Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 309: Making History Again
Monday, April 7th.

This day is a very ordinary day for most people in the world.

But for people in the financial industry, especially the securities industry, this is a special day.

For some investment institutions, today is even an extremely important day.

Because today, Zhiyun Group will be relisted on the Hong Kong stock market!
This incident has also become a major event that has attracted the attention of countless people in the world!
It’s not just because this will be the IPO of a company with the highest market value in human history, but more importantly because of the huge influence of Zhiyun Group.

This is a truly world-class giant company with its tentacles spread across more than 100 countries and regions around the world!

Based on the information publicly disclosed by Zhiyun Group before its listing.

Zhiyun Group has 163 wholly-owned subsidiaries and more than 100 holding companies worldwide, and has also made strategic investments in over 300 companies.

The assets of the entire group, including various securities, cash, fixed assets and intangible assets, exceed US$360 billion.

This is a truly world-class giant enterprise!

This is also the only high-tech company in the world that can compete with a large number of oil giants in terms of corporate assets and revenue.

In terms of revenue, except for one special supermarket company like Walmart, all the others ahead of it are oil giants.

Only a few oil giants can surpass Zhiyun in terms of corporate assets.

However, what is more noteworthy is that Zhiyun Group is not just large in scale, with abundant assets and high revenue!
It’s more profitable!

The 14 financial report released by Zhiyun showed that the full-year net profit reached US$13 billion. Although it was a significant decrease compared to the peak net profit of more than US$ billion in , it still became the second most profitable company in the world with a net profit of US$ billion.

As for the one who forcefully suppressed Zhiyun Group, it was a certain local bank, whose super high profit of nearly 43 billion US dollars made Zhiyun Group bow down to it.

As for fruit, it was affected by Zhiyun and only earned more than 33 billion US dollars this year. Its profitability far surpassed countless companies. In the second half of last year, Cook often walked on airs... but he was still held down and beaten by the second largest bank in a certain place.

Sixing Electronics is even worse, earning less than 20 billion US dollars a year. The third brother in a certain banking industry, no, the fourth brother can suppress it single-handedly!

lame!
You see, Zhiyun, the world's number one high-tech company, was beaten by the big boss of the banking industry.

The world's second largest high-tech company, Apple, was beaten by the second largest banking company.

The world's third largest high-tech company with four stars is beaten by the third and fourth largest banks!

The top three companies in the high-tech industry are all inferior to others!
As for some other car companies and world-class high-tech companies, they are even worse. Most of them are not even worthy of carrying shoes for the top ten banks in a certain place!
But we can't blame them for being too weak.

After all, Zhiyun Group, a high-tech enterprise with the largest scale, most advanced technology and global influence in the world, has been strongly suppressed by the banking industry in a certain place.

What can ordinary high-tech companies do? They are also helpless!
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Despite being suppressed by the banking industry, Zhiyun Group's profitability is still very impressive. The net profit of US$41 billion is quite exaggerated and is unique in the high-tech industry.

At the same time, Zhiyun Group also has great advantages in all aspects of its business.

Some media have counted the various businesses under Zhiyun Group.

One media outlet quoted statistics from a foreign professional organization, reporting that Zhiyun Group sold a total of 320 million mobile phones last year, continuing to lead the global smartphone market and ranking first in the world in terms of shipments.

Even though Four Star relies on large-scale shipments of mid- and low-end mobile phones, it still cannot catch up with Zhiyun, with shipments of only more than 250 million units.

The media also analyzed Zhiyun Group’s other terminal businesses, which were also very strong.

In the tablet computer field, YunPad shipped by Zhiyun Group reached 14 million units in , slightly less than Apple's million, ranking second in the world.

Zhiyun also performs extremely strongly in the field of smart watches, with annual shipments exceeding 10 million units and accounting for 70% of the market share.

Not to mention the field of Bluetooth headsets, it can be said that it directly occupies more than 90% of the branded Bluetooth headset market, and is almost at the level of complete monopoly. The remaining 10% of the market share is actually occupied by Weiku Electronics' Little Blue Headphones... In a sense, if we don't take into account those unknown brand Bluetooth headsets in Huaqiangnan, Zhiyun has completely monopolized the branded Bluetooth headset market.

This is mainly because the main competitors, Apple and Apple Watch, have not yet figured out the Bluetooth communication protocol and have not yet launched corresponding competitive products.

In the PC field, although Zhiyun Group's sales fell sharply last year due to the chip supply interruption, sales quickly rebounded after the launch of its self-developed chips at the end of last year. In the first quarter of this year, Zhiyun's shipments of various PC products have recovered to five million units.

Annual sales are expected to hit 25 million units.

Zhiyun's PC products seem to have average sales, with a global market share of only about 7 or 8 points, but they are sold at a high price and have a high gross profit margin. Their revenue and profits far exceed those of traditional PC manufacturers...

The above-mentioned types of smart terminals, plus miscellaneous smart home devices, brought a total of more than US$240 billion in revenue to Zhiyun Group last year.

Quite exaggerated!
In addition to its core business of smart terminals, Zhiyun Group also has an extremely strong semiconductor business.

Its subsidiary Zhiyun Microelectronics has the second largest semiconductor production capacity in the world. The reason for such a large production capacity is mainly because the demand for two types of storage chips, memory and flash memory, is high and the production capacity is also large.

Among the world's top six semiconductor manufacturers in terms of production capacity, except TSMC, the others are all storage chip manufacturers.

However, the production capacity of most storage chips is actually mediocre, and most of them are old and mature processes. Although they are large in scale, they are not very eye-catching and are far less eye-catching than logic chips.

The huge storage chip production capacity, coupled with the logic chip production capacity, makes the semiconductor production capacity of Zhiyun Microelectronics extremely exaggerated.

In total, it has an equivalent eight-inch wafer production capacity of approximately 2.3 million pieces per month, accounting for 11% of the global semiconductor production capacity.

The huge production capacity mentioned above is not all invested and built by Zhiyun Microelectronics, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group. More than half of the production capacity is actually acquired.

The main acquisition was the storage chips and corresponding factories of Germany's Qimonda. In addition, in recent years, it has also acquired a number of other chip factories to increase the production capacity of mature processes.

If we build our own factories, they are often factories with advanced technology and are located in China.

Through acquisitions and new construction, Zhiyun Microelectronics' semiconductor production capacity has expanded rapidly, and its factories are spread across multiple regions. In addition to multiple core production bases in China, it also has acquired chip factories in Singapore, Germany, Italy, France, and Japan.

Not only is the overall semiconductor production capacity huge, but Zhiyun Microelectronics' advanced process production capacity is also huge.

The 18-nanometer process put into production in the second quarter of last year has expanded its monthly production capacity of 12-inch wafers from an initial 50,000 pieces to the current 150,000 pieces per month.

In addition, there is the 14-nanometer production capacity of the 18th site which is still in trial production.

The current top-level 14-nanometer and 18-nanometer process production capacity alone reaches a total of 200,000 12-inch wafers.

This is a very exaggerated data. In terms of advanced process nodes below 22 nanometers, Zhiyun Microelectronics' production capacity is second only to Intel... Intel started early and has long switched to large-scale production of 22 nanometer process. At the end of last year, it started to work on 14 nanometer. In addition, Intel's main products are logic chips, which have higher process requirements.

Therefore, Intel's entire semiconductor production capacity is not the largest in the world, and it is not even in the top five... Intel's total semiconductor production capacity is actually only ranked eighth in the world.

The first place is Six-Star Semiconductor, the second is Zhiyun Microelectronics, the third is TSMC, the fourth is Micron, then the fifth is Toshiba and the sixth is Hynix.

See? Except for TSMC, a professional foundry, the other five companies in the top six are all major storage chip manufacturers.

However, in addition to storage chips, Zhiwei Electronics and Sixin Semiconductor also have logic chip manufacturing businesses, so the overall scale appears to be even larger.

But when it comes to top-level process technology and production capacity, Intel is still the undisputed leader, Zhiyun Microelectronics is only second, and TSMC is third.

As for Four Star, it can only be ranked fourth... They do not have 22nm process and only started mass production of 20nm process this year, and their production capacity is also low.

Come again...no more.

The four semiconductor manufacturers that can provide processes below 22 nanometers are the above four.

Going further to 14nm/16nm, there are only three companies: Intel, TSMC, and Zhiyun Microelectronics.

If we go a step further to 14 nanometers, there are only two companies, Intel and Zhiyun Microelectronics.

Just the top four semiconductor manufacturers are divided into three levels in terms of technology, which shows how fierce the competition in advanced semiconductor technology is.

Zhiyun Microelectronics is in the first echelon in this competition, which has also brought a lot of revenue to Zhiyun's semiconductor business.

The core smart terminal business, semiconductor business, software and Internet business, investment income, electronic consumer parts business, etc., have generated a total revenue of US$310 billion for Zhiyun Group, and the net profit of the entire group reached US$41 billion.

If Zhiyun Group, which is so large in scale and has good earning ability, goes public again, what will be its market value?
Soon, international investors from all over the world gave their answers.

On the day of listing on the Hong Kong stock market, Zhiyun Group's share price first rose slightly, then fell back, but saw another wave of increases in the morning.

Finally, Zhiyun’s overall market value was set at US$670 billion.

Not only did it re-cross the $600 billion mark, but it also continued to break through, breaking its previous historical high and hitting the $670 billion mark, once again becoming the world's company with the highest market value.

Later that day, Zhiyun Group issued an announcement expressing its gratitude to investors from all over the world for their trust!
As for the re-listing and the market value returning to the world's first, Xu Shenxue is actually not too concerned... Zhiyun is in his hands anyway, so a little more or less market value doesn't really matter.

However, with a higher market value, it is easier to reduce holdings and cash out.

On the one hand, Xu Shenxue's reduction of holdings is to cash out. On the other hand, Xu Shenxue is not simply reducing holdings to cash out. More often, he is actually buying low and selling high, or simply shorting his own stocks.

This is typical insider trading.

Xu Shenxue was able to cash out so much money in recent years by reducing his holdings and making arbitrage at the same time, and then use the money to invest in semiconductors, electric vehicles, and aerospace fields.

Xu Shenxue himself doesn’t care much about it, but others are extremely concerned!
Especially the management and technical staff of Zhiyun Group who own a large number of option shares, basically kept their eyes on the stock market today and had no intention of going to work.

The rise and fall of Zhiyun’s stock price directly affects their wealth and even their lives.

Especially some grassroots managers and technical personnel, they do not have many option stocks, which may be worth only a few hundred thousand or a million yuan.

The fluctuation of the stock price is a fluctuation of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of yuan for them... This amount of money is nothing for enterprises and some rich people, but for many grassroots management and employees, it may be their biggest wealth. For some middle-level management and technical backbones, their stock price is more, which may be worth millions or even tens of millions. The stock price of Zhiyun is directly related to whether they can achieve financial freedom.

As for the company's senior management, the impact of the stock price may not be that great... because the real senior management above the vice president level in Zhiyun Group are basically not short of money. The lowest annual salary is over 10 million, and the value of the company's stocks they hold is basically over 100 million.

One million becoming two million has a huge impact on personal life.

But for a rich man, increasing one hundred million to two hundred million will not bring any obvious changes in his life.

Furthermore, people at the level of Zhiyun Group’s senior executives, after becoming billionaires, often pursue careers, power, fame and fortune.

Group executives like Gu Zhiming and Ji Chenghe, when they go abroad for inspection, enjoy treatment there that ordinary billionaires or even trillionaires cannot enjoy.

Especially Gu Zhiming, who is in charge of the supply chain, has countless orders in his hands. When he goes to some ordinary countries for public inspections, he can walk on the red carpet after getting off the private plane.

Whenever these two people visit some ordinary countries, they basically make the local news headlines!
In the true sense, he talks and laughs with the rich and powerful, and associates with everyone!

Without close business dealings, ordinary billionaires would not even be qualified to meet them!

What brings them these treatments?

It’s not because of the stocks worth billions or even tens of billions on their hands, but because of the super platform of Zhiyun Group!

The reason they were given this extraordinary treatment was not because they were rich or anything else, but because they were senior vice presidents of Zhiyun Group!

This is the unique attraction of Zhiyun Group, a world-class platform, to a large number of top business elites.

At present, if Zhiyun Group invites a top business elite, it will rarely be rejected... No one can refuse an invitation from Zhiyun Group.

This brings not only generous salaries and option benefits, but also a social status that exceeds that of ordinary corporate management!

Not to mention the top executives in these groups, even some middle-level managers in Zhiyun Group have a good social status.

For example, the head of Zhiyun's German branch, which is highly valued by the German side and even hailed as the European semiconductor center, is actually at the level of executive president in Zhiyun's management system, which is the fourth level below the group president, group senior vice president, and group vice president.

But in the local area, the person in charge of Zhiyun's German branch only interacts with local dignitaries and celebrities, the kind that appear in the news every other day.

Because Zhiyun's German branch has the largest storage chip production base in Europe.

Europe's semiconductor industry and the corresponding consumer electronics industry have long since declined, so much so that the German branch, which does not even rank in Zhiyun's semiconductor system, has become Europe's largest storage chip production base.

The head of business for the entire European region is only a group vice president in Zhiyun's management system, and has not even entered Zhiyun's real decision-making management level.

But such a person, his every word and action are reported by European technology media... This unlucky guy even took some time out to hire a blonde girl to learn a foreign language, but he was still secretly filmed and turned into a scandal affecting the whole of Europe!

Of course, the reason why this incident caused such a big stir was because Zhiyun and the American consortium were fighting at that time, and the American consortium used a beauty trap.

Although Zhiyun reacted quickly and took control, due to the large impact on local European public opinion, they eventually recalled the person to China for cold treatment.

This is not to say that the competition between the two sides is fierce, or that there are scandals or ethics. It is purely to say that the influence of the executives of Zhiyun Group is beyond the level of ordinary corporate management.

The influence is so great that learning a foreign language can cause a scandal...

There are very few companies in this world that can achieve this level!

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In addition to Zhiyun Group’s internal employees, there are also a large number of ordinary investors who pay attention to the changes in Zhiyun Group’s stock price. They either buy or short Zhiyun’s stocks, and naturally they are extremely concerned about the changes in the stock price.

However, some people who tried to short Zhiyun’s stock on the first day of listing lost all their money.

As for the long investors, they were all smiling from ear to ear, as today's surge on the first day of listing had made them earn a lot of money.

As for various consortiums and large financial institutions, although they also pay attention to the stock price, they are more concerned about Zhiyun's future operating conditions.

After all, compared with ordinary investors in the secondary market, these consortiums and large financial institutions pay more attention to Zhiyun Group's future revenue and profits. They are playing value investing, which is somewhat different.

In addition to the Zhiyun employees, ordinary investors and strategic investors who have direct interests.

There are also countless media and netizens who are paying attention to the changes in Zhiyun’s stock price after its relisting.

As soon as the stock market opened that day, a large number of news media continued to report on Zhiyun's performance after its listing.

As soon as the market closed in the afternoon, a large number of websites launched a series of reports.

"Big news, after Zhiyun's listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, its market value has reached a record high!"

"Zhiyun's market value reaches 670 billion US dollars, returning to the world's number one!"

"King Zhiyun has returned!"

Various news about Zhiyun's re-listing instantly bombarded the entire Internet media, and many people were able to see related information while playing with their mobile phones.

After all, news related to Zhiyun is on the hot search lists of various information platforms, and ordinary people can basically see it as long as they use these apps.

Even on the newly emerged short video platform, namely, Diaodong Video under Yihai Technology, Zhiyun's related short video information also appeared in large quantities, and then appeared in front of some users who were paying attention to related information.

Even some people who do not pay attention to financial or technological news will be forced to browse related news because of the large amount of traffic directed to Zhiyun News by short video websites.

Of course, not everyone can see it.

For some people who have successfully raised an account, even if the world explodes, all they will see are long legs, and they will not see the news of the world exploding.

The recommendation algorithm of Tiaodong Video, owned by Yihai Technology, has been accumulated over several years. Before launching short videos, it had already accumulated a large amount of data in news apps and browser homepage information. Its recommendation algorithm has reached an impeccable level under current technical conditions.

It is enough to form a super information cocoon, allowing people to see the content they only want to see, but the more they read, the more addicted they become, and finally they forget the time.

In the early days of Jump Video, because there was relatively little content, it took up relatively little user time. However, as more content was added, the average time users spent on it became longer and longer.

Many people may just think about opening their mobile phones before going to bed, then watching a video for ten minutes or so and then going to sleep, but as they watch, they forget the passage of time, and by the time they react, an hour or two or even longer has passed.

----

The news that Zhiyun had re-listed and had a market value of US$670 billion spread quickly not only in China but also abroad.

Even in the United States, countless people are paying attention to news related to Zhiyun.

In the Wall Street Journal, the most viewed news of the day was that Zhiyun was re-listed and its stock price exceeded 670 billion US dollars.

Although Zhiyun's smart terminal products have been launched in the US market, some American users who want to use Zhiyun phones have to either buy them abroad or buy smuggled parallel imports.

At the same time, Zhiyun has also been delisted from the US stock market.

However, news related to Zhiyun is still being followed and even discussed by a large number of Americans.

Zhiyun seems to have left the United States, but it is still everywhere!
After all, even Americans cannot ignore a world giant like Zhiyun!
Zhiyun’s influence spreads all over the world. That is not an exaggeration but a real thing!
Even though Zhiyun seems to have left the United States, that is just an appearance!

Ordinary Americans can still access Zhiyun's semiconductor products... For example, in the Midea smart terminal market, in addition to Fruit, there are also a large number of four-star products. In addition, some smart terminal manufacturers from China also have some market share here.

Regardless of whether it is Sixin or other Chinese smart terminal manufacturers, they all use a large number of semiconductors and other spare parts under Zhiyun Group.

The four-star Galaxy series now uses the W series chips from Zhiyun Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group!

Not to mention other Chinese smart terminal manufacturers. Not only SOC, but other memory and flash memory are basically all Zhiyun products. Even batteries, screens and some other products are mostly closely related to Zhiyun.

Even for fruits, there are Zhiyun-affiliated companies in their supply chain!
It is not so easy to completely get rid of Zhiyun.

This is also the reason why the two sides fought so fiercely before, but the other side never banned Zhiyun Semiconductor’s business... It’s not that it cannot be banned, but if it is banned, it will lead to a substantial increase in costs, which is not worthwhile.

As for some products, there is no way to ban them. The other party even asked Zhiyun to continue supplying them and included maintaining supply in the negotiation conditions.

These are the various computing chips in the AI ​​field, including APO graphics cards for training AI, automotive-grade integrated computing chips, visual algorithm chips, and so on.

In the field of computing chips, Zhiyun Group has an indisputable and absolute monopoly position, and there is not even any competitor!
In the field of AI training, ATI's graphics cards have no ecosystem and are difficult to develop... Intel is not professionally qualified, and companies such as Google and Microsoft have also encountered many difficulties in trying to develop AI computing cards on their own.

In the field of automotive-grade comprehensive computing chips and visual algorithm chips, there is no second company at all... The first and second companies in the industry are both owned by Zhiyun Semiconductor. Currently, only Tesla is trying to develop its own chips, but it is not easy.

For many things, if you don’t go to Zhiyun, the price is either too high or simply not available!

This makes many competing companies feel helpless.

You see, Fruit is fighting with Zhiyun, and at the same time it is humbly asking to buy Zhiyun's APO computing power card...

The expensive APO2000 graphics card is expensive, but ordinary companies cannot buy it even if they have money. Even large companies have to beg Zhiyun to sell it to them.

Very frustrated!

However, it’s not that Zhiyun is deliberately holding them back from selling, it’s purely because of limited production capacity.

The APO2000 graphics card uses an -nanometer process, which is still the top mass production process and has very limited production capacity. Various advanced chips are waiting to be used.

The GPU core of APO2000 is very large, and not many of them can be produced on a single wafer, which results in relatively low production capacity.

(End of this chapter)