Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 411: Frustrated Fruit

August 18th.

A large number of executives from technology companies, investors from some investment institutions, etc. began to show up in large numbers at the Qianshan International Convention Center in Shenzhen.

Among them are many senior executives from well-known large domestic and foreign companies.

Many of them are actually not in the mobile phone industry, and they don’t care much about the S17 mobile phone that Zhiyun Group is about to release.

Most of these bosses or executives in the technology industry and investors from investment institutions come here to make connections and communicate with each other.

Because Zhiyun Group’s annual flagship phone launch conference is also known as the annual global high-tech summit.

At this time of year every year, a large number of high-tech companies or investors from all over the world gather here to communicate with each other and look for cooperation opportunities.

Similarly, Zhiyun Group’s flagship phone launch conference is also an annual event for technology and financial media.

A large number of media will also gather at Qianshan International Conference Center during this time.

Because there were so many high-tech industry executives coming, and people have been saying that the launch of its own flagship phone is a global high-tech summit, Zhiyun Group has made some special arrangements this year.

On the day before the press conference, a number of seminars in different fields were specially organized for executives and investors from various technology industries who came to attend the press conference. Each company could choose to participate according to its own field.

However, Zhiyun Group did not send anyone to speak, but only acted as an organizer, mainly allowing people from other companies to use this platform to tell their stories.

This year's changes have made many technology companies feel very favorable... In the past, if you wanted to make connections, discuss with peers at home and abroad, explore cooperation opportunities, or attract investment, you had to talk to them privately one by one.

But now, Zhiyun Group has organized such an open platform for them.

At the same time, senior executives from many top domestic investment funds will also participate.

In particular, several investment funds under Xu Shenxue will also participate, such as "Liuhe Strategic Investment Fund", "Zhiwei Semiconductor Investment Fund", "Zhiyun Future Investment Fund", "Zhiyun Strategic Investment Fund", "HaiLan Industrial Investment Fund", and "Yihai Strategic Investment Fund".

These investment funds under Xu Shenxue are all extremely well-funded...The sources of their funds are also varied. Some are funds owned by Xu Shenxue's companies, some are Xu Shenxue's personal funds, and some are funds absorbed from other capitals, including a large number of national team funds.

Once a project is chosen by them, it means that funds and various other resources will be in place quickly... If your project is good enough, these Zhiyun investment funds can even mobilize tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars for investment.

However, the investment funds controlled by Xu Shenxue all serve the entire business sector of Xu Shenxue. They value not just investment returns, but more to support the entire industrial chain, so it is not easy to obtain their investment.

In addition to the investment funds controlled by Xu Shenxue, a large number of domestic investment institutions will also send heavyweight management and teams to look for investment opportunities in a few days.

For example, the investment departments of several relatively wealthy domestic technology and Internet companies.

Still others are pure venture capital firms.

And the capital is not limited to foreign countries. In fact, there are also a lot of foreign investment institutions, such as Temasek Investment, West Asia Petroleum Fund, and even Wall Street. Capital from Europe will also come to fish...

Capital comes from all over the world, and similarly, many high-tech companies attending the conference also come from all over the world... Although there are the most high-tech companies in China, there are also many high-tech companies from the United States, Europe and other regions, and even companies from Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, India and other places will come.

Zhiyun's flagship phone launch conference and global high-tech summit are open to the world. Those who can appear at such an occasion today are generally powerful companies, either with money, technology, or great potential, so they can receive an invitation to Zhiyun Group's flagship phone launch conference.

Ordinary small startups don’t have the ability to get an invitation to the Zhiyun flagship phone launch conference...but many small and medium-sized enterprises will also go outside the venue and just invite people to chat.

Based on this situation, Shenzhen will also hold various technology forums, investment forums and other related meetings during this period to build bridges between small and medium-sized technology companies and investors. Of course, the most important thing is to invite them to invest and settle in Shenzhen.

Therefore, during the period before and after the launch of Zhiyun’s flagship phone, the high-tech and investment industries in Shenzhen were actually very lively.

A large number of small and medium-sized high-tech companies attend various conferences to make connections, look for cooperation opportunities and attract investment.

Investment institutions are also entering their busiest time of the year, attending meetings everywhere and looking for the next "Zhiyun Group".

However, these various peripheral high-tech industry conferences and forums are still far behind the global high-tech summit hosted by Zhiyun Group on the eve of the flagship phone launch.

This can be seen from the size of the companies participating in the conference and the level of company executives who come!
In Qianshan International Conference Center, when Lei Jun of Rice Technology walked into the hall with a few subordinates with a smile on their faces, they were immediately spotted by reporters, and then a group of reporters surrounded them and asked all kinds of questions.

"May I ask what do you think of the Little Blue MAX series of Weiku Electronics, whose sales in the first half of the year have exceeded 14 million units?"

“When will your new high-end model be released?”

"What do you think of Xiaomi's failed flagship full-screen strategy? It is rumored that your flagship phone sales were only a few hundred thousand units. Is that true?"

"Mr. Bai from Weiku Electronics said that he never considered Rice as a competitor. What do you think of his statement?"

Lei Jun looked at the reporters with a smile on his face, completely ignoring the reporters' various provocative questions, and said to himself: "Our work this year is still quite outstanding. The sales of mobile phones in the first half of the year have exceeded 40 million units, and it is absolutely certain that it will exceed 100 million this year!"

"It has always been our strategy to impact the high-end market. Last year, we launched the first generation of full-screen smartphone Mi MIX, which was loved by a large number of consumers. This year, we will continue our efforts and release our new flagship Mi MIX2 in September. This time, we will bring the ultimate innovation."

“The best mobile phone SOC, the best mobile phone screen, the most extreme screen-to-body ratio, and the smoothest user experience!”

On the other hand, the CEO of Qiandu, a domestic Internet giant, also boasted to reporters about their technological advancement in the field of artificial intelligence: "We are developing the second large-scale generative AI in China, and we hope to release it by the end of the year!"

"At the same time, we will deeply integrate artificial intelligence technology into our various businesses to bring more convenience to people's lives!"

"We are also developing self-driving vehicles that are powered by pure artificial intelligence. If all goes well, you will see our self-driving vehicles on the streets in the next few years."

"We at Qiandu remain confident and committed to the field of artificial intelligence!"

Not far away is the battlefield of overseas companies such as Microsoft. A large number of executives from well-known foreign high-tech companies were also surrounded by a large number of reporters and asked various questions.

A senior executive from Google said: "There is no doubt that artificial intelligence is the future, and our investment in artificial intelligence is huge. This year alone, we will invest at least $5 billion in the field of artificial intelligence for the development and training of artificial intelligence!"

“We have the second largest server GPU array in the world, and three of the most advanced server GPU arrays are continuously training our super-large artificial intelligence!”

"Our engineers have successfully found a new AI technology route, achieved better learning efficiency, and trained AI that is smarter!"

"Robotics? Yes, our robotics business is underway. We have established a large robotics R&D center with more than 3,000 engineers working hard. Believe me, it won't be long before American consumers will be able to use our own general-purpose service robots!"

“I don’t deny the gap between us and Zhiyun Robotics. Zhiyun Group is a pioneer in the field of robotics and we always respect them. However, we have enough confidence, funds and engineers to promote the progress of the robotics project and eventually catch up with Zhiyun Group’s technological level in the field of robotics, or even surpass it!”

More than ten meters away from the Google management was a senior executive of a fruit company, but this person was talking a lot about the issue of supply chain transfer.

"Now is the era of globalization. It is undoubtedly unwise to concentrate the supply chain in one place. We have set up assembly plants in Vietnam and India and relocated a large number of supply chains to ensure the diversification of the supply chain!"

"According to our estimates, 10 percent of Apple phones will be assembled and produced in Vietnam and India this year. Our goal is to increase this figure to 50 percent within three years!"

“We always believe that globalization is the future, whether it is the market or the supply chain!”

"Re-enter the Chinese market? We have never given up on this and have been trying hard, but unfortunately, we have not succeeded yet!"

Another reporter asked: "What do you think of the settlement of the tax case between Zhiyun and Europe, with a settlement amount of 2 billion euros?"

"Fruit is also facing prosecution from the European Union, with fines of up to 10 billion euros. What is your response to this?"

An executive of the fruit company said: "I don't know about the settlement between Zhiyun Group and the EU, and I have no comment. However, Fruit strictly abides by local laws in any market around the world. The EU's tax investigation and fine on us are groundless."

"We will actively cooperate with the review and respond to the lawsuit!"

The reporter asked: "In the first half of this year, statistics from a statistical agency showed that Zhiyun's sales of mobile phones exceeded 130 million units, while the sales of fruit in the first half of the year were less than 70 million units. Does your company have any measures to reverse the decline? Can you continue to compete head-on with Zhiyun Group?"

The management of the fruit company said: "The market competition of smart phones is fierce. Short-term success or failure does not mean everything. We are still working hard to promote the development of technology and make better mobile phones... I can guarantee that this year we will bring new surprises to our users!"

When saying this, the management of the fruit company looked happy on the surface, but they still felt helpless inside!
Fortunately, after two years of hard work, their fruit company finally mastered the 3D facial recognition technology. It will be installed in the new models to be released this year, and the new Fruit X will be launched... proving to the market that not only Zhiyun phones have 3D facial recognition technology, but our fruit company also has it.

Unfortunately, they have lagged behind Zhiyun Group for too long. Even if they launch new mobile phones equipped with 3D face recognition technology this year, they will most likely be regarded as imitators, making it even more difficult for them to pose a big challenge to Zhiyun Group's S series mobile phones.

But there is no way around it... To be honest, the fact that the fruit company is able to keep up with Zhiyun Group's pace and is only two years behind in the field of 3D facial recognition is already pretty impressive.

Except for fruit companies, other mobile phone companies cannot do this for the time being.

The four-star brand simply gave up on 3D face recognition technology early on and started focusing on iris recognition and under-screen ultrasonic fingerprint technology.

Not to mention companies like LG, they gave up long ago.

The mobile phone companies in China are also in a difficult situation. Huawei is an ambitious company and is also developing 3D facial recognition technology. It is also cooperating with many companies in R&D, but the difficulty is too great and it is estimated that it will take a long time to develop it.

As for the other companies, such as OV, Dami, and Lianxiang, they have no plans to develop this core technology at all... This is not something that these mobile phone integration design manufacturers can do.

As for Wecoo Electronics, whether they engage in 3D facial recognition is not up to them, but depends on what Zhiyun Group thinks. If the management of Zhiyun Group believes that 3D facial recognition technology is no longer a core advantage and can be released, then Wecoo Electronics will be able to obtain and apply 3D facial recognition technology.

On the contrary...it is not possible.

In fact, in addition to Zhiyun, Fruit, Sixing and half of Warwick, there are some technical research and development capabilities for core components of mobile phones.

Other mobile phone manufacturers such as Weiku Electronics, Dami, OV, foreign LG and many others do not have this ability. They are all very pure integrated design companies...that is, they integrate other people's parts and components, and then find OEM factories to produce them...They belong to the downstream industry in the smart terminal industry and earn hard-earned money.

Why is Zhiyun Group so awesome? Because they can develop everything by themselves, and the spare parts they develop are all world-class... At the same time, these spare parts are generally not sold but only used by themselves.

We develop our own spare parts, our own systems, our own ecosystem...everything is our own, and we can cooperate with each other in research and development and design, and finally the integrated design will make the phone excellent as a whole.

Zhiyun mobile phone provides a very smooth user experience. In addition to its powerful hardware performance, its core components are all its own, so it can carry out targeted research and development and optimization to ultimately obtain a better experience.

But other manufacturers can’t do that…they can only use other people’s parts and components to integrate the design.

Even Fruit and Four Star cannot achieve the level of Zhiyun. Many of their core components are purchased, so it is difficult to achieve such thorough optimization and coordination.

It’s a little bit lacking here and a little bit lacking there, but after integration, it’s a long way from the Zhiyun S series mobile phones.

Of course, at present, Fruit phones are still top-tier phones second only to the Zhiyun S series phones. Their performance, industrial design, system ecology and other aspects are still quite excellent. Otherwise, even with the protection of the closed US market, they would not be able to maintain annual sales of 140 to 150 million units!

Nowadays, although Zhiyun is strong, it cannot completely monopolize the global smartphone market.

Any mobile phone company that can achieve annual sales of tens of millions actually has direct and very unique advantages, whether it is system ecology, hardware advantages, brand advantages, marketing channel advantages, cost-effectiveness advantages, etc. It always has a few more prominent points, and then it can achieve annual sales of tens of millions of units in the cruel smartphone market.

If a mobile phone company can achieve annual sales of hundreds of millions, then it is basically extremely powerful, has a deep moat, and has market competitiveness... It's just that their advantage areas are different. Ordinary mobile phone companies can't achieve this level...

In recent years, a lot of second- and third-rate mobile phone companies have gone bankrupt, not to mention those abroad, a large number of domestic companies have also gone bankrupt.

The mobile phone companies that are able to survive and are still alive and kicking are all quite capable...

How to put it, you can say it has no technology, but you can't say it has no market competitiveness.

----

While reporters from all over the world were interviewing the bosses of these big companies, a large number of small-scale meetings were taking place inside the venue.

Many people from the high-tech industry and investors are there, each looking for their own goals.

Some had good results, while others were ignored; there were all kinds of results.

As the summit progressed, various news reports were also sent out from here and then spread around the world.

Not to mention domestic news media, many foreign news media also focus on reporting the content of their respective concerns... With so many companies participating in the summit, there are companies from different countries and different industries, and there will always be things happening that ordinary people from different countries are concerned about.

Along with news from various global high-tech summits, information about the upcoming release of the S17 mobile phone has also spread around the world.

After all, any report on this high-tech summit that lasted only one day must mention Zhiyun Group's flagship phone launch conference and the S17 that will be released at the conference.

The marketing department of Zhiyun Group released a promotional picture. Below the big S17 is a very blurry photo of a mobile phone with a big question mark in the middle.

This will arouse people's attention and curiosity!

Every year, the marketing department of Zhiyun Group goes to great lengths to use various methods before and after the press conference to draw people's attention to the new flagship phones, thereby increasing sales after the release of the phones.

It is actually not easy to make people rush to buy Zhiyun S series mobile phones every year.

After all, the Zhiyun S series of mobile phones are no longer a new brand. Even the grandparents in the rural areas know about the Zhiyun mobile phone brand.

In fact, it is difficult for people to maintain close curiosity and attention to things that they are accustomed to at a specific time...they will only think of them when they change their mobile phones.

Unless Zhiyun Group comes up with a lot of black technology every year to shock the world... but this is obviously impossible.

First of all, it is impossible to have major technological innovations every year, so what kind of black technology is there!

Secondly, even if there is, they will generally only release one major innovation a year like squeezing out toothpaste to avoid a lack of follow-up.

In recent years, Zhiyun Group's S series of mobile phones have been continuously criticized by many people for being slow and lacking innovation.

There's nothing we can do about it.

With the development of smartphones, especially in the era of full-screen displays, it has become difficult to have major innovations that can change people's usage habits and lifestyles.

It’s not like when smartphones first came out, they really changed people’s lifestyles...Behind smartphones is actually the mobile Internet.

There is no need to explain much about the significance of mobile Internet. It has changed everyone's lifestyle.

This is also the reason why when Fruit Phone and Zhiyun Phone released smartphones in succession, they caused a huge sensation.

Innovations such as multi-touch, fingerprint recognition, voice assistant, large-size retina screen, 3D face recognition, and full screen have actually changed people's lives.

However, nowadays…it is hard to find such innovations that can bring about changes in people’s lifestyles.

This is also the reason why Zhiyun Group continues to squeeze out the toothpaste, can only stack hardware performance and make some small innovations in appearance...

However, even though Zhiyun Mobile is now struggling year by year, it is still the leader in the global smartphone industry.

Every new mobile phone released every year can have a profound impact on the entire smartphone industry.

Many mobile phone manufacturers, including Apple and Samsung, are keeping an eye on Zhiyun’s new mobile phones and then modifying their future research and development plans.

To some extent, this is also the main reason why the mobile phone market has become highly similar today... they are all copying Zhiyun Group's mobile phones.

Fruit and Four Star are directly copied from the S series.

Some domestic brands’ flagship phones copy the A series and C series.

In the ordinary mobile phone industry, there is all kinds of plagiarism. Even the Little Blue MAX series of Wecoo Electronics has been plagiarized by other mobile phone manufacturers.

Who made the Little Blue MAX series sell so well?

The entire Xiaolan MAX series is now the second largest high-end brand in China, second only to Zhiyun mobile phones. It has also achieved considerable success in many foreign markets and sells well in ASEAN and South America.

This gives hope to many mobile phone manufacturers who want to enter the high-end market... We are all assemblers, so why can Weiku Electronics go high-end but we can't?

Therefore, since last year, many domestic mobile phone brands have been launching high-end mobile phones, with the price of flagship phones priced between three thousand and four thousand, and high-end models even selling for more than four thousand.

But there is no one who can really succeed... It is actually very difficult to sell about 30 million high-end machines a year like Weiku Electronics.

Especially when there is a huge mountain like Zhiyun Mobile pressing down on it.

In this time and space, it is more difficult for domestic mobile phone manufacturers to enter the high-end market than in the previous time and space.

So although everyone is shouting about reaching the high-end market, in fact their main focus is still on mobile phones priced at more than 1,000 yuan or 2,000 yuan.

This also leads to the fact that the mobile phone market in these two price ranges is very competitive in contemporary times, and the overall performance of mobile phones is better and more excellent than in the original time and space.

After all, for these mobile phone brands, the mobile phone market priced at more than one thousand or two thousand yuan is their core lifeline, which they absolutely cannot afford to lose.

As for the high-end market, it’s enough to just play around with the three to four thousand yuan market… I don’t expect to make money from it anyway.

Because not many phones can be sold in the high-end market, and they also have to compete on factors such as price-performance ratio, many mobile phone manufacturers do not make any money, or even lose money, by making high-end phones priced at three to four thousand yuan, but they just bite the bullet and do it for the sake of their brand.

However, even if it is making mid- to low-end mobile phones, if it can achieve sales of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, it can maintain the reputation of a major mobile phone manufacturer.

But it’s still not easy, the competition is too fierce.

Well, Zhiyun Mobile is about to hold a press conference this year, and a large number of mobile phone manufacturers have already prepared their homework books and started copying.

It was around six in the evening, and many guests with invitations entered the venue one after another, waiting for the press conference to begin!
At 7:30, Xu Shenxue took the stage on time and started the press conference.

The first thing we do is introduce the changes in this year's Yun OS system, while also introducing the continuous progress in hardware.

Especially the S803 chip that uses a ten-nanometer process.

This is the only mass-produced chip in the world that uses a ten-nanometer process, and Xu Shenxue boasted about it.

The CPU performance has been improved by 40%, and the graphics processing performance has been improved by 50% compared to the previous generation.

The new generation of communication baseband is even more powerful, supporting almost all mainstream 3G/4G protocols worldwide and more frequency bands.

Basically, with a Zhiyun S17 phone, you can use it in most countries around the world. You just need to change the SIM card or activate international roaming service.

Xu Shenxue boasted directly at the press conference: "The S803 chip represents the most advanced semiconductor process technology and semiconductor design technology of the contemporary era!"

What follows is a long series of SOC performance comparison charts. Regardless of the performance comparison in any field, the various running score data of the S803 chip are significantly higher than many competitors, including Apple's A series chips, Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, Zhiyun Semiconductor's W series chips, and also Zhiyun's previous generation S703 chip.

But to be honest, people are just average in their interest in the S803 chip... I know it's awesome, but the Zhiyun S series phones have the most powerful chips, which is understandable. After all, the highest-end model of your Zhiyun S series phones is sold for more than yuan. If your chip is not good enough, what's the point?
Therefore, although the S803 chip is powerful, there are not many points worthy of attention of ordinary consumers... Instead, a group of industry insiders, especially professionals in the semiconductor industry, frowned as they looked at the various introductions to the S803 chip.

A huge number of transistors, ingenious design of many auxiliary cores, a large number of exclusive chip technologies, and then a Zhiyun Microelectronics 10-nanometer process that makes other mobile phone chip manufacturers swallow their saliva.

Zhiyun Microelectronics' ten-nanometer process is extraordinary. It has a transistor density of 53 million per square millimeter, while power consumption is very well controlled.

In comparison, TSMC's 10-nanometer process has a transistor density of about 52 million... From the perspective of transistor density, the two sides are actually at the same level... After all, the level of the lithography machines used by the two companies is the same, so it is difficult to break through the physical limits of the lithography machines.

However, according to some information collected by Zhiyun Group's intelligence department, Apple is dissatisfied with TSMC's 10-nanometer process's power consumption control.

When this is fed back into chip design, even if the chip design cannot indiscriminately increase the main frequency, it will also take up more internal space of the mobile phone for heat dissipation and limit the battery life of the mobile phone.

Zhiyun Microelectronics is different. They have very strong technical accumulation in low-power chip technology. Since the 28-nanometer era, Zhiyun Microelectronics' low-power technology has been unique in the world. That year, they even launched the low-power LP process for the first time.

To date, the 28LP process is still the top process among the 28-nanometer processes. Many chips that have power consumption restrictions and are mainly used in terminal devices prefer to outsource their chips to Zhiyun Microelectronics' LP process.

The later 12-nanometer process was another major breakthrough for Zhiyun Microelectronics in low-power technology... The so-called 12-nanometer process is actually a low-power version of the 14-nanometer process. The transistor density does not change much, but the big change is the power consumption control.

When it comes to the 10-nanometer process, the low-power technology of the 12-nanometer process is continued to be used, making Zhiyun Microelectronics' 10-nanometer process technology excellent in power consumption control.

what does this mean?
This means that in a mobile phone SOC chip where every inch of space is valuable, the chip can be made slightly larger and more transistors can be stacked without affecting the battery life and heat dissipation design of the mobile phone.

This is also an important reason why the performance of the S803 chip is so powerful!
Not only is it a 10-nanometer process, but it is also a low-power 10-nanometer process!

In this regard, the technical alliance between Apple and TSMC cannot do it!
So as expected, although this year's Apple phone uses TSMC's 803nm process, it is still suppressed by Zhiyun's S chip in terms of performance.

So, the executives of the fruit company in the audience looked at this chip with black faces!

I thought that this year we would be able to make a comeback with TSMC's 10-nanometer process, and at the very least we would be able to be on par with Zhiyun in the chip field.

In the end, I was still beaten... I felt so frustrated.

If we think about the backwardness in many areas such as screens, storage chips, basebands, etc., it is very frustrating.

Then I thought of the 3D facial recognition technology that my company had worked so hard to come up with and treated like a treasure. Zhiyun has been using it for more than two years...

I feel even more aggrieved!

(End of this chapter)