Chapter 1429 Father of Android

When Andy Rubin heard that Larry Page was going to introduce himself to meet Li Mu, Andy Rubin was stunned for a while, instinctively thinking that Larry Page was joking with him, and repeatedly told Larry Page When Page asked for confirmation, he believed it.

Afterwards, Andy Rubin hurriedly set the time with Larry Page, and in an hour, he would come to Muye Technology to meet with Li Mu on time.

Hanging up the phone, Andy Rubin was overwhelmed with excitement.

In Andy Rubin's perception of Silicon Valley tycoons, Larry Page is already a very top tycoon. As for Bill Gates, he is basically a god-level figure that can only be admired. And Li Mu, a young man from China, is a non-human existence in Andy Rubin's eyes.

Looking at the entire Internet industry, there is no other person other than Li Mu who can start from nothing like Li Mu and create such a great business in a short period of time.

There are a lot of self-made billionaires in Silicon Valley, but none of them are worth tens of billions of dollars from scratch, Bill Gates? He didn't start from scratch, and few people from Silicon Valley can match Bill Gates.

Because of this, Andy Rubin felt unbelievable. According to normal circumstances, even if he applied for a job in a company like Muye Technology, he would not have the chance to meet Li Mu. Unless it was a very high management position, he would not even have a chance to meet Muye. The vice president of technology is not seen.

The bigger the company, the clearer the internal hierarchy. This is not to highlight the privileges of the management, but a time-saving method that the management has to follow. Whether it is a recruitment interview or a cooperation meeting, the company must follow a clear and definite way. Hierarchical logic, otherwise if all interviews and talks are sent directly to the CEO, the CEO will probably be exhausted.

In a company like Muye Technology, unless it is an interview for a vice-president-level talent, or an important position such as the head of a major business department, Li Mu will need to personally confirm, and Li Mu does not even have the time to understand other positions. Because the higher-level person in charge of that position will be responsible for this person and this position, you only need to see the results of the feedback from the person in charge.

The same goes for investment and financing.

Muye Technology has its own investment department. This investment department does not serve the will of Li Mu alone, but serves the entire Muye Technology. The external investment ranges from millions to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, with a very wide range. If it is large, Li Mu will personally check if it is more than 100 million yuan. If it is less than 100 million yuan, the person in charge of the investment department and the person in charge of the business department can make a decision as long as they agree. For investments below tens of millions of dollars, an investment manager and the committee of the investment department can make full decisions.

For Andy Rubin, his new project financing target is not even $10 million, such a project,

In Li Mu's eyes, I'm afraid it would be a waste of time to listen to it, so just arrange an investment manager corresponding to this amount of authority to talk to him.

However, Li Mu wanted to meet him in person, which made Andy Rubin excited but also nervous.

...

Larry Page left from Muye Technology. Before leaving, he had already sent a message to Google's board of directors to get them ready for an emergency meeting. Anyway, Li Mu wanted some of the interests in Google's pocket, not with him. Google is the enemy, which is enough to make the entire Google board of directors breathe a sigh of relief. The rest is to quickly communicate and see how much profit Li Mu, a Venetian businessman, will be given as a ticket to cross the sea before he can get on his ship.

Li Mu studied Apple's stock price today in the office. Today, Apple's stock price fluctuated slightly for a day, and the overall decline was 2%, which was basically stable.

Inside Apple, stop-loss and counter-attackers are still working hard for their own goals.

Stop Loss is still communicating with Microsoft about the acquisition, but little progress has been made. Microsoft’s attitude is relatively tough. They only want Apple’s operating system and complete machine production business. As for the rest, they are not ready to take over.

However, Apple's internal stop-loss pie wants to let go of the whole package, which means that the takeover party has to pay extra for Apple's iPod business, which is now worse than before, although the iPod business line can still squeeze out almost 100 million US dollars. The funds can be used for temporary turnover, but this is just drinking poison to quench thirst. The follow-up things in the iPod business are the most terrible. The production line is stopped, the settlement of the foundry, the refund of users and dealers, and a large amount of inventory needs to be sold at a reduced price to recover losses, but even so, everywhere The iPods in the stock state are also difficult to recover from the fate of selling one and losing one.

If Microsoft is unwilling to carry the iPod, the stop-loss party itself cannot afford such a large loss, so the whole situation becomes deadlocked.

However, the counter-offensives are actively looking for countermeasures.

This group of geeks, consisting of programmers, product managers and various technical personnel, all held together at a critical juncture, desperately looking for a way to break the situation. This is also the unprecedented unity of Apple's internal business lines, Tim Ku Although Ke was ordered in danger, he maintained the mentality and fighting spirit of the business team very well.

The counter-offensives already have a general idea. They feel that if they immediately stop the iPod business and shut down the iPod production line, the losses behind it will be difficult for Apple to bear, so they decided to find new breakthroughs in the iPod business. The specific operation is divided into two parts. First, the production capacity of iPods should be reduced to a minimum while maintaining the continuous operation of the production line, and then the current problems of iPod returns and subsequent low-price clearance should be solved; second, new iPods should be developed quickly!

The most important thing is to develop a new iPod, because Tim Cook believes that although Makino's mango-me2 is very cost-effective, its current production capacity has not yet reached the stage of global distribution, which means that, mango-me2 still has a long way to go. In the future, it will continue to increase production capacity, expand sales and after-sales system, and then complete the market occupation. On me, so, when Makino Technology was running at full speed and could not turn around, Apple quickly developed the next-generation iPod that could fully surpass mango-me2, which became the top priority of the counterattack.

Tim Cook has even begun to lead the team to carry out product project establishment and follow-up development. They have selected a preliminary product plan, which is to realize device networking in the next-generation iPod.

Device networking means that the iPod will be separated from the computer to a certain extent and become a terminal device directly connected to the Internet. On this basis, it is necessary to support the connection between the iPod itself and itunes through the Internet, at least it can be downloaded directly from itunes through the iPod music.

The counter-offensives have disagreements on this issue. Some people think that they can directly write the iPod version software of iTunes into the MCU system, and then add the lan module to the iPod, so that users can use the network and the iTunes software on the iPod. Downloading songs, the advantages of this solution are that the development speed is relatively fast and the cost is low; but the disadvantages are also obvious. If the next-generation iPod is designed in this way, it has almost no room for expansion;

Another part of people thinks that since we want to counterattack Muye Technology and completely reverse the iPod's defeat, we must catch up with Makino Technology at the core level, solder a lan module to the iPod and write a simple itunes microcontroller, although it can make the iPod Connect to the Internet and use it away from the computer, but Makino Technology will also do it in this way. They can also write yytunes into the microcontroller, and then bundle it with lan and add it to the next-generation mango-me. At that time, the new generation of mango -me catches up with the iPod in performance again, and then fights the price war, what should Apple do at that time?

So, this part of the people came up with an ambitious solution: develop an operating system for the iPod! Not only to realize the use of itunes on the ipod, but also to realize the use of other software, so that the ipod will undergo qualitative changes.

For most IT companies in the world, developing an operating system is a huge project, and most companies do not have this basic strength at all, but Apple is different. Apple has this technical strength, and it has a very strong technical reserves.

Apple was able to launch ios in more than a year in its previous life, largely relying on the foundation of the maos operating system. It can be seen that there is enough foundation to develop a mobile operating system on the basis of the desktop operating system. It's not that difficult.

This part of people just want to rely on maos to develop a mobile operating system for the iPod, completely opening the gap with Makino Technology. If Makino Technology wants to develop a mobile operating system, even if it searches for top teams from all over the world, it will take at least three to five It takes years to see results. This time difference is enough for Apple to make a beautiful turnaround.

However, this solution also has its shortcomings. In order to be able to cope with a mobile operating system, Apple needs to redesign and upgrade the iPod hardware subversively. This will greatly increase the cost of the iPod. The development cycle will be extended.

If it is a single-chip microcomputer, Apple can immediately start research and development, the hardware is mature, and the software is mature, but if the operating system is used, the amount of engineering will immediately increase exponentially.

In addition to developing its own mobile operating system, Apple also has to conduct in-depth understanding and research on the microprocessors and various other hardware on the market, and then formulate multiple sets of hardware matching plans, and then repeatedly conduct various tests and demonstrations, and finally select A solution came out.

For Apple, the single-chip solution is like assembling an unpowered glider toy, which is generally not difficult;

However, the operating system solution is equivalent to upgrading the unpowered glider toy to assemble a stable, reliable and high-performance remote control model aircraft, which is much more troublesome.

The selection and matching of materials, the selection and matching of motors and batteries, the selection and matching of remote control transceiver modules, ESCs, and servos, the overall engineering volume is huge, even for Apple, it is a big project.

The project is large, which naturally means it will take a long time. Such a plan, from project establishment to software and hardware development to finished products, takes at least one and a half to two years before it can be implemented. Apple itself is already riddled with holes. How long have you survived the crisis? .

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