Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 268 Xu Shenxue Playing with the Industrial Chain
After returning from the headquarters of Weiku Industrial, Xu Shenxue temporarily shifted his attention away from the S13 mobile phone and turned to other directions.

In the past month, Xu Shenxue has been busy with the mass production of the S13 mobile phone. He held various meetings for coordination, visited the main production bases to check the production of core components, and finally visited the trial production of the production line at Weiku Industrial.

After going through a circle, the mass production of the S13 mobile phone is progressing steadily without any major problems.

If nothing unexpected happens, by the time the flagship phone launch conference for the new year is held in late June, a large number of pre-stocked S13s will be shipped to sales channels around the world, and then put on the global market for sale to cope with the global buying frenzy.

The total pre-production stock of at least 30 million in May and June is barely enough to cope with the early buying frenzy. As for whether it is still not enough, there is nothing that can be done.

After finalizing all the work on the S13 phone, Xu Shenxue came to the headquarters park to inspect several other important products, including the Bluetooth headset that will be released together with the S13 phone at the summer conference in June: Zhiyun wireless headset, whose English name is YunBuds.

In the acoustic business department of Zhiyun Group, Xu Shenxue saw the Zhiyun wireless headphones that had been fully perfected and were already being secretly produced in a foundry.

It has a very small white body, which is actually also the battery compartment. It houses a lithium battery that can be used to charge two small Bluetooth earphones through a magnetic connection.

After Xu Shenxue picked it up, he directly used his mobile phone to connect it. After the connection was successful, he picked up the headphones and put them on, then opened the music software to listen to music.

After listening for a while, he took off the headphones and said, "It feels very good. It is very comfortable to wear. It is more comfortable than last year's prototype. The sound quality is also good. It feels similar to the current wired headphones. However, I am not a professional, so I may not be able to hear the details!"

“But as an industrial product for the general public, it is already very perfect. I am looking forward to its sales performance after it is launched on the market!”

Ji Chenghe said: "This Bluetooth headset is really good and has great innovative significance. There has never been such a Bluetooth headset on the market before, which can give us a great advantage in publicity."

"According to our marketing department's estimates, due to the unique innovation of this product, coupled with our brand appeal and our ecological appeal, the annual sales volume in the global market is expected to reach 10 million units, contributing more than US$1.5 billion in revenue to us."

After hearing this, Xu Shenxue shook his head slightly and said, "This number can be raised further. The sales volume in the next year is expected to reach more than 15 million units. And with the continuous release of products and feedback from users, this sales volume will continue to grow. In two years, it may even reach 30 to 40 million units."

I and other senior executives in the group had a certain degree of underestimation of the Bluetooth headset project. I believed that even if this product could be successful, it would only generate revenue of around US$10.

However, Xu Shenxue believes that this product can be the main product that can achieve revenue of 5 billion US dollars or even more.

In Xu Shenxue's mind, the future potential of Bluetooth headsets even exceeds that of smart watches, which have limited development potential.

The Bluetooth headset project will be able to grow into a major product like mobile phones, ultra-thin business notebooks, tablets, and smart watches in the future.

Although the revenue and profit it brings are far less than those of mobile phone products, they are not much worse.

A product with billions of dollars in revenue is worthy of Xu Shenxue's attention even in Zhiyun Group.

This is Xu Shenxue's opinion. As for Ji Chenghe and his team, they are limited by existing concepts and are more conservative in their estimates, estimating that the revenue in the first year will be approximately US$1.5 billion.

But even with their conservative estimate of $1.5 billion in revenue, it's still not easy.

Zhiyun Group has a large number of smart terminal products and spare parts, but there are not many products that can generate revenue of more than one billion US dollars.

The main revenue of Zhiyun Group's smart terminal business is still supported by the mobile phone business, supplemented by three major product categories: notebooks, tablets, and smart watches.

The sales of some other smart terminal businesses are actually not very good and the profits are also average.

It is quite rare to be able to create a product with annual revenue of US$1.5 billion and a good profit margin.

It is worthy of the attention of senior group officials like Ji Chenghe, who should personally take charge of the marketing work.

However, Xu Shenxue took it more seriously!
Xu Shenxue said to a group of slightly surprised executives: "You can't treat our headphones as ordinary headphones or Bluetooth headphones. You need to have a higher level of vision and a longer-term perspective!"

"In addition to its unique innovative features, our headphones are also an extension of our smart terminal product matrix. They are the best headphones to pair with our mobile phones, tablets, and notebooks."

"Especially when our mobile phone is paired with this headset, the ecological experience it obtains is beyond compare!"

"In the simplest scenario, when a person is sitting at a desk working or entertaining, and using wired headphones to connect to a mobile phone or computer, when he wants to get up and do something, he must first take off the headphones, or take away the mobile phone or laptop connected to the headphones... No one thinks there is anything wrong with this model at the moment, because it is what it is."

"However, if you use our Zhiyun headphones, you can save the above extra steps and just stand up and do whatever you want. There will be no wire restricting you and you don't need to take off the wired headphones first."

At this time, Gu Zhiming on the side also seemed to have realized something: "Human nature is lazy. Any step that can be omitted is a good thing. Once you get used to it, you can't go back. Just like our fingerprint recognition technology, it only omits a step of entering the screen password, but it has become the core reason for many people to buy our mobile phones!"

Xu Shenxue said: "Yes, that's what I mean. You can also experience it yourself. When you use Bluetooth headphones, you will find wired headphones inconvenient in various ways."

At this time, Sun Yitong, executive president of Zhiyun Group's acoustic business unit, also introduced: "In addition to these unique ecosystems and user experiences, our Bluetooth headsets are also ahead of their time in hardware and are capable of creating a market wave!"

"The sound quality of our Zhiyun headphones is basically comparable to that of wired headphones that cost a few hundred yuan... At the same time, the size and wearing comfort of the headphones are both optimized to meet the needs of most people, and most people can get a very good sound quality experience when wearing them."

As she spoke, Sun Yitong also sighed: "This is not easy, because different people around the world, men and women, young people and other factors, lead to different sizes of people's ear canals."

“When we were developing the car, we referred to samples from a large number of different groups around the world and conducted repeated tests before we finally decided on the most suitable appearance.”

"We have done everything to the extreme, enough to make other manufacturers despair, and thus bring a groundbreaking user experience!"

When saying this, Sun Yitong was full of pride.

Why is it possible to achieve such an extreme?
Because there is no other manufacturer in the world, even those professional audio product manufacturers can spend such huge manpower and material resources like Zhiyun, just to develop a pair of headphones.

To be frank, the market capitalization of most of the so-called professional headphone manufacturers today is even less than the R&D funding of Zhiyun headphones... What can they compare with Zhiyun?
Acoustics is a serious scientific discipline. When developing headphones, Zhiyun's engineers did not rely on experience, but on various acoustics, ergonomics and other technologies, which all require a lot of scientific research funds.

At the same time, Zhiyun Bluetooth headphones also have an exclusive Bluetooth 4.5 protocol, which greatly increases the transmission speed of audio data.

Data transmission speed is the most important indicator for wireless headphones using Bluetooth or other protocols.

No other acoustic component manufacturer would develop a completely new communication protocol just for a Bluetooth headset... nor does it have the technical capabilities.

But Zhiyun will do this and has the ability to do so.

This is also the reason why many of Zhiyun’s products can achieve such extreme performance.

It’s simple, they have a lot of money... and are willing to spend it on research and development.

As a senior technical R&D manager of Zhiyun Group, Sun Yitong is naturally deeply influenced by the ethos of Zhiyun Group and pursues perfection in everything he does.

This mentality of pursuing perfection also made him spend several years to finally create the Zhiyun Bluetooth headset, a groundbreaking product.

Eventually, he was promoted directly from a senior project director to the executive vice president of the business unit.

After the Bluetooth headset project team produced results last year, in order to better carry out subsequent development and coordinate with other departments, Xu Shenxue personally arranged to merge the original wired headset project and the new Bluetooth headset project to form the Acoustic Business Unit. Sun Yitong jumped one level to become the executive president of the Acoustic Business Unit.

This person is already a senior manager under the management structure of Zhiyun Group.

In the management structure of Zhiyun Group, the highest level is naturally Xu Shenxue, the chairman and president. The second level is the senior vice president in charge of a business group or other core affairs, such as Ji Chenghe who is in charge of marketing and other work, and Gu Zhiming who is in charge of the supply chain. In addition, there are the chief financial officer, chief legal officer, and chief technology officer.

The third level is the group vice president, who is specifically responsible for an important business within the group, an important subsidiary, etc. For example, Fu Zhengyang, general manager of Zhiyun Semiconductor Co., Ltd., is also the group vice president; the same situation is Ding Chengjun, general manager of Zhiyun Microelectronics Co., Ltd., who is also the vice president of Zhiyun Group.

The third level is the executive vice president of the group, who is the person in charge of a regular business within the group headquarters or the person in charge of a regular subsidiary, etc. Sun Yitong belongs to this category. He is the executive president of the acoustic business unit within the group headquarters.

The above three types of vice presidents are actually all under the direct management of Xu Shenxue and are all part of the group's senior management sequence.

Below that are the middle-level management levels, such as managers in various departments, general managers of ordinary subsidiaries, and senior project directors in some R&D departments.

There are also lower-level ordinary project directors, product managers, and so on. Although the titles may be different, the levels are similar.

However, there are too many subsidiaries and grandson companies in Zhiyun Group, with hundreds of thousands of employees, so those who can reach the middle level are actually elite talents.

Many managers in small departments or small subsidiaries are not even considered middle-level managers of the company... they can only be considered low-level managers.

Sun Yitong was promoted directly from a senior project director to executive vice president of a business unit, which is already a good progress.

This means that he can solely control the direction of an entire business unit and report directly to Xu Shenxue. Of course, his income and various welfare benefits are also excellent.

For example, the kind that comes with a luxury car and a driver.

You can travel in first class, and if the group's business jet is idle, you can occasionally take the group's own business jet.

In terms of accommodation, if there is no housing at the group headquarters, the group can directly provide him with a large flat or villa to use as a dormitory. Although he does not have ownership, he can live there at will.

All of the above are just the most basic and even unimportant benefits. The most important thing is the high salary and options.

Taking both calculations into account, if the combined annual income is less than 10 million, then this person should worry about losing his job... because it means that this person's work ability is not good enough and he cannot complete the assigned work tasks, resulting in a large number of options not being obtained.

Zhiyun Group generally adopts a regular salary plus incentive options approach for core technical personnel and management... The more you get, the happier the group's top management, especially Xu Shenxue, will be, because it means that you have completed or even exceeded the work task goals and created higher revenue and profits for the group.

If you take less, sorry, you are not suitable for our group...get out!

Therefore, the senior managers and core technical personnel in Zhiyun Group generally have very high incomes... because those with low incomes have been fired.

On the one hand, Sun Yitong was excited and satisfied to be the executive vice president of the group, but on the other hand, he also felt great pressure. He did not want to be demoted or even fired because of his poor work ability not long after becoming the executive vice president.

Therefore, among all the people present, he was the one who paid the most attention to Bluetooth headset products, and was also the most worried.

So today, when Xu Shenxue came to see the Bluetooth headset, he tried his best to explain to Xu Shenxue and other group executives such as Ji Chenghe the various advantages and prospects of Bluetooth headsets, trying to gain more group resources, especially early publicity and promotion resources.

Although Zhiyun Group is large and powerful, its resources are not unlimited. There are so many projects in the group. If you need to carry out large-scale publicity and promotion for your Bluetooth headset project, the publicity and promotion resources for other projects will be reduced accordingly.

Except for core projects of the group such as mobile phones, which never have to worry about these things, other smart terminal projects need to worry about this issue.

But he can only influence part of it as much as possible, and the final decision has nothing to do with him.

Issues concerning the group's overall development strategy have always been decided by Xu Shenxue after consultation with several senior vice presidents of the group, and some core projects are decided solely by Xu Shenxue.

Xu Shenxue's attitude towards the Bluetooth headset project is that he instructed Ji Chenghe to do a more solid job in the publicity and promotion of the Bluetooth headset project, and try to sell 10 million Bluetooth headsets this year, and double it to 20 million next year.

We should treat this project as the next major project of the group.

Hearing what Xu Shenxue said, Sun Yitong breathed a sigh of relief. Since President Xu had spoken personally, it would be of great benefit to their Bluetooth headset project in the future.

At least there is no need to worry about the early promotion and marketing. As for how many can be sold in the end, it depends on the performance and quality of the Bluetooth headset itself.

But Sun Yitong is confident that their Bluetooth headset is definitely not a hopeless product. As long as it is given certain publicity and promotion resources, it will become an important product that changes people's daily lives.

After looking at the Bluetooth headset project, Xu Shenxue came to the mobile phone business department again. This time he was not looking at the S13 mobile phone that had entered the mass production process, but the A13 mobile phone that was still in the research and development and testing stage.

In Zhiyun Group's mobile phone research and development, among the three major series, the S series is the most valued, and all human and material resources are prioritized to meet the research and development of the S series mobile phones.

Relatively speaking, the resources available to the A series and C series are much less.

This can be seen from the fact that the number of R&D staff in the A series mobile phone project team is only one-sixth of that in the S series mobile phones.

However, whether it is the A series mobile phones or the C series mobile phones, they are actually products that make extensive use of the existing technologies of the S series mobile phones, and they do not require so many R&D employees in various basic fields.

After arriving at the A series mobile phone project team, Xie Jianyong, the head of this business unit, introduced the prototype of the A13 mobile phone to Xu Shenxue.

"We have continued to use the glass back cover design for the body, but the glass material has been improved, and the performance in terms of drop resistance has been improved to a certain extent!"

"In terms of size, in addition to the 13-inch solution, we also adopted a -inch retina display and launched the A Pro version."

"Continue to implement our dual high-end series strategy!"

"The SOC uses the S402 chip, which has the same design specifications as the S403 chip and a main frequency of GHz."

At this time, Fu Zhengyang, general manager of Zhiyun Semiconductor, who accompanied us to see the products, said: "We continue to use the strategy of the S300 series chips and W500 series chips. We test the performance of the produced chips and then distinguish them. We lock the frequency of defective products and shield the core to distinguish the models."

In the process of chip production, it is impossible to say that every chip can fully meet the design standards. There will always be some chips that have some deviations in the production process, resulting in performance not meeting the design indicators. The most common is that the main frequency does not meet the design requirements.

However, these inferior chips cannot be thrown away directly, and chip manufacturers often lock the frequency of these chips for use.

For example, the S400 series chip, the full-blooded version is S403, and all indicators meet the design requirements.

If some functional cores or communication baseband parts are not working well, but the CPU and GPU are normal, some functional cores will be blocked and then made into S404 and used as tablet SOC.

There are also some cases where the function core is normal but the CPU is not working well. The CPU is locked to 1.6GHZ and used as the SOC of the A13 mobile phone.

There is also a part that is even worse, where the CPU is locked to 1.3GHZ, and two cores of the GPU are blocked, and it is used as a C series mobile phone SOC.

According to common sense, the shipment volume of low-end chips is larger, and it is difficult to rely on defective high-end chips to meet the demand... If there are too many defective products, it will be very uneconomical. In fact, cooperative products are the most in the normal chip production process.

However, the situation of Zhiyun Group is somewhat special. Among Zhiyun's own mobile phones, the high-end S series sells the most, with annual sales exceeding 150 million units last year. Relatively speaking, the slightly inferior A series only sold more than 30 million units.

The lower-end C series only has 60 million units.

Therefore, it is entirely possible to produce the same chip to meet the demand for a large number of high-end chips, while using some defective products to meet the chip needs of the other two series of mobile phones and tablets.

By the same token, the W600 series chips for export launched on the market this year actually follow the same path, and are divided into high-end and mid-range models based on the degree of defective products.

As for the lower-end, there are no new products, only the old W500 series and W400 series.

The market for these two export chips is quite good at present, especially the W500 chip, which has very large sales so far.

The life cycle of these exported chips is still long. It does not mean that these chips will lose the market directly if high-end mobile phones no longer use them.

High-end chips will gradually become popular, from high-end mobile phones, to mid-range mobile phones, and then to low-end mobile phones.

What the market demands is precisely this kind of mid-to-low-end, seemingly slightly backward chip. The W500 series quad-core chip of Zhiyun Group is the star product of Zhiyun Semiconductor, with huge sales. In addition, a large number of mid-range mobile phones released this year are also going to be equipped with this chip.

The total output of this chip has exceeded that of Zhiyun's own S300 series chips, bringing Zhiyun Semiconductor very considerable revenue and profits.

At the same time, Zhiyun Semiconductor's W series chips have also become a well-known mobile phone SOC brand for many technology enthusiasts and ordinary mobile phone users.

At least in China, Zhiyun Semiconductor's W series chips have surpassed Qualcomm's Snapdragon series chips in popularity.

Due to the limitations of the communication baseband and price advantages, more than 4% of the large number of high-end Android 500G mobile phones newly launched in China from last year to now are equipped with high-end chips from the Zhiyun W series.

However, overseas, the situation is reversed, and Qualcomm beats Zhiyun Semiconductor's W series chips.

In the field of third-party mobile phone SOC chips, Qualcomm is still the undisputed leader, Zhiyun Semiconductor can only be regarded as second, and there is the newly developed MediaTek. As for other companies such as Texas Instruments and Nvidia, they are almost dead now.

Because third-party SOC manufacturers who do not have their own communication baseband have no future.

----

Xu Shenxue took a quick look at the A13 phone in his hand, and picked up both the standard version and the Pro version to have a look. In terms of size, it appears thicker and slightly larger because of the glass back cover.

However, it does not use the 13 screen glass solution like the S2.5 phone, but a conventional narrow-border solution.

In other aspects, there is not much difference from the S13 mobile phone. It is the same as the S13 mobile phone, and also uses a -bit operating system. However, in order to control costs, the memory, flash memory and some other components are slightly worse. However, they are all high-end products, not the mid-to-low-end products like the C series.

Xie Jianyong said: "This year, our A13 mobile phone will continue to move towards the high-end and build the group's dual high-end strategy!"

Xu Shenxue said: "Last year's dual high-end strategy of the A12 mobile phone was barely successful overall. The sales of more than million units have met expectations. This year we must work harder and strive to achieve sales of million units!"

Even if the A series of mobile phones implement the so-called dual high-end strategy, for the purpose of protecting the sales and brand of the S series of mobile phones, Zhiyun Group cannot really let the A series of mobile phones impact the market positioning of the S series of mobile phones.

Its competitors should not be the Zhiyun S series mobile phones, but the Fruit phones, the four-star Galaxy series, and some other so-called flagship phones.

Zhiyun S series mobile phones should be unique.

In addition to the market positioning issue, the A series of mobile phones, due to their unique glass back cover body design, can also provide potential users of Zhiyun mobile phones with more high-end phone candidates.

After all, not everyone likes the integrated aluminum alloy body. Some people think that the Zhiyun S series mobile phones are not good-looking, or the models are poor... With an aluminum alloy body, no matter how good the design is, there will inevitably be some problems with poor signals.

The A series phones use a glass back cover, so there is no such problem of poor signal.

Moreover, the A series phones with glass back covers are considered by many to be more beautiful.

Everyone has their own preferences.

This is also the core factor for the A series of mobile phones to insist on using glass back cover bodies. They want this kind of differentiated advantage... Otherwise, they would have been drowned by Apple and Zhiyun's own S series mobile phones.

After seeing the A13 phone, I also took a look at this year’s new models of the C series phones, namely the C6 series.

This series of mobile phones has actually become a relatively independent business unit within Zhiyun Group, and has gradually used "Zhi C" as its name in some promotional terms. Zhiyun Group has also registered the Zhi C brand trademark on a global scale.

The C series of mobile phones are continuing to be deeply separated from Zhiyun's high-end models to a certain extent and are developing towards an independent brand.

As for this year's C6 mobile phone, Xu Shenxue took a quick look and found that it was average in other aspects and nothing new... It was just an ordinary mid-range mobile phone.

Apart from the Zhiyun LOGO and Yun OS system, it basically has no unique advantages compared to some competing products.

Of course, it’s not completely impossible. In fact, this year’s C series mobile phones have one biggest advantage, which is that the entire series uses fingerprint recognition technology.

Last year, only the C5 pro used fingerprint recognition technology.

As the cost of fingerprint recognition technology continues to drop, especially the production cost of the older generation of fingerprint recognition has dropped significantly, fingerprint recognition products have become feasible for use in mid-range mobile phones.

More importantly, Apple also used fingerprint recognition technology last year, and fingerprint recognition technology is no longer Zhiyun's exclusive technology.

In order to further seize the market and stimulate sales of mid-range mobile phones, the top management of Zhiyun Group decided to apply fingerprint recognition technology to the C series mobile phones.

The fingerprint layout is still the traditional layout at the front chin position, with a flat round button structure... This is the iconic front shape of the Zhiyun phone.

In fact, it is not only the Zhiyun C series phones that will use fingerprint recognition technology this year. The new generation of Xiaolan MAX from Vicoo Electronics and the new generation of Vicoo K Pro with a different shell, which are Vicoo Electronics' high-end flagship phones and target the 3,000 yuan market, will also use fingerprint recognition technology.

However, in order to control costs, they used the same fingerprint recognition technology as the C6 series, and its hardware configuration belonged to the first generation of products, which was the product used in the S10 mobile phone that year.

However, the software algorithm is still the latest, and the overall performance is still better than the fingerprint recognition technology on the S10 phone.

"With this fingerprint recognition technology, when we launch the C6 series of mobile phones this fall, we will gain a huge leading advantage in the mid-range market!"

“It’s hard to say about other markets, but in the domestic market, we have great confidence in increasing the sales of the C6 series by about %!”

Xu Shenxue said: "Work hard and do well. I look forward to your good news!"

Xu Shenxue basically doesn't care much about the C series phones that are sold in large quantities to make money. He only pays attention to sales and revenue reports, and is too lazy to pay attention to the specific details...

Not to mention the C series, Xu Shenxue didn't pay much attention to the A series.

In the field of mobile phones, Xu Shenxue has always focused on the S series, which is the core revenue pillar of Zhiyun Group and the core product representing the entire group.

Moreover, they can come up with some cool technology from time to time. Regardless of how consumers feel about it, it feels good to watch it yourself.

As for other mobile phone products, to be honest, they are just so-so and don’t arouse much interest.

On the contrary, two days later, Xu Shenxue went to the next door Weiku Electronics and saw the new generation of Xiaolan MAX mobile phone, which was more interesting. The overall design of the phone felt good, and it also had a dual camera... This is a determination to copy its big brother.

What surprised Xu Shenxue even more was that they were currently developing the next-generation mobile phone, the Bluegogo MAX, which is expected to be released next year.

Bai Qiwen showed Xu Shenxue the phone like he was showing off a new toy: "We are trying to put the fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone."

"If the fingerprint button is placed on the back, the chin area on the front will not need to be that large, and the capacitive touch button can even be eliminated, which is exactly what we did!"

"We directly removed the capacitive touch buttons at the chin position to compress the space. At the same time, for coordination, we also compressed the space above the screen."

"In this way, the screen-to-body ratio of the entire mobile phone is greatly improved."

"If you use a mobile phone, you can use virtual buttons or gestures directly!"

While listening, Xu Shenxue looked at the 3D concept design drawing on the computer.

The design drawings of this phone look a little different from some full-screen phones of later generations... It's not a hole-punch screen, nor a notch screen, but just an ordinary screen, so some space needs to be left above the screen to place the camera, ambient light sensor, and speaker.

In order to achieve overall symmetry and beauty, the bottom of the screen is not directly built into the frame, and a small space is left.

But even so, it looks pretty good, with a very large screen-to-body ratio, which gives people a very amazing feeling.

Although it was just a design drawing, Xu Shenxue said, "This design is quite interesting. You guys should go and study it in depth and see if you can make a prototype for me to see."

Zhiyun Group actually has a similar back-mounted fingerprint sensor design, but it has not been put into action... because it is impossible for a Zhiyun phone to have fingerprint recognition on the back!

This is not a question of whether it is good or not, but a question of brand awareness!

The flat round fingerprint button on the front chin and the white cloud logo on the back are the two major symbols of Zhiyun phones.

Since the S10 mobile phone was launched on the market, these two points have not changed, no matter what series of Zhiyun mobile phones it is or how the appearance changes. Even when the previous C series mobile phones were not equipped with fingerprint recognition technology, they still used oblate touch physical buttons... just to conform to this brand awareness.

If Zhiyun removes the oval fingerprint button on the front and adds a fingerprint button on the back, many people will ask themselves a soul-searching question: Is this still a Zhiyun phone?

This will cause cognitive confusion, and for top brands like Zhiyun, it will damage its brand image.

It is very difficult to change the general perception of the general public. Only epoch-making, top-level innovative products can make users accept this change in general perception, such as 3D face recognition technology and under-screen fingerprint technology.

But unfortunately, Zhiyun hasn’t figured out these two things yet!

Before one of these two technologies emerges, Zhiyun Mobile will stick to the flat circular fingerprint button on the front chin and will never change it!

But there are not so many restrictions on Weiku Electronics, because they don’t have any brand value... They are just a mid-to-low-end mobile phone brand, and they haven’t formed any consistent perceptions. If there is any, it is the brand image of "mid-to-low-end" and "Zhiyun's younger brother".

There is no design burden and you can try all kinds of random designs. Last year, Wecoo Electronics even tried to launch a flip-cover smartphone, trying to go for a retro style...but the result was not very good.

Xu Shenxue thinks the current design of this mobile phone is pretty good. If it can be successfully launched next year, it may bring the brand value and sales of the Xiaolan MAX mobile phone to a higher level.

Apart from this design that caught Xu Shenxue's eye, some other smart terminals of Weiku Electronics, whether mobile phones, notebooks, tablets, smart watches, etc., are not very innovative. There may be some changes in appearance, but in essence they are still simplified and low-profile versions of Zhiyun mobile phones.

Weiku Electronics' products have a very big and very important feature, that is, their products are all made using the mature supply chain system established by Zhiyun, and use a large number of various spare parts with mature technologies, taking the mid-to-low-end cost-effective route.

It is a pure mobile phone assembly manufacturer. It is an exaggeration to call it an assembly plant because it does not even have its own factory.

To put it bluntly, pick up what's available...

But don’t think that picking up ready-made things is a bad thing. In fact, it is still very important for Xu Shenxue’s entire layout of the consumer electronics industry chain.

As long as it can maintain annual shipments of more than 200 million smart terminal devices, its value will be very great. Whether it makes money or not is secondary. The important thing is that it can drive the development of the entire industrial chain.

Xu Shenxue attaches more importance to this.

Without the large number of mid- and low-end products from WeCool Electronics to spread the cost of the supply chain and absorb the backward and outdated technologies of some high-end machines, the consumer electronics industry chain and even the semiconductor industry chain promoted by Xu Shenxue will face huge cost increases.

This is unacceptable.

Similarly, this is also the main reason why Xu Shenxue supported and promoted other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, and even opened up the sale of various smart terminal spare parts to foreign mobile phone manufacturers, even core products such as mobile phone SOC and communication baseband.

In addition to Zhiyun Group, Xu Shenxue needs a sufficiently large shipment volume of various core components to spread the cost, recover R&D funds, and maintain the research and development of more advanced technologies.

This will better drive the development of the entire industrial chain, while also bringing better spare parts to Zhiyun's various smart terminal products, which can then be integrated into better products.

High-end, mid-end, low-end, we want them all... This is the idea of ​​building an industrial chain, not just making high-end products and ignoring the others.

In other words, they keep everything in their own hands and never sell it to anyone else... This is the way to run a single business, not the way to run an industrial chain.

Xu Shenxue is not working on a single company or a single product, he is working on an industrial chain!

From beginning to end!

Whether it is Weiku Electronics or other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, they are all part of Xu Shenxue's entire semiconductor and consumer electronics industry chain layout... Even if many domestic mobile phone manufacturers themselves do not know or are unwilling to do so, they cannot change this.

Having gained something from Weiku Electronics, Xu Shenxue was in a good mood and had dinner with Bai Qiwen. Then he took him to the Hailan Automobile next door to attend this year's Hailan Automobile launch conference.

This year, Hailan Automobile will release SUV models at a press conference in May, including two versions: pure electric and extended-range.

At the same time, the extended-range version of the Hailan SEC will also be released.

Xu Shenxue will naturally not ignore the launch of Hailan's core SUV model. He plans to host the press conference in person like he did last year to bring a new pure electric SUV to the world.

(End of this chapter)