Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 385: The Madness of Generative AI

It is now April, and many high-tech companies have released their spring products.

Zhiyun Group released the A16 mobile phone that uses under-screen photoelectric fingerprint technology, and Weiku Electronics also released their new generation of Xiaolan 9 standard version, which also uses under-screen photoelectric technology and a water drop screen.

Sixing released their new generation of Sixing Galaxy, but their new generation of Galaxy phones were hit by the news of phone explosions and fires last year. Its sales suffered a certain impact. The markets in other regions were okay, but their market share in the Chinese market was almost lost. This was because when they handled the phone fire and explosion incidents, they showed arrogance towards the Chinese market and refused to recall the phones. This time, Sixing's reputation in the Chinese market was completely ruined.

Its market share was quickly divided up by other mobile phone manufacturers, especially Weiku Electronics, Huawei, and OV, which are domestic mobile phone manufacturers that have mobile phones priced at three to four thousand yuan. They took advantage of this opportunity to seize the market and gained a lot of nutrients from the corpse of Six Star.

This spring, other domestic mobile phone manufacturers have also released their flagship phones in various varieties, but most of them are full-screen phones, mainly using rear or side fingerprints.

After the concept of full-screen mobile phones was thoroughly promoted by Zhiyun Group and became popular all over the world, domestic mobile phone manufacturers followed suit last year and reached a peak this year. Not only some high-end mobile phones, but also many mid- and low-end mobile phones have begun to adopt full-screen design.

However, 3D facial recognition technology is still not adopted by other manufacturers...there is simply no second supplier on the market.

Currently, only Wanjin Technology, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group, can provide under-screen optoelectronic technology. However, Wanjin Technology's products, including its previous fingerprint products, have always been supplied only to Zhiyun Group and Wecoo Electronics, and not to the outside world... The significance of Wanjin Technology is not to make money by selling these spare parts, but to make the smart terminals of Zhiyun Group and Wecoo Electronics technologically advanced and maintain their originality.

Therefore, if other mobile phone manufacturers want to make full-screen mobile phones, they can only choose rear fingerprint or side fingerprint... and some low-end mobile phones simply do not have fingerprint technology, but only provide a 2D face recognition technology... which is also called face recognition.

Therefore, from last year to now, many mobile phone models priced at one or two thousand yuan also boast about their facial recognition technology.

Even the Galaxy S8 from Samsung uses a new unlocking technology, which is iris unlocking technology, and then combines it with a 2D face recognition technology.

Ever since Zhiyun Group pioneered 15D facial recognition technology on the S3 Max mobile phone, facial recognition technology seems to have become popular almost overnight, with every mobile phone claiming to have facial recognition technology.

But in fact, except for Zhiyun Group's own S series mobile phones, the so-called face recognition technology on other mobile phones is all 2D face recognition...

What is the concept of this 2D face recognition technology? You can unlock it with a photo...

In order to ensure security, Zhiyun Mobile does not even use 2D face recognition on mid-range phones such as the C series, but continues to stubbornly use front-facing fingerprint recognition.

Because security is a major concept in the creation of Zhiyun mobile phones, you are not even allowed to use the 2D face recognition technology, an unlocking method whose security cannot be guaranteed.

Unlike other mobile phone brands, they don’t care about security at all…

Otherwise, if we really talk about 2D face recognition technology, Zhiyun Group's technology is actually better than a large number of other mobile phone manufacturers. After all, the essence of this thing is image recognition, and image recognition is a major application of artificial intelligence technology.

In the field of artificial intelligence technology, Zhiyun Group leads the world!
The 2D facial recognition technology used in Weiku Electronics is a technology license obtained from Zhiyun Group, and it is also very convenient to use.

----

From the second half of last year to the first half of this year, in just less than a year, the smartphone industry has entered a large-scale wave of full-screen mobile phones. Regardless of the technical means used to achieve the full-screen, it is undeniable that smartphones have indeed entered the full-screen era.

The numerous new mobile phones have also made many domestic consumers dazzled...

However, this did not affect Zhiyun's strength. After all, consumers with money bought Zhiyun phones as soon as possible.

In the field of high-end mobile phones priced above 4,000 yuan, there is no need to choose at all, just choose the Zhiyun S series or A series with your eyes closed.

As for overseas markets, consumers will choose between Zhiyun phones, Fruit phones and Four-Star phones. However, except for the US market, which Zhiyun phones cannot enter, most consumers in most other countries or regions actually choose to buy Zhiyun phones.

The combined annual sales of Zhiyun's S series and A series phones are close to 280 million units... This is a very exaggerated figure.

Last year, Apple’s smartphone sales failed to maintain its annual sales target of 150 million units, but instead reached just over 140 million units, and the company was heavily dependent on domestic sales in the U.S. market.

Star's high-end mobile phone business, that is, the Galaxy series, is not that good either, with sales of only about 30 to 40 million units, mainly relying on the Korean and American markets.

In addition to these two special markets, in other places, whether it is China, Europe, Japan, ASEAN, India, Russia, South America, and even Canada and Mexico, there are high-end mobile phone markets.

Zhiyun S series mobile phones are the absolute king, occupying the vast majority of the market share!

In fact, if the American market hadn’t blocked Zhiyun from entering, the sales of Fruit and Six-Star would have been even worse!

Even if Zhiyun Mobile competes head-on with them in the US market, it will be able to beat them with its current strength.

After all, American consumers are not stupid!

They can tell whether a mobile phone is good or not... For the same 16 yuan, what kind of mobile phone is Zhiyun S, and what kind of mobile phone is Fruit Phone and Four Star Phone? There is a world of difference!

As for the price of seven or eight thousand or even tens of thousands, the gap is even bigger!
Globally, only the Zhiyun S series of mobile phones dare to raise the price to more than 10,000 yuan, and its sales volume is still quite high.

In terms of brand, it can even be said that Zhiyun mobile phones have already reached a higher level than Apple and 4-star phones.

Unfortunately, Zhiyun’s mobile phones cannot enter the US market.

Not only Zhiyun phones, but even phones from Vico Electronics are no longer allowed to enter the US. Vico Electronics was banned from selling smartphones last year, saying their smart terminals threatened US security...

In addition to the two companies under Xu Shenxue, several other relatively successful domestic mobile phone manufacturers have also been banned from entering the US market, such as Huawei and Zhongxing, which have also been banned.

Among the current domestic mobile phone manufacturers, only Lianxiang can occupy a part of the local market share by relying on the acquired Motorola brand... and then there are some other second-tier manufacturers that pose no threat.

Basically, in the American market, as soon as they see that you are gaining momentum and can threaten Apple or 4-Star, they will immediately ban you.

Therefore, the US market is a blank market for Chinese mobile phone manufacturers. Either they cannot sell many mobile phones after entering the market, or they sell too many and are banned.

Their trade protectionism is more straightforward than that of most countries in the world!
I won't waste my time talking to you. If you threaten me, I'll find a reason to ban you right away...

But the funny thing is... even so, the Apple phones and four-star phones sold in the US market are almost all produced in China... They have been trying for a long time to shift the industrial chain, but they can't do it at all. At most, they can only shift an assembly plant, but the spare parts manufacturers cannot be shifted at all.

Fruit wants to go to India to build its industrial chain, and Four Star wants to go to Vietnam to build its industrial chain, but China’s supply chain manufacturers are not willing to go at all... Why?
Because Xu Shenxue wouldn't let him!

Xu Shenxue doesn’t just sell mobile phones... he’s involved in the industrial chain.

Fruit makes high-end mobile phones, and their spare parts need to be provided by high-quality spare parts manufacturers. Among the supply chain manufacturers around the world that can provide these high-end spare parts, quite a few are related to Xu Shenxue!

Xu Shenxue controls and influences almost the entire mid-to-high-end supply chain through Zhiyun Group, Wecoo Electronics and its parent companies Liuhe Holdings and Xiannvshan Holdings.

Although the core business of Xiannvshan Holdings is semiconductor equipment and consumables, in order to provide a transfusion to the semiconductor equipment and consumables business, Xu Shenxue got a lot of profitable smart terminal spare parts businesses and stuffed them into the subsidiaries of Xiannvshan Holdings.

In other words, there is actually a considerable overlap between the supply chains of Fruit and Sixing and those of Zhiyun Group and Wecoo Electronics!
Xu Shenxue, for strategic security reasons, does not allow his supply chain manufacturers to mess around, especially to build factories overseas...

Not to mention the subsidiaries or holding companies that he can control, even if it is some strategic investments or cooperative supply chain companies without decision-making power, if you dare to build a factory abroad, Xu Shenxue will dare to cancel the order immediately.

They can even use their strong influence in the smart terminal and semiconductor industries to require other domestic smart terminal manufacturers to completely ban you.

You want to go abroad to make enemies, let overseas companies get the bullets that can threaten Zhiyun and Weiku, and even other domestic manufacturers, and then affect the entire domestic consumer electronics industry chain... Xu Shenxue will slap you to death!
Therefore, most of the domestic supply chain manufacturers in the field of smart terminal parts are unwilling to run, and some of those who are willing to run are unable to run...

Then, Fruit and Sixin have been working on the industrial chain transfer for several years, but it has not been completed yet.

They could only relocate a small-scale assembly plant, but none of the supporting supply chains in China were relocated...

This is very embarrassing... Although mobile phones have started to be assembled in India and Vietnam, most of the spare parts need to be imported from China, which is much more expensive.

As for supporting new supply chain manufacturers, it is not that easy... On the one hand, there are technical and financial costs, and on the other hand, most of the electronic consumer goods are in China. Do you really think Xu Shenxue is a good guy who would allow Fruit and Four Star to poach customers on their own turf?

Supply chain manufacturers, there are supply chain manufacturers above them... Are you sure these upstream supply chain manufacturers will sell things to you?

Don’t imagine the world to be too beautiful!
As for foreign manufacturers...if they had this ability, Zhiyun would not have risen!

So after a long period of struggling with the industrial chain transfer, most of the production of various smart terminals for Fruit and Star is still in China... This is a very embarrassing thing.

However, everyone tacitly agreed not to mention it... It's too embarrassing for Fruit and Six Star, and for the domestic supply chain, it's enough to make money in a low-key manner, there's no need to bring it up to provoke others!

For Xu Shenxue, as long as the factory does not move away, everything else is fine, and the supply chain is open to external supplies...even its own spare parts manufacturers, including top-level semiconductor products such as mobile phone SOC, storage chips, screens, and batteries are open to supply.

Many situations eventually led to this situation!
The transfer of the industrial chain is basically just verbal talk, but in reality it is still the same as before.

China's consumer electronics and semiconductor supply chain continues to supply the global market with more than two billion mobile phones each year, as well as almost all other computers, tablets, smart watches and almost all other smart terminals.

The world factory is not a joke, it really exists!
While the field of smart terminals continues to develop rapidly, Xu Shenxue is actively deploying in the field of artificial intelligence.

On April 13, Zhiyun Group held an artificial intelligence press conference.

This time, Xu Shenxue personally hosted the press conference and released the world's first super-large generative AI model: Yun AI
This Yun AI is not the simple human-computer interaction of the past, nor is it an ordinary voice assistant, but an ultra-large generative AI for many fields.

Its model is very large and requires huge computing resources to maintain its operation. It also provides services in many fields such as chat, translation, image generation, and article generation.

This is also the first time that Zhiyun Group has provided such large-scale artificial intelligence services to corporate and individual users.

In the past, although Zhiyun Group’s artificial intelligence technology was very advanced, it was basically not supplied to the outside world. It was only supplied for use in its own products, and was mainly used in industrial fields, such as robots, autonomous driving, national defense, etc.

So although everyone knows that Zhiyun Group’s artificial intelligence technology is awesome, to be honest, many people are actually unable to appreciate how powerful artificial intelligence technology is... because they can’t access it.

But this time, Zhiyun Group is providing this super-large generative AI service to regular corporate users and individual users, which directly brings artificial intelligence technology to everyone.

Let people truly feel the power of artificial intelligence technology.

Enterprise users can pay and then call the Yun AI interface to obtain various functions... For example, after calling the interface, they can use it on some software they have developed themselves to obtain the corresponding artificial intelligence functions.

It can even be called upon to some smart terminal hardware products to obtain the corresponding artificial intelligence technology.

One of the very convenient functions is translation... Yun AI supports translation of almost all mainstream languages ​​in the world, and the translation is extremely accurate.

If Yun AI's translation interface is connected, social software or other information platforms can easily solve language barriers for users from different countries.

The first company to access this interface was Yihai Technology's Doudong Video, which was used to replace the translation function they had previously developed themselves.

In addition to corporate users, individual users can also directly download the Yun AI APP and get some basic functions for free to try out, with restrictions on quantity and content.

If you are a professional who wants to use this app for work, such as a designer, programmer, copywriter, etc., you need to use advanced functions to unlock these restrictions, which requires payment.

The fees vary depending on the membership version, but they are not cheap.

For example, for advanced drawing functions, the monthly fee for premium membership is US$150 per month, with a uniform price worldwide.

As for why the price is the same, it is because this advanced function consumes a lot of computing resources, and computing resources do not have price differences depending on where the user uses them. The computing power cost consumed by users in country A using this function is the same as the computing power cost consumed by users in country B using this function.

Therefore, the price is unified globally!

As for everything being free... the computing power cost is too high, and Zhiyun can't afford it, so it has to charge.

Zhiyun Group launched Yun AI, which instantly set off the global technology community and even spread to the group of ordinary people.

We have heard about this artificial intelligence technology for many years, but many ordinary people still don’t have much feeling about it...even though many of them are actually already using some artificial intelligence technologies provided by Zhiyun Group, such as autonomous driving and robots in Hailan cars.

Many people may not have used these, but many people must have used the voice assistants in Zhiyun’s many smart terminals and the album management technology of Zhiyun phones. The recognition and management of people and scenery in this project management technology, as well as simple image generation, are actually the artificial intelligence technologies of Zhiyun Group.

However, they all use dedicated small models and call on the local computing power of the mobile phone, so the performance is relatively limited.

At the same time, Zhiyun Software Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group, has also released an APP that focuses on image modification and generated beautiful pictures. This APP also only uses a small model and the local computing power of the mobile phone.

However, people don’t actually have a deep understanding of artificial intelligence technology because the local computing power of mobile phones is limited and cannot give people too much shock.

However, this time, Yun AI released by Zhiyun Group used an ultra-large model. Before this, the AI ​​had been iterated three times, and the training parameters increased from tens of millions at the beginning to hundreds of billions, and then to an exaggerated 300 billion.

In addition, YUN AI is still in continuous training, and the entire model is constantly iterating and updating, which consumes huge training costs every day.

To run such a huge model and provide computing power to a large number of users, a very large AI supercomputing server is required.

Behind this is billions of dollars worth of computing power costs.

But this also allows Yun AI to provide users with fast and excellent content generation services.

After users download this APP, they do not need to use the pitiful local computing power to generate content. Instead, they transmit the demand to Yun AI's server. After the server calls on the computing resources to generate content, it is returned to the APP on the user's mobile phone for display.

As soon as Zhiyun Group’s artificial intelligence conference ended, Yun AI was officially launched in China and some overseas countries, and a large number of users began to download and try it out.

Then it was amazing!
Overnight, a huge amount of AI-generated content appeared on the Internet, including various texts, pictures, etc., and then people found that Yun AI was much more useful than any translation software.

Not only can it translate various languages, but it can also translate some ancient Chinese texts and some Internet terms...even Martian text. Even if the order of Chinese text is reversed, it can still be translated accurately.

In other words, it can do most of the things that humans can do, especially in the fields of language and pictures.

Just when a lot of media and ordinary people are actively discussing and trying it.

However, the overall feeling in the artificial intelligence industry is very complicated.

On the one hand, Zhiyun Group has opened a window for them in the field of artificial intelligence, demonstrating important application scenarios of artificial intelligence technology, and these are commercial application scenarios.

This further demonstrates the super commercialization potential of artificial intelligence technology and proves the importance of artificial intelligence technology.

But on the other hand, they felt desperate!
Their artificial intelligence technology is far, far behind Zhiyun Group's artificial intelligence technology!

Several domestic Internet companies have been working on artificial intelligence technology for several years. They have always known that there is a big gap between their artificial intelligence technology and Zhiyun Group's, but they did not expect it to be this big.

A lot of money has been spent, but the technological gap is still so big, which makes people despair!
But giving up is not an option. Artificial intelligence technology has huge potential and is the future development direction, so they will continue to grit their teeth and persevere.

However, the largest Internet company in China, Yihai Technology, has given up the research and development of large-scale AI technology... Why bother developing it? Just call Yun AI directly, it's all Xu Shenxue's own stuff anyway.

Of course, they will continue to develop some small and medium-sized data models in specific fields. After all, Zhiyun Group is not engaged in artificial intelligence technology in all fields. Previously, it was basically concentrated in the fields of industry and defense, and now it is engaged in ultra-large-scale generative AI.

However, artificial intelligence has many application areas, and it is impossible for Zhiyun Group to do everything.

Furthermore, not all companies are willing to directly call the Yun AI interface like Yihai Technology...

This is one of the reasons why many companies insist on developing artificial intelligence technology.

The situation in China is actually relatively better. Those with ambitions can continue to do so, while those without ambitions are prepared to lay low and directly adopt Yun AI's enterprise services.

But in overseas areas, it is relatively more troublesome and complicated.

It doesn't matter for places like Europe, Japan, South Korea, and some emerging market regions... Anyway, their artificial intelligence technology is very poor and they don't expect to compete with giants in the field of artificial intelligence technology like Zhiyun Group. Many of their companies' research in the field of artificial intelligence is mainly focused on some specific areas.

Previously, they hoped that Zhiyun Group would relax the restrictions on artificial intelligence technology so that they could use it.

Now, Zhiyun Group has really given them the go-ahead... Yun AI is open to users around the world, and everyone can download and use it, including enterprise-level services.

So, they also thought about using Yun AI... Why bother? They have no basic knowledge anyway and can't do anything about it.

What is really embarrassing is the American side!
why?
Because Yun AI is a software service of Zhiyun Group, and Zhiyun Group's software services are banned in the US market.

Therefore, the Yun AI APP cannot be downloaded from the Apple APP store or the Google APP store in the local US market... Of course, it doesn’t mean that it is completely unusable. Users can switch to other countries to download it, or Android users can simply find an installation package and install it themselves.

Bans cannot control what individual users want to do!

This is the same as the fact that a large number of people in the United States are still using smuggled Zhiyun phones...

Therefore, it is relatively troublesome for local users in the United States to use this Yun AI!
But what’s even more interesting is that… the banned Zhiyun software services are limited to services provided to individuals, while corporate services are not included.

The US ban on Zhiyun is actually quite strange... It does not completely ban the sales and operations of Zhiyun's products and services in the US.

Instead, it prohibits the sale and operation of smart terminals and their accompanying personal software services in the United States in specific areas.

However, semiconductor products and spare parts are not included, and neither are enterprise-level software services!

why?
Because there is really no way to completely ban Zhiyun Group... If you really want to ban all of Zhiyun's products and services, the shareholders of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, GM, Ford and other high-tech companies will have to slap the congress first!
Especially in the semiconductor field, such as computing chips... Not to mention banning them, they have to beg Zhiyun to sell them more APO graphics cards.

A picture is circulating on social media: a group of CEOs of American high-tech companies surrounded Xu Shenxue, with the caption: I have money, please sell me more APO graphics cards!

Tesla, GM, Ford and other automobile companies all use in-vehicle computing power cards, whether they are EYEQ series platforms or PX platforms, which are all computing power card products under Zhiyun... Without Zhiyun's computing power platform, their automobile production lines with assisted driving functions will have to be discontinued immediately.

Zhiyun Group's technology in many fields is very strong and highly monopolistic...

Zhiyun is so powerful that even the enemy cannot do without it!
While fighting with Zhiyun for life and death, he also has to find reasons to protect Zhiyun!
This is the charm of technology!
When it comes to Yun AI, individual users are currently unable to use it through formal channels, but many American companies can legally use Yun AI's enterprise-level services.

Then something interesting happened. Many Internet companies in the United States developed a large number of so-called artificial intelligence apps in just a few days, providing powerful artificial intelligence technology services.

However, even ordinary people know that these self-proclaimed artificial intelligence apps are just shells developed by themselves, while the real artificial intelligence technology services are basically directly connected to the Yun AI interface.

These so-called artificial intelligence apps developed in the United States are nothing more than middlemen.

Because there is an extra layer of middlemen, the fees for its advanced features are also higher. In the United States, the middlemen price the advanced drawing function at US$250 per month, which is US$100 higher than Yun AI's direct global price of US$150.

After all, the middlemen have to eat too!
Once this idea came into being, many other Internet companies in the United States also began to consider integrating the Yun AI interface into their many software programs!

This leads to an interesting situation: due to the ban, Zhiyun Group cannot directly provide Yun AI services to the vast number of American users, but it can use a large number of intermediary manufacturers to indirectly provide services to American users...

This is also quite bizarre.

In this situation, Zhiyun Group is very happy because it is making a lot of money and there is a group of American companies calling for market promotion.

Internet companies in the United States are also very happy. They don’t have to spend a penny on the research and development of artificial intelligence technology, but they can directly use Yun AI and then sell it to American users at a higher price. They don’t even have to pay for the computing power themselves... They are definitely middlemen who make a profit from the price difference.

American users have some opinions, thinking that they are losing out because they have to pay more than people in other countries to use Yun AI's advanced features and services, but there is nothing they can do about it... Of course, some smart people will find ways to bypass various restrictions and directly download Yun AI for use.

And who was hurt the most?

Google, as well as Microsoft and a large number of other American high-tech companies engaged in artificial intelligence technology.

They have invested heavily in artificial intelligence technology and have high expectations for it.

Google, in particular, has spent a lot of money in the field of artificial intelligence. They are also the largest customer of Zhiyun Group's APO graphics cards.

Now that Zhiyun Group has come up with Yun AI, it is very difficult for Google and others.

This has allowed them to see the newer technological advances in artificial intelligence technology and the vast market, but it has also made them feel more desperate about the technological gap in the field of artificial intelligence technology.

In the field of generative AI, Google and Microsoft are actually both working on it, but their projects are basically in their infancy, and the technology is still very primitive, and it is simply impossible to carry out commercial applications.

According to their own estimates, if they want to develop commercial AI, it would conservatively take three or even five years if other external conditions are not restricted.

The technical gap is too big.

It's so despairing!

But soon, they were happy again... because just one week after Zhiyun Group released Yun AI, the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of Zhiyun Group held a press conference.

It announced that many of its artificial intelligence data models will be open source, and everyone around the world is welcome to improve them.

Many of them are niche data models in specific fields, but they also include a generative AI model: GTAI.

As soon as this news came out, many high-tech companies, especially those Internet companies engaged in artificial intelligence, suddenly felt that they were on the rise again...

Google announced that its generative AI can be launched on the market within half a year at the earliest!

The three major domestic Internet giants have also successively announced their own generative AI plans!

While these manufacturers were announcing their artificial intelligence plans, they also found Zhiyun Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group, and placed crazy orders for APO graphics cards!
Zhiyun Group accepts all orders, but there are too many orders and they are too busy to handle them, so they have to queue up to get the goods.

It is hard to get a Zhiyun APO graphics card now.

The prices of APO graphics cards in the hands of some card dealers in Huaqiangnan suddenly increased, and the price of the latest model of APO graphics cards soared to more than 200,000 yuan per piece.

That’s it, a lot of companies can’t buy it!

Today's APO graphics cards are a scarce commodity that cannot be bought even if you have money!

(End of this chapter)