at a lower price just because your mobile phone is priced at 1999 yuan. It will still be the same price.

So they need time to wait for the cost of hardware such as chips to come down!

This is a typical feature of the ultimate cost-effectiveness.

However, several other mobile phone manufacturers that purchased Zhiyun Semiconductor's W603 chip did not do this after releasing their mobile phones.

Weiku Electronics' new generation flagship Xiaolan MAX4 also uses this chip!
The Xiaolan MAX series, as the signature product of Weiku Electronics, has had mediocre sales, but it has had a significant impact on the Xiaolan brand.

In the early years, it took advantage of the popularity of the Zhiyun S series to launch this series and raised the price to 3,000 yuan.

This is the only domestic mobile phone, except for Zhiyun's mobile phones, that can be priced over 3,000 yuan and can still achieve sales of tens of millions.

This year's Little Blue MAX4 is also unwaveringly following the path of plagiarizing and imitating its big brother!

The S12 Pro uses a -inch reticulated screen, and it also uses a -inch large screen... As for the resolution, I won’t mention it, and you don’t have to mention it either, it’s watchable anyway.

A three thousand dollar phone has a 5.5 inch giant screen, what else can you expect?

As for other appearances, they copied wherever possible, and copied wherever possible... For example, the Home interaction mode among the three buttons. Yes, the first one to copy Zhiyun mobile phone and use a Home button without a fingerprint was the Xiaolan MAX series.

This operation left big brother Zhiyun speechless.

However, it does not use a flat round Home button, but a flat and long Home button. In fact, at the beginning, the Xiaolan MAX used a round home button, but was sued by Apple... Later, the new model used this flat and long button.

It has a 2-inch large screen, a quad-core high-end chip, and an old GB of RAM.

Bai Qiwen, who is already the CEO of Weiku Electronics, vowed at the press conference that he would beat a group of competitors!
This phone may look scary at first glance, but if people in the industry take it apart and have a look, they will find that except for the SOC which is a good thing, the rest are low- or medium-spec products, and the hardware cost is probably about the same as that of Mi 2.

But consumers are not industry insiders, and when they take a look at it, they think: Wow, a quad-core, five-inch, five-inch ultra-large screen mobile phone, and it looks very similar to the S12 Pro.

Then I placed an order.

Xiaolan MAX is imitating the Zhiyun S series Pro version, Xiaomi is playing the ultimate cost-effectiveness, and several other domestic mobile phone manufacturers also have their own routines.

In the price range below 3,000 yuan, the market is booming and has reached its peak!
In this big wave, a large number of international brand mobile phone manufacturers, except for four major ones that can still gain a foothold in the Chinese market, the sales of other manufacturers have basically plummeted and they have been forced to withdraw from the Chinese market one after another. Even after withdrawing from the Chinese market, the situation is not much better. Other overseas markets, even their domestic markets are facing fierce competition!
The three giants, Fruit, Zhiyun and Sixing, are no joke. The competitiveness of their products is extremely strong, directly defeating these traditional international manufacturers.

HTZ, which once pioneered the Android smartphone, is now in decline and is not far from complete demise.

Manufacturers such as Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Onoya have retreated again and again, their smartphone businesses have stagnated completely, and their companies have fallen into a state of huge losses.

In the domestic market, a large number of traditional mobile phone manufacturers have been eliminated one after another!

This is a major reshuffle of the mobile phone market that has affected the entire world. Countless mobile phone manufacturers have been submerged in this wave and then completely disappeared from the sight of consumers.

At the same time, a number of mobile phone manufacturers have emerged and grown rapidly, among which Weiku Electronics and China Lianku, the five domestic manufacturers, are typical examples of their rise.

At the same time, due to the existence of a large number of branded thousand-yuan smartphones, the copycat phones that once created a great reputation in the mobile phone market are gradually dying out.

In fact, many former copycat phone manufacturers have also transformed into smartphone manufacturers, using some very cheap chips. For example, Zhiyun Semiconductor launched a series of low-end SOCs for export last year, such as the W100 series, a renamed version of the S400 single-core chip.

Although this series of chips is outdated, it is still one of the main SOCs in the thousand-yuan market of the domestic mobile phone market and is very popular.

In addition, in the era of smart phones, there is a feature, that is, except for special manufacturers such as Zhiyun, Sixing and Fruit, the others are basically assembly plants!

These copycat phone manufacturers engage in assembly, and big-brand phone manufacturers also engage in assembly. In this case, the big brands can be more aggressive because the volume is larger, the cost control is better, and the price can be lower.

After a large number of copycat phone manufacturers transformed themselves into smartphone manufacturers, they found that they could not even compete with the large mobile phone manufacturers in the area of ​​cost-effectiveness, which they were most proud of!
After 12, a large number of big-brand smartphones priced below yuan have emerged.

The performance of these phones priced below 1,000 yuan is of course very poor, but they are cheap, and no matter how poor they are, they are still better than feature phones. At the same time, the workmanship, quality and quality control are also better than those of the generic smartphones produced by copycat manufacturers.

As major mobile phone manufacturers have successively entered the thousand-yuan phone market, they have also forced a large number of copycat phone manufacturers who had just transformed and tried to make smartphones to death.

The copycat smartphones died before they could make any waves, and then a number of copycat phone manufacturers either continued to make feature phones or turned their attention to overseas markets.

Some mobile phone manufacturers even use obsolete parts from a few years ago to make smartphones that only cost a few hundred yuan, and then sell them to backward areas such as Africa!

You know what, this approach actually works and it even sells quite well!

Until one day, the people at Zhiyun Semiconductor were dumbfounded. There were actually mobile phone manufacturers coming to customize ultra-low-priced mobile phone SOCs, and they didn’t want the 28, 32, or even 45 nanometer processes because they thought they were too expensive.

Just use a 7200-nanometer process, and the main frequency should be around -. Yes, it's a chip similar to the A.

However, they still felt that outdated products like 7200A were too expensive and not in line with their company's cost control when they requested a lower price.

This almost broke the defense of Zhiyun Semiconductor, who has been fighting at the forefront of technology and committed to creating top-level chips!
Buddy, did you see the sign ahead clearly?

We are Zhiyun Semiconductor, the largest chip design company in China and a top-ranked chip design company in the world.

It is very normal if you come to us to customize and design various high-end chips.

But now you come to me to customize this backward chip. To be honest, have you come to the wrong place?
Unexpectedly, the man didn't take it seriously and said directly: "Don't you also make a lot of low-end and mid-end functional chips of 65, 90 nanometers or even more than 100 nanometers? Just treat mine as a low-end functional chip!"

Upon hearing this, the experienced sales staff at Zhiyun Semiconductor were all stunned!
After some discussions and consultation with the technical department, Zhiyun Semiconductor finally took the order. It was a good deal. They could just slightly modify the S100 chip and produce it using outdated technology. This would be a good training opportunity for a newly formed chip design team.

Just treat it as a low-end functional chip, and definitely don’t print the Zhiyun Semiconductor logo on it… I can’t afford to lose face.

As a world-class chip design company, they are making a mobile phone SOC that is many years behind the times... I don't know what people will say if this gets out.

The other company was even happier when they heard this, and said, "We'll give you some design fees, and then this thing will be considered as our own research and development, how about that? Just print our company's logo on it."

Haha, we want to be the third mobile phone manufacturer in China with self-developed chips, and then go to Africa to be the king!
(End of this chapter)