Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 265 New Flagship S13 Meeting
With the passing of the spring press conference, Zhiyun Group's various tasks have entered a new round of calm.

But it is only calm on the surface. Many people in the group, and even ordinary people outside, know that Zhiyun Group has begun preparing for the launch of this year's new generation of flagship phones since April.

Since entering April, there have been media reports that Zhiyun Technology's new generation flagship phone has been finalized and preparations for stocking have begun.

The production bases of several major OEM factories have entered the small-scale trial production stage. At the same time, some rumors about the S13 mobile phone have begun to circulate, and even spy photos of the so-called Zhiyun S13 mobile phone have been leaked.

There are some real ones among them, but there are more fake ones.

Many of them are actually information released proactively by Zhiyun Group’s marketing department, some true and some false. They are designed to maintain market heat and let people know from time to time that new Zhiyun phones are about to be launched, while at the same time maintaining the mystery of the new phones to prevent various important information from being leaked, thereby consuming people’s curiosity.

Zhiyun Group’s marketing department is very good at this kind of thing, and has done so almost every year in the past few years.

Promotion for the new phone begins one month or even earlier before the official launch of the new flagship phone.

The actual situation is that it was not until April that Zhiyun's new generation flagship phone was finally finalized, and then some were trial-produced on a small scale in Weiku Industrial for various practical tests, while the final public relations research and development of the production line was also carried out.

The production of each generation of Zhiyun's new flagship phone is actually a very complicated matter, which requires a certain degree of adjustment and modification to the old production line, and a large number of new specialized equipment for production.

Therefore, it is not enough to just develop the S13 phone. WeCool Industrial still needs to carry out the research and development and design of mass production technology for the new phone.

After Weiku Industrial has completed the production line design and perfected the mass production process, it will deliver the corresponding technical information and the large number of ordered equipment to several other cooperating OEM factories and then prepare for mass production.

In mid-April, Xu Shenxue, Ji Chenghe, Gu Zhiming and a number of other senior vice presidents and vice presidents of the group arrived at Building B of the headquarters campus, which is the office building of the mobile phone business department.

Xie Jianyong, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Zhiyun Group, has followed Xu Shenxue in starting a business and led the R&D team to develop the C1 mobile phone, S9 mobile phone and a series of subsequent mobile phone projects.

Wearing a plaid shirt, he introduced Zhiyunji's most important product this year: S13 to a group of core executives in a small conference room.

In front of the small podium in the conference room, Xie Jianyong held an S13 mobile phone in one hand and said to the PPT behind him: "In terms of appearance design, we continue to continue our usual design language and adopt an integrated aluminum alloy body. In order to control costs and also to meet ergonomics, we continue to use the 12-inch screen of the standard version and the -inch screen of the Pro version. However, based on the previous generation S mobile phone, we further reduced the height and width of the body, so that the screen-to-body ratio is further improved!"

"So overall, our new generation of phones looks a little bit smaller than last year's."

"However, the appearance design of our mobile phone is quite different from that of last year. This year, our mobile phone uses 2.5 glass on the screen glass, which gives it a more rounded edge feel and is more conducive to our various gesture operations!"

Xie Jianyong was speaking on the stage, while Xu Shenxue in the audience was holding the S13 mobile phone in his hand and looking at it repeatedly, comparing it with the S13Pro next to him and the S12 mobile phone in front of him from time to time.

In terms of appearance and size alone, there is actually no obvious difference from the previous generation S12 mobile phone.

It's just an additional 2.5 screen glass.

At the same time, because the screen-to-body ratio is higher, the screen seems to appear larger, but in fact this is an illusion, the screen still has the original specifications.

At this time, Xie Jianyong on the stage continued: "For the screen, we have continued to use last year's LCD screen, the size is also 13 inches and inches, but with the improvement of technology, we have done a better job in screen adaptation and optimization. Therefore, although the screen used in this year's S is still last year's screen, the overall color performance is better!"

"Screen suppliers don't need to make too many technical adjustments. They can continue production by simply adjusting the production line, and costs continue to fall!"

"This solution allows us to effectively control screen costs."

Xu Shenxue nodded and said, "Cost control is very important. Last year, we spent a lot of effort and money to produce a large-size LCD high-end retina screen. We can't just use it for one year and then stop using it. We have to use it for two more years to spread the cost."

"I approve of this screen solution!"

Gu Zhiming also said: "The various costs of high-end screens are very expensive, especially the two types of retina LCD screens we use. Not only are the R&D costs expensive, but the production line construction costs are even more expensive. Huaxing Technology has been under great pressure to develop this screen, and it is also very difficult to recover the costs."

"If it is only used for one year and then gone, and there are no other high-end mobile phones on the market that can take over this part of the production capacity, then Huaxing Technology will probably suffer huge losses!"

"Each generation of new screen is used for only one generation of mobile phone. Even we can't stand it!"

"In addition, we have also encountered some problems in the research and development of new screens. Huaxing Technology's research and development progress on the next generation of high-end LCD screens is not very optimistic. According to the research and development schedule they gave me, I am afraid that the main technical problems will not be initially solved until the end of the year. If we take into account the subsequent technical details adjustments, mobile phone adaptation, production line transformation, etc., our new generation of LCD screens will not be seen until next year's flagship phone at the earliest."

Xu Shenxue arrived at this time: "How is the progress of our OLED screen?"

Gu Zhiming said, "Huaxing Technology has already produced the first generation of OLED screens. The performance is actually quite good, roughly on par with the OLEDs that Samsung introduced to the market last year. However, the overall performance still cannot meet the requirements of our S-series mobile phone department."

"Not only does Huaxing Technology's OLED screen fail to meet Zhiyun Group's technical requirements, but in fact, Sixin's OLED screen also fails to meet our technical requirements."

In the past two years, Four Star has actually been trying to sell its OLED screens to Zhiyun and Fruit, but was rejected by both Fruit and Zhiyun.

There is no special reason. On the one hand, it is expensive. On the other hand, compared with LCD screens, it does not have any significant advantages and even has some disadvantages.

OLED screens these days are actually not very mature. No one uses them except the four star brands that forcibly promote OLED screens for their own use.

Therefore, Zhiyun does not use a four-star screen, not because it is afraid of being stuck, or for any other special factors, but simply because it does not like the current OLED screens.

As for bottlenecks or competitor factors, there are actually not many at the moment.

Although Zhiyun Group and Sixin compete fiercely in the mobile phone business as well as memory, flash memory and other businesses, there are also many areas of cooperation between the two parties.

For example, in the screen field, Huaxing Technology has actually reached a cooperation with Sixin. Huaxing Technology acquired a screen factory in China owned by Sixin. At the same time, the other party also took out some of the technologies and patents in the OLED field as technical investment.

The last four stars also hold a portion of Huaxing Technology's shares.

At present, Zhiyun Group holds more than 60% of the shares of CSOT, TCL holds a portion of the shares, LG and Sharp each hold a portion of the shares, and finally Four Star also joined in and holds a portion of the shares.

To put it simply, Huaxing Technology is led by Zhiyun Group, and then various screen manufacturers including Sixin have joined in. It is mainly a cooperative enterprise that provides screens for Zhiyun and Weiku Electronics, and also solves many patent issues.

At the same time, Zhiyun Group has also cooperated with Sixin in the chip field. For example, Sixin's 4G mobile phones that entered the Chinese market last year fully adopted the W500 series chips of Zhiyun Group's semiconductor.

For no other reason than that at present, only Zhiyun Semiconductor can provide a full-network communication base that integrates two 4G networks and three 3G networks.

This type of communication baseband is usually integrated into the SOC chip and sold together. Of course, you can buy it separately, but it will be more expensive.

Therefore, whether it is Snapdragon, some other foreign mobile phone manufacturers, or even domestic mobile phone manufacturers, if they want to make full-network 4G mobile phones for the Chinese market, they can only purchase Zhiyun Semiconductor's W500 series chips.

They have no choice!
Of course, this is only limited to the full network communication baseband.

In fact, quite a number of mobile phone manufacturers and low- and mid-end models, in order to save costs or supply chain security, insist on using other companies' SOCs and other considerations. They will also adopt communication basebands with less complete modes. They do not have to use Zhiyun Group's full-network baseband.

But for high-end models, especially when you need to consider the Chinese market, you can't avoid Zhiyun's full network baseband.

Even a strong company like Apple can only patiently continue negotiations with Zhiyun Group to try to obtain Zhiyun's full-network baseband for use in Apple phones sold in the Chinese market.

But so far, the two parties have not reached an agreement on the price... because Fruit wants to use its own SOC plus Zhiyun full-network baseband solution.

As for Zhiyun, when it comes to exporting, they always sell communication basebands with SOC solutions. Of course, they can also sell single basebands, but the price is very expensive... Anyway, there is currently no single full-network communication baseband. If you want one, you have to pay a very high fee to have Zhiyun make it specifically for you. That price... Tsk tsk, even Qualcomm would give a thumbs up and say: You are even more evil than me!
Naturally, the fruit side was unwilling to accept being severely cut by Zhiyun, so the negotiations between the two sides were somewhat deadlocked and there was no progress for the time being.

Zhiyun is not in a hurry about this, and neither is the fruit industry!
Because Apple's market share in China is very small, and its market share in the high-end field is only a few percent...the number of mobile phones sold by Apple in China is not as many as those sold in the Japanese market.

Since the sales volume of fruit in the Chinese market is relatively low, fruit manufacturers are naturally not in a hurry. If Zhiyun wants to sell it, then sell it. If not, then forget it. Fruit phones using Qualcomm's communication baseband can also be sold in China. The only difference is that they cannot use China Mobile's 4G mode.

So the cooperation negotiations between the two parties were stuck.

For a super-large multinational group like Zhiyun, there is both competition and cooperation with many other multinational companies. The relationship between them is very complex, and with so many businesses, some overlap is inevitable.

Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish between friends and enemies in a one-size-fits-all manner.

The cooperation between Zhiyun Group and Sixing in the field of screens is a typical example of this... The two parties are obviously fighting each other in the fields of smart terminals, memory, and flash memory, but they are cooperating with each other in the field of screens, especially in the field of OLED.

Zhiyun wants Sega's OLED technology, and Sega is also jealous of Zhiyun's share of the high-end screen market for so many high-end mobile phones every year!
However, the current OLED technology is not yet feasible for Zhiyun, so it is impossible to use it in the short term. In the next two to three years, it will most likely continue to use LCD screens.

After all, what Zhiyun Group wants is not a barely usable screen, but a top-level high-end screen. It will only consider using it when it outperforms LCD screens in all aspects, or has other unique advantages.

Until such standards are met, Zhiyun Group would rather use LCD screens with more mature technology and better color performance.

Zhiyun will not do what Sixing did, which was to rush into the market when OLED screens were not yet mature, even two years ago, and then received mixed reviews.

Whether it is the screen or any other spare parts, the Zhiyun S series mobile phones either do not use them or use the best ones.

The world's most advanced mass-produced smartphone is not something that can be achieved by empty words, but relies on Zhiyun's attitude of pursuing the limits of technology.

Similarly, this is also an important reason why many consumers buy Zhiyun phones.

People trust Zhiyun to be able to do the best in this regard.

The S13 mobile phone that Xu Shenxue is holding in his hand is also a product of this design concept, and all the components used are currently the best.

It's not just the most advanced, but also mature and usable, with no half-baked stuff like OLED screens.

At this time, Xie Jianyong on the small podium continued to introduce other aspects of the S13 mobile phone, including the S403 chip and the more advanced B42 communication baseband built into the chip that supports more frequencies.

Then there are the new generation of LPDDR3 memory, 3D NAND flash memory and other core components.

However, these things are not enough to make the S13 phone popular enough. In order to further enhance the unique selling point of its own mobile phone, this year's Zhiyun S13 mobile phone, in addition to using the same 2.5D screen glass as Apple, also has an innovation that is no longer original, that is, dual cameras!
In fact, HTZ has already launched a mobile phone with dual cameras and 3D shooting function to the market a few years ago, but it did not cause any market response.

This year, Zhiyun plans to introduce dual-camera mode on its flagship phone. However, unlike the weird 3D shooting that other mobile phone manufacturers are focusing on, Zhiyun's dual camera is still mainly focused on taking better photos and videos.

Xu Shenxue has already anticipated the dual-camera trend that will be set off after this phone is launched on the market. No matter what people’s attitude towards dual cameras was before, after the S13 phone is released, current smartphones will officially enter the dual-camera era!
Zhiyun Technology's S series mobile phones have the brand appeal to set off a technological trend and even the appearance of mobile phones!
Just like the previous fingerprint recognition, aluminum alloy body, three-button interaction mode, gesture operation and so on.

Before Zhiyun did these things, other mobile phone manufacturers had actually done these things, but none of them formed a trend that affected the entire mobile phone industry.

Speaking of aluminum alloy body, Apple had already made it when it first produced the iPhone X, but no one followed suit and even Apple stopped making it.

The time when real aluminum alloy bodies became popular and became a symbol of high-end mobile phones was after the Zhiyun S9 mobile phone was launched on the market. At the same time, multiple generations of Zhiyun S series mobile phones have unswervingly used aluminum alloy bodies, from three-section aluminum alloy bodies to integrated aluminum alloy bodies.

As a result, aluminum alloy body has become a symbol of high-end mobile phones.

This concept was further strengthened when Apple also joined the camp of integrated aluminum alloy bodies.

The same is true for fingerprint recognition. Nowadays, fingerprint recognition is the symbol of high-end mobile phones. Zhiyun's high-end mobile phones and Fruit's new mobile phones all have fingerprint recognition.

The reason why the Galaxy series of Samsung has been slow to enter the high-end market is actually related to the fact that they do not have fingerprint recognition technology and aluminum alloy body.

Don’t tell me whether the integrated aluminum alloy body is good or not, or whether the fingerprint sensor is easy to use or not, but if you don’t have it, it won’t work.

So the four-star Galaxy 4 launched in the market in March this year is good in all aspects, especially the five-inch OLED screen, which has a PPI of over . This resolution alone should be the most powerful among all mobile phone screens currently available.

However, it still uses a plastic body and does not have fingerprint recognition, so the feedback from the outside world is: it is very average!
Especially in the Chinese market, it did not attract any attention at all, and many people did not even think that the four-star Galaxy 4 was a high-end phone.

But what can Four Star do? They have no other options… It’s easy to say that an aluminum alloy body is easy to make, but it’s expensive and difficult to process, and it also involves the material field.

Both Zhiyun and Fruit keep the relevant technologies, especially materials, strictly secret and do not provide them to the outside world.

Not to mention fingerprints. The world's most technologically advanced fingerprint technology solution company was acquired by Zhiyun early on, and the world's second most powerful fingerprint technology company was acquired by Apple a few years ago.

The third one is Qianding Technology... A large number of mobile phone manufacturers have high hopes for it, and they hope that they can come up with fingerprint recognition technology as soon as possible. However, Qianding Technology has not yet figured it out, and the optimistic estimate is that it will take until next year.

As for the future... they are all second- and third-rate fingerprint technology manufacturers, so don't expect them to come up with any technical solutions now.

So even this year, except for Zhiyun and Fruit, other four-star and other mobile phone manufacturers can only look forward to fingerprint recognition!

It's completely useless.

This has also seriously affected their approach to the high-end market.

How dare you call your phone a high-end one when it doesn’t even have a fingerprint scanner?
Do you really think consumers are stupid?

From the metal body to the fingerprint recognition, it fully demonstrates the powerful role of the Zhiyun S series mobile phones in driving trends.

No matter whether it is good or not, useful or not, but since Zhiyun has used it, a lot of manufacturers will follow suit. Even if they can't copy it overseas, they have to copy it in the same way.

This is also the reason why in the past two years, many mobile phones do not have fingerprint technology, but have a Home button of various shapes on the chin of the phone.

Just to make it look similar to Zhiyun's phones and Fruit phones.

However, the plagiarism of these mobile phone manufacturers is fine if it is just a small matter, but once the sales volume increases, they will soon face lawsuits from Zhiyun and Fruit...

Four Star suffered a great loss in this regard before, and finally paid hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. It also exchanged many patents with Zhiyun, which solved this big problem.

This year, Zhiyun is going to launch a dual-camera mobile phone. If nothing unexpected happens, by the second half of this year and next year, there will definitely be a lot of mobile phones that will also have dual cameras.

But it is impossible to be as good as Zhiyun.

Zhiyun Technology's dual cameras are designed to increase the number of pixels, control depth of field, wide field of view, and night scene mode. In order to achieve these, in addition to the hardware configuration of the dual cameras, chips are actually needed to cooperate.

Because when a smartphone takes photos, it needs the chip to provide computing power, so that it can quickly capture and synthesize an excellent photo.

This is related to the computing power that the SOC can provide.

Zhiyun has always been ahead of other manufacturers in this regard. It has long developed its own ISP module and subsequently integrated it into the SOC.

At the same time, corresponding better algorithm support is also needed to bring out the hardware performance of the dual camera.

If there is no corresponding high-performance ISP module and no corresponding excellent algorithm, simply putting two rear cameras on is actually of no use.

Although the technical difficulty is not too high, it is not small either.

Other mobile phone manufacturers can do it, but it is not easy to do it well!

----

After an internal high-level discussion meeting on the S13 mobile phone, Zhiyun Group began to fully promote the mass production and early marketing of the S13 mobile phone.

Most of the departments and subsidiaries of the group have participated!

Zhiyun Group's S series mobile phones are super-best-selling products with annual shipments of over 160 million units. Due to their large sales and production volume, the entire production process is actually very complicated and difficult.

It requires the joint efforts of Zhiyun Group and its hundreds of supply chain companies to produce tens of millions of mobile phones in a short period of time for the initial sales frenzy after the launch.

It's not just the companies themselves, but also other industries that are involved in the production, stocking and sales of Zhiyun Group's new flagship products.

For example, electricity supply, smooth traffic, and priority supply of various raw materials and spare parts!
This is not something that can be accomplished by a single company alone; it requires the support of the entire massive industrial system that builds up the consumer electronics supply chain and the semiconductor supply chain!
Only in this way can we complete large-scale mass production in a short period of time and quickly supply the global market!
What can achieve this is not Zhiyun Group itself, but China's huge industrial system!
In any other country, even if there is a company like Zhiyun with advanced technology and more money than can be spent, it will not be able to establish such a comprehensive, large and complex industrial supply chain.

This is also the reason why a large number of giant companies in the electronic consumer industry chain, such as Zhiyun, Fruit, and Sixing, have almost all established production bases in China.

Today, Zhiyun Group has once again utilized this huge industrial system for the mass production and subsequent launch of its new generation of flagship phones.

----

In mid-April, Xu Shenxue arrived in Tongcheng on a special plane to inspect the headquarters production base of Zhiyun Microelectronics, which is also one of the most important 28-nanometer logic chip production bases in Zhiyun Group.

The S403 chip, as the core brain of the S13 mobile phone, is of unquestionable importance. Therefore, when Xu Shenxue started to inspect a series of preparatory work for S13, his first stop was to visit the Zhiyun Microelectronics headquarters production base in Tongcheng to inspect the production of the S403 chip.

At the headquarters of Zhiyun Microelectronics, Xu Shenxue met a series of senior executives of Zhiyun Microelectronics, and then listened to the report of Zhiyun Microelectronics CEO Ding Chengjun.

"We have already started the production of S400 series chips at Plant and Plant in our headquarters production base."

"The production capacity of S403 chips is currently increasing. It is expected that by May, the production capacity will reach million pieces per month to meet production needs."

"In the production of the S400 series chips, we use our latest -nanometer process technology. The overall technical level is no worse than that of TSMC or Four Star. In terms of yield, we have also improved the process many times. At present, the yield has been raised to the world-class level!"

"Currently, the revenue generated by the 28-nanometer process has accounted for 30% of our Zhiyun Microelectronics' total revenue, which is a significant increase compared to last year when the 28-nanometer process was first introduced!"

Zhiyun Microelectronics naturally does not only produce the S400 series chips, but also produces a large number of other chips, including a series of advanced SOC chips with -nanometer process, AI chips, CPU chips, graphics card chips, etc.

At the same time, it continues to use the 500-nanometer and 400-nanometer processes to produce some outdated chips, such as the improved W300 and W200, and even the more outdated W100, W, and W series chips that are still being sold.

At the same time, it is also producing a series of various chips for domestic chip design companies such as HiSilicon.

Finally, there are a large number of functional chips with outdated processes, etc.

As a professional large-scale integrated chip foundry, as long as there are orders and spare production capacity, they can basically do anything, from logic chips to memory, flash memory, functional chips and so on.

A considerable portion of the revenue actually comes from the 32nm and 45nm processes, as well as the 30nm process in the memory field.

It doesn't mean that with the 28-nanometer logic chip process, other backward processes are useless.

Not to mention the processes of dozens of nanometers, Zhiyun Microelectronics continues to do foundry business for processes of 130 nanometers, 150 nanometers, or 180 nanometers, and it is also quite profitable.

Xu Shenxue walked and looked around, occasionally stopping to listen to Ding Chengjun, and then talking to other executives nearby.

After a brief inspection, he asked about the research and development progress of advanced process technology as usual.

Professor Liang Song gave Xu Shenxue a more optimistic answer. They expect to complete the basic research and development of the 22nm FinFET process by the end of this year, but it will take several months. However, it will not affect the production of the group's next-generation flagship chip next year.

After hearing this, Xu Shenxue was quite satisfied. Although Intel had already developed the 22nm FinFET process and used it on their flagship chips, other manufacturers, especially major foundries for mobile phone SOC chips such as TSMC and Samsung, have not followed up yet.

If Zhiyun Microelectronics can complete it on time next year and produce mobile phone SOC using 22nm FinFET process, then the performance will be sufficient.

Then he asked about the technological progress of the 15-nanometer process. In this regard, Liang Song said that great technological progress has been made and a breakthrough is expected in the year after next, that is, in .

After learning in detail about the S400 series chips and Zhiyun Microelectronics' process research and development, Xu Shenxue left Tongcheng on a special plane with a satisfied expression, and then went to several other major cities for inspection.

The S13 mobile phone is about to be mass-produced and ready for stocking, and there is still a lot of work for Xu Shenxue to do!

If you want to hold a shocking press conference in June and achieve huge sales that shock the world after the press conference, this requires long and complicated preparations!

Success is never that easy!
A new month has arrived...If you have a guaranteed monthly ticket, you can vote for it.

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(End of this chapter)