From knock-off old-man's electric vehicles to industrial giant

Chapter 322 Xu Yi: I need more money!!
"Sales exceeded 30,000 units in three days, and the Polestar WATCH1 has bridged the gap between smart wearable devices and the automotive ecosystem."

"A smartwatch that surpasses the Apple Watch? A 30-minute charge provides 300 hours of battery life—unparalleled battery endurance!"

……

5 month 20 number.

Within just one week of its launch, the Polestar Watch dominated headlines in the digital technology world thanks to extensive media coverage, and its sales skyrocketed at a visible rate, exceeding 25,000 units per day.

This has already made it into the top five of the smartwatch sales charts, and anyone who sees it can only describe it as terrifying!

The news of their plans to enter overseas markets has also stirred the interest of several domestic giants with related businesses.

It's only been a few days?

As a manufacturer with no mobile phone business and no prior experience in smart wearable devices, how did Xingchen manage to enter this market and carve out a piece of the pie?

The smart wearable device market is worth tens of billions of dollars. If we expand to the global scale, the global shipments exceed 30 million units, which is worth at least 50 billion to 100 billion dollars. Moreover, it is a clear oligopoly market, with high-end electronic watches often accounting for 70% of the market's sales and profits.

None of the players present can remain indifferent.

Lei Jun got his hands on the Polestar Watch1 as soon as possible and compared it with his Amazfit sports watch.

Amazfit is a smartwatch made by Huami. Strictly speaking, it cannot be considered a pure product of Mijia, but it still achieves basic functions such as GPS positioning, optical heart rate monitoring, waterproofing, and outdoor running.

Compared to the Polestar Watch 1, it now seems utterly unremarkable.

For example, the NFC function and built-in voice assistant function on the Polestar Watch1 are features they are internally planning to add. In addition, the Polestar Watch1's extremely long battery life and incredibly advanced gesture recognition function are things that Xiaomi would find difficult to replicate in a short period of time.

"Mr. Lei, we've done a detailed investigation into UWB (Ultra-Wideband) technology. There are some chilling details in the StarCraft promotional video. If this technology is applied to wearable devices, its impact will likely extend far beyond just mobile phones and vehicles..."

Huang Wang, as the chairman of Huami Technology and the technical decision-maker for Amazfit's smartwatch business, has a keen insight into this type of device.

The video clip he captured wasn't a demonstration of the Polestar Watch1's car controls and functions, but rather the last segment showing the use of "spatial positioning technology" to remotely control a table lamp.

At first glance, it seems to be just using a watch as a remote control.

Nowadays, both mobile phones and their internal electronic watches integrate smart home connectivity functions.

But that's done by connecting directly to a Wi-Fi signal via Bluetooth Mesh.

There is a fundamental difference between spatial positioning like the Polestar Watch1, which can sense where you point it and even precisely control the trigger to activate within a few meters.

Huang Wang's ideas extend beyond car locks. If the key function is expanded upon, it could extend to door locks, turnstiles, indoor GPS, and so on. The possibilities are endless, and it's hard to guarantee that it won't have an impact on the smart home market.

Most importantly, Xiaomi has not yet ventured into this technology.

Lei Jun suddenly felt a sense of threat. After a brief conversation, he immediately called Xu Yi, "Mr. Xu, congratulations on the great sales of Xingchen electronic watches. Xingchen's efforts in wearable devices this time are truly remarkable. This watch is really well made..."

Hearing Lei's tone, Xu Yi knew that Lei's call to him was not just for congratulations. He chuckled and said, "Lei, it's just lucky. We followed your lead and refined the functions according to the standards of our competitors in the market. The reason we have achieved our current sales results is entirely due to the fact that there is still a niche market that is not yet open."

He wasn't talking nonsense.

In the current electronic watch market, apart from Apple, the ecosystem barriers of other companies are not high. The most critical issue is that they have serious shortcomings in hard functions such as battery life and activity detection.

Since Xingchen has solved this problem, it's equivalent to addressing consumers' pain points. Furthermore, by keeping the price below 2,000 yuan, it has secured a niche in the market.

"Your three-axis gesture algorithm and UWB technology were not learned from our competitors."

Lei Jun said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

He watched the product's promotional video in detail. Once the Polestar Watch1 was connected to his phone and authorization was granted, he could use gestures such as pinching with two fingers or making a fist to switch songs and turn pages in e-books...

The accuracy of this level of gesture recognition is insane. You should know that other domestic manufacturers still have a few percent false trigger rate for the wrist raise recognition function on electronic watches.

They've already "carved" the features of the stars.

Young people happen to like this kind of flashy and flamboyant style, and its emotional value is off the charts.

If it can access the phone's background processes, then implementing gesture screenshots and gesture unlocking is a piece of cake.

Lei Jun is currently very interested in Xingchen's gesture recognition technology, and considering the impact of UWB technology on the smart home market, he simply asked directly, "Mr. Xu, are these two technologies for sale?"

Xiaomi has conducted internal research on the relevant technologies. Xiaomi could certainly do it by investing money in research and development from scratch and acquiring other companies, but that would be at least by the end of next year or even the year after.

You should release at least two or three smart wearable devices this year or next, right?

What will we do then?
When you think about it carefully, it's really a bit late.

“Mr. Lei, the gesture recognition algorithm is the core technology of Polestar Watch1, and the UWB ultra-wideband signal is currently the only core patented solution that can realize spatial perception and ranging. There are only two or three companies in the world that can do it…” Xu Yi’s tone became serious.

Currently, the accuracy of gesture recognition is very poor because all electronic watches use single-mode inertial sensors.

The Polestar Watch1 integrates a multi-sensor fusion system combining IMU and optics.

In addition, they trained the model with a large amount of data to reduce gesture recognition latency, which enabled them to achieve the current accuracy.

Although there are occasional delays in recognizing complex gestures, it is already far ahead of other manufacturers who can only perform simple gestures such as "raise to wake" and "shake your wrist"!

Lei Jun paused for a moment, then hesitated: "Mr. Xu, what do you mean?"

To be fair, if Xiaomi had this technology, they definitely wouldn't release it easily.

We should at least give our competitors a good beating first.

or……

...

"You need to pay more!!"

Xu Yi's firm tone came from the other end of the phone like a sudden turn of events, almost making Lei Jun choke on the spot!

Fortunately, he remained calm and immediately replied, "Of course, good technology deserves a high price."

Xu Yi chuckled: "The core algorithm for gesture recognition is only used in the Polestar Watch1, but we also have a lightweight Transformer model that is stronger than more than 90% of the competing products on the market, and we can license it to others."

In addition, UWB's integrated hardware and software solution for mobile devices can also be licensed to Xiaomi.

In fact, besides the UWB solution, the biggest cost inside the Polestar Watch1 is the training cost of this algorithm and big data.

Nvidia's strategy has proven that the most dominant approach is to sell products along with shovels.

Moreover, gesture recognition algorithms are only difficult to develop at present. As time goes by, other companies will eventually catch up by investing money. So why not take advantage of the current gap and make a quick buck?

Once other companies have truly developed their own algorithm models, StarCraft will then release more advanced AI models!

And UWB technology and related protocols go without saying.

It's impossible to rely solely on Xingchen Group for promotion.

In its previous form, the FiRa Alliance was spearheaded by chip suppliers such as Apple, Samsung, NXP, Broadcom, and Qorvo to push for the standardization of the ultra-wideband technology ecosystem and protocols in the market.

Since Xingchen Group has gained a first-mover advantage, it can take the lead in promoting the reform and deepening of the automotive sector, and then pull several major manufacturers into an alliance to continuously promote the ecological application in fields such as consumer electronics and smart homes, gradually improve the underlying protocol of UWB technology, and at the same time share the costs.

At that time, not only will they be able to make money by selling chips, but as the alliance standard setter, they can also charge patent fees to new entrants based on the patent pool, further influencing the overseas market ecosystem.

Lei Jun was slightly wary when he heard about the authorization method, but Xiaomi has never been a company that likes to develop from scratch. What they are better at and prefer to do is integration.

After some hesitation.

Faced with the high price offered by Xingchen for the authorization, they gritted their teeth and agreed.

After all, such high-precision gesture recognition is extremely competitive in the market.

By purchasing the license for the Starry Sky lightweight model, they can continue to develop their own model internally. Once they develop their own gesture recognition technology and overcome this market vacuum, won't they have complete control over the process?

With this thought in mind, Lei Jun felt more relaxed.

"Mr. Xu, what do you think about integrating the UWB chip into a flagship phone? Could Xingchen Motors grant backend access to the vehicle-to-machine interface? Perhaps we could collaborate on this with our ecosystem users?"

His eyes lit up, and he set his sights on the owner of the Star Car.

UWB technology can be used in smart homes and can also be integrated with cars.

Xiaomi does not currently own any cars.

Whether or not Lei Jun will actually manufacture cars is still uncertain.

However, with an existing user base, integrating the UWB chip into flagship devices and enabling smart home connectivity with Star Auto's in-vehicle system would expand the ecosystem.

Will a lot of Starlight car owners notice it then?
What if the StarCraft phone fails? Sales could plummet.

Wouldn't their Xiaomi phones become the best alternative for Starlight car owners?
Xiaomi has always grasped this excellent concept of using meal replacement products.

(End of this chapter)