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Chapter 448 0438 [HarmonyOS A1 Spring Festival Sales Boom]

Before the 2010 Spring Festival mobile phone market battle even began, Chen Guiliang was already discussing the next-generation HarmonyOS solution with his R&D team.

In fact, HarmonyOS 2 has been under development for a while, but Chen Guiliang's requirements are a bit too high!

Now there are two plans.

First, continue making mid-range phones priced around 2000 yuan. That is, the HarmonyOS A2.

Secondly, while developing HarmonyOS A2, they will also develop a high-end model, which will most likely be priced above 4000 yuan. This would be HarmonyOS M1.

Chen Guiliang visited Hongmeng Technology Company in Shunyi. The R&D center has already been put into use, and the "Hongmeng Technology Building" is currently under construction.

The ownership of the HarmonyOS Technology Building is temporarily held by its parent company, ByteDance. Once completed, some of ByteDance's departments will also move there.

There are four experts present: Zhou Guangping, Pan Aiming (Peking University), Chen Yu (Tsinghua University), and Zhang Chao (Chinese Academy of Sciences).

Whether it was HarmonyOS A1 or A2, Zhou Guangping served as the chief project commander, mainly responsible for the mobile phone system, supply chain and hardware integration.

Zhang Chao assisted with system architecture and power management, and was responsible for designing the most compact and optimized motherboard, as well as writing and optimizing power management drivers and strategies. He also worked with Zhou Guangping's team to solve heat dissipation issues.

Pan Aiming collaborated with Zhou Guangping's team to develop and maintain the HarmonyOS system, and to design and optimize the system UI.

Chen Yu was responsible for writing optimized low-level drivers for peripherals (gyroscopes, accelerometers, etc.), optimizing the system startup process, and solving problems such as crashes and blue screens.

The three laboratories, which were initially disorganized, have been completely integrated by Zhou Guangping.

Zhou Guangping's scientific research management skills are indeed impressive, but if... his personality weren't so impulsive and irritable, it would be even better.

Zhou Guangping said, "Mr. Chen, I still think your all-metal body is very unreasonable. It's not just because of the technical difficulties, but also because of the battery replacement issue. Nowadays, users can replace the battery themselves. If it's made with an all-metal body, they'll have to find a repairman to replace the battery. This goes against the market!"

“I understand. But let’s give it a try,” Chen Guiliang nodded.

When Apple first launched its phones with non-replaceable batteries, it was met with criticism and skepticism from users.

Zhou Guangping said, "There are currently three solutions to the signal problem of the all-metal body. One solution is to make the metal casing itself an antenna, but experimental results show that this solution is easily interfered with by human hands..."

This is the solution used in the iPhone 4: once the user holds the phone near the metal seam on the lower left side, the phone signal will be severely interfered with, or even completely lost.

Apple's final solution was to give users a free case. By placing a silicone (or plastic) frame over the iPhone, the user's palm was isolated from the metal antenna.

Simple and rude!
Chen Guiliang asked, "What about other options?"

Zhang Chao said, "The second solution is an adjustment to the first solution. I call it 'dynamic antenna tuning.' The metal frame is divided into three sections: the upper section is responsible for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the lower section is responsible for the main cellular antenna, and the lower left section is responsible for diversity and auxiliary antennas. Antenna tuning circuits also need to be designed... This solution can compensate for the frequency shift caused by hand interference. However, it can only alleviate the problem to a certain extent and cannot completely solve it."

Chen Guiliang then asked, "What about the third option?"

Zhou Guangping said, "Nano injection molding involves nanoscale etching on a metal surface to create a microporous structure, and then injecting molten plastic into it. It is very expensive and has a low yield rate. We need to cooperate with Taisei Plastics of Japan, who are the inventors and global leaders."

Chen Guiliang asked, "How much will the cost increase?"

Zhou Guangping said, "I have specifically consulted about this, and the yield rate of nano-injection molding is less than 60%, which means that nearly half of the metal casings for mobile phones will be scrapped. Metal casings for mobile phones are already expensive, and our solution is to use aerospace-grade aluminum alloy. Nano-injection molding alone will increase the material cost of mobile phones by 10% to 20%."

"Is it profitable to price it at 4999 yuan?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Zhou Guangping nodded: "That's quite suitable."

Chen Guiliang said, "Then we'll use nano-injection molding technology and price our phones the same as Apple's! Next, we'll launch HarmonyOS A2 as an upgraded version of HarmonyOS A1, targeting the mid-range mobile phone market. Then we'll launch HarmonyOS M1, priced similarly to Apple, targeting the high-end mobile phone market."

Zhou Guangping worriedly said, "Can it compete with Apple? Although the current Apple products sold in mainland China are not selling well, the main reason is that they do not have Wi-Fi functionality. Even so, many people still buy Hong Kong versions and grey market imports. If the next generation of Apple products is sold in mainland China, the Wi-Fi problem will definitely be solved."

“You’ll be in charge of research and development and production, and I’ll be in charge of selling the phones,” Chen Guiliang said.

Zhou Guangping nodded reluctantly: "Alright. You're a professional in marketing."

Chen Guiliang then asked, "Have you made contact with Kang Ning?"

Zhou Guangping said, "It's all arranged. Corning is very happy to cooperate with us. They said if we sign a contract for more than 50 units now, they will give us priority in supplying goods, second only to Apple."

Corning's Gorilla Glass hasn't really taken off yet, and Apple hasn't made it a selling point.

Therefore, there is definitely no problem with supply. Corning is very happy to sell to Chinese manufacturers and expand its influence in the mobile phone industry.

However, if Gorilla Glass is adopted, HarmonyOS phones will have to say goodbye to Japanese photo printing. This is because the light transmittance of the thin-film capacitive screen is too poor, and adding a layer of Gorilla Glass will only make it worse.

HarmonyOS A1 features a thin-film screen and uses the predecessor chip of Snapdragon S1.

HarmonyOS A2 features a glass screen with Gorilla Glass applied and officially adopts the Snapdragon S1 chip.

HarmonyOS M1 features a glass screen, Gorilla Glass, an aerospace-grade aluminum alloy body, nano-injection molding, and a Snapdragon S1 chip.

These are the first three HarmonyOS phone models that Chen Guiliang decided on.

Once HarmonyOS M1 is released, it will absolutely shock the industry and overshadow the Apple 4.

If Chen Guiliang hadn't insisted on starting the project, Zhou Guangping would never have developed HarmonyOS M1. In fact, he and the other three professors wouldn't have even begun their research along this line of thought.

Since phones with replaceable batteries are all the rage now, how could they possibly make a unibody metal phone with a battery that's hard to replace?
Moreover, the unibody metal design causes signal problems, which violates the fundamental attribute of a mobile phone—communication.

The advantage of a unibody metal chassis is simply that it looks very beautiful, giving it an unreal, futuristic feel, and it's less prone to scratches compared to a plastic chassis. Who would go against market trends and design something just for looks?

Only someone as crazy as Steve Jobs could be.

Now there is another reborn person, Chen Guiliang.

He was even more insane than Jobs, directly adopting the more expensive nano-injection molding technology to completely solve the signal problem.

Zhou Guangping said, "HarmonyOS A2 has been under development for three months, and now we are about to launch HarmonyOS M1. Another batch of the system development team has been sent to the foundation. I am severely short-staffed and need to recruit R&D personnel."

"trick!"

Chen Guiliang resolutely blocked the railway.

How does Zhou Guangping recruit people?

Of course, they'll continue to poach Motorola's talent.

Motorola is continuously downsizing its R&D facilities due to losses and production cuts. This is especially true in China, where some R&D teams have become defunct, and those who haven't been laid off are living in fear.

By the way, the head of R&D for Motorola China has been poached by Wu Ying to Starcom.

That's the guy Chen Guiliang personally recruited in Tianjin to make mobile phones.

They couldn't poach them back then, but now Wu Ying easily lured them away. Firstly, Wu Ying has a bigger reputation, and secondly, Motorola is indeed in decline.

……

A few days before the Spring Festival, various mobile phone brands had already started promotions.

For example, the Nokia E72 has been reduced in price again, and you can buy it for 2350 yuan.

This delighted consumers who wanted to buy it, prompting them to rush to purchase one for use during the Chinese New Year. The full QWERTY keyboard design made some people feel particularly cool, believing that taking it out would allow them to show off to their friends and family.

In this era of full touchscreens, major brands are busy reducing physical buttons, but Nokia still has this flagship phone with a full keyboard.

Surprisingly, it has a good market presence and sells very well!

Ham is developing a new phone that's also following Nokia's lead with a full keyboard design. They're clearly spurred on by Nokia's sales figures.

Despite the price cuts and promotions from major mobile phone brands, Chen Guiliang's HarmonyOS A1 remained unaffected, only offering free phone cases, earphones, batteries, and so on.

But daily sales are climbing rapidly!
Especially those white-collar workers who received year-end bonuses suddenly had more money in their pockets, so they immediately placed orders online for HarmonyOS A1 phones and took them back to their hometowns to show off during the Spring Festival.

Alternatively, when placing an order, you can simply fill in your hometown as the delivery address.

With the widespread adoption of e-commerce, express delivery services have now expanded to more smaller cities. HarmonyOS phones primarily target online sales, and the market environment is already quite mature.

The focus on online sales has caught the attention of the mobile phone industry, prompting them to pay more attention to e-commerce.

Nokia has now established an official online direct sales store.

On the eve of the Spring Festival, the official website of HarmonyOS suddenly announced: We warmly celebrate that the sales of HarmonyOS A1 have exceeded 35 units.

Then, it went out of stock again.

Even with a daily production capacity of over 10000 units, they still run out of stock, and this is happening despite price reductions and promotions from competitors, which has greatly surprised other mobile phone manufacturers.

Chen Guiliang posted on Renren.com, Haiwai.com, and ByteDance's Weibo account: "I really didn't mean to mess with everyone. In the past week, the average daily production of HarmonyOS phones has been 10356 units. But we couldn't keep up with everyone's enthusiasm, so thank you all for your support. For those who have already placed orders, we will ship them as soon as possible."

"Damn, are there really that many people buying HarmonyOS?"

"Haha, I'm an employee of Youke. My personal performance was pretty good this year, so I got an extra five months' salary at the end of the year. I bought three games at once, two of which were for my parents. My mom is now obsessed with playing Candy Crush, and my dad posted seven Weibo posts in one day."

"An extra five months' salary at the end of the year? Damn it, I'm going to work at Youke!"

"Not only that, I have a friend who works at Youke, and he has all five social insurances and one housing fund paid. My crappy company only has three social insurances and one housing fund."

"It makes me want to buy one too. Too bad I don't have any money."

"I'm still a student, and I rely on my New Year's money to buy things!"

"Is the Meizu M8 not selling well now?"

"Don't even mention it. Meizu's legendary phone is now being severely impacted by HarmonyOS."

"..."

During the Spring Festival, Chen Guiliang received another piece of good news.

One of Foxconn's Motorola production lines is now available and can be immediately moved to HarmonyOS A1.

Chen Guiliang didn't care what Wang Chuanfu thought and happily started cooperating with Foxconn.

(End of this chapter)