Chapter 2400 The Most Important Partner

The sky was filled with lead-gray clouds, so that not even a trace of blue could be seen. The drizzle falling from the clouds made the lawns and trees on the roadside a little brighter, but it caused trouble for other people.

On the Jian River, the students who used to be so heroic and vigorous in the past were wearing raincoats and had to avoid the wind with cold rain blowing in their faces, so they were hunched over.

In such weather, the tourists who still insisted on sightseeing were not much better. They had an umbrella on their heads and another umbrella in front of them. It was estimated that they could not enjoy the so-called fun of sightseeing at all.

Feng Yiping could guess the thoughts of some of them. They had to finish the journey they chose, even if they cried or knelt.

Looking at the uncomfortable pole-holders on the river and the tourists who were also not enjoying it, Feng Yiping said, "Sure enough, everyone makes mistakes sometimes,"

"What did you say, Feng?" Drucker, who was sitting next to him, raised his head from the folder.

"I mean, I wonder if Jobs regrets selling the company's stock now," Feng Yiping said.

Drucker thought for a while, "Jobs probably had no choice at the time. I remember that he even asked Bill Gates for money?"

"Yes, I heard about that incident," Feng Yiping said.

This incident may be one of the things Jobs is reluctant to mention. After he returned to Apple, at the Apple Product Exhibition in Boston in 1997, Jobs, who was still the interim CEO of Apple, fooled Bill Gates and announced to the media, "We must abandon the idea of ​​'Let Apple win and Microsoft must fail.'"

When Jobs announced the cooperation between Apple and Microsoft to the world, Bill Gates nodded and smiled behind him. In addition to supporting Jobs, he also lent Apple $100 million for development.

For Apple, which was already on the verge of bankruptcy at that time, the $100 million was very precious.

But Feng Yiping could fully imagine how tormented Jobs, who had always been very dissatisfied with Bill Gates, belittled and looked down on him, would feel when he had to bow down and borrow money from Bill Gates.

We can probably imagine how aggrieved Zhou Dapao would be if he borrowed money from Xiao Ma Ge one day, and we can understand Jobs' mood at that time.

On the other hand, Jobs must have known that his so-called cooperation with Microsoft was just a cover. After getting the money, he would still regard Microsoft as the most important opponent as before. In other words, he knew that after borrowing the money, it would once again have a negative impact on his already bad image.

But he still did it. It is conceivable how badly Apple was short of money at that time, and how helpless he was.

In that case, it was actually a very inevitable choice for him to sell some of Apple's stocks in other companies to extend Apple's life and raise funds for Apple's development.

"Even if he had expected today's situation, he would still have sold it, but I think he probably didn't foresee today's situation," Drucker said, "After all, no one in this world can have such an outstanding vision as you, and Jobs is no exception."

"Haha," Feng Yiping smiled, "You said that, I'm really stressed."

In fact, he was also smiling bitterly in his heart. How could he not make mistakes? He should have come here to take a look when he came to Cambridge last time.

The last time he came to Cambridge, he visited the British search engine Autonomy, which has a considerable advantage in the field of enterprise search.

It's just that because Autonomy founder Mike Lynch asked too high a price and made too many demands, he returned empty-handed that time.

In fact, he should have come to this company in Cambridge at that time, which is also known as ARM, one of the two rare high-tech companies in the UK, together with Autonomy.

The stocks that Feng Yiping and Drucker said Jobs sold were the ARM stocks that Apple held at the time.

ARM is currently the world's leading semiconductor intellectual property provider.

When talking about it, we must mention its parent company, Acorn.

Acorn is a company that many people in the UK probably don't even remember now.

In 1978, in a small alley full of bird droppings between Cambridge Gap and Spenser, a group of people founded a computer production company. At that time, the computers they made with MOS's 6502 chip achieved considerable success in the UK.

Then, the performance of the 6502 chip gradually failed to keep up with the times, so they wanted to use Intel's 80286 to develop a new computer, but Intel didn't even give them a sample - I guess Intel hated the person who made this decision later.

If Intel's original handlers could be more generous, Intel's biggest competitor in the mobile Internet era might not have been born at all - of course, this is a later story.

Just like when Hastings approached Blockbuster and hoped that they would acquire Netflix, which he founded, but was humiliated instead, so he got angry, the British, who were angered by Intel's contempt and stinginess, also got angry. Since you don't sell it to us, then we will develop it ourselves.

As a result, Acorn developed ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) in a fit of anger, which is the world's first RISC processor positioned at the mid- to low-end (not servers).

In 1985, ARM1 was born (but never commercialized), and later Acorn launched RISC OS and desktop computer Archimedes in 1986 and 12 and ARM3 in 1987.

However, their luck was not as good as Hastings. The result of their efforts was that they only achieved certain success in the British education market. But even this achievement was quickly eliminated by the Wintel Alliance after 1990. The ecology was defeated.

As luck would have it, the development of handheld computers became a trend in the 1990s. Apple CEO John Sculley, who had driven out Steve Jobs at the time, also had high hopes for this direction. He arranged for Apple to develop a A tablet computer they named Newton.

From this naming, it can be seen that Apple at that time attached great importance to this product, because many Apple people regard Apple as the apple that made Newton enlightenment, and they are now going to produce a product called " Newton's tablet...

They happened to take a fancy to ARM chips.

Therefore, Apple, which still competes with Acorn in the field of computer sales, spent six weeks to get Acorn to agree to operate its chip research and development department independently.

In the end, Apple got its wish. On November 27, 1990, the joint venture ARM was officially established. It was initiated by Apple, Acorn and VLSI (a US semiconductor company). The three of them invested 1.5 million, 1.5 million and 250,000 pounds respectively.

Acorn also put the intellectual property related to ARM processors and 12 employees into the newly established company.

Since then, the abbreviation ARM has been interpreted as Advanced RISC Machine.

The newly established ARM developed the ARM6 processor for Apple's Newton handheld computer. Unfortunately, all handheld computers of that era did not achieve much, and Apple's Newton was no exception.

It was discontinued after a few years of production - speaking of it, the later domestic Business Link was considered a very successful product.

In short, ARM has survived since then.

Because the chips it developed have low power consumption, they have been favored by Nokia. Nokia's classic generation, 6110, uses ARM processors.

Since then, ARM has opened up licensing, and unlike Intel, its business model of producing its own chips has been a great success in the mobile phone market.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, Intel has always looked down on low-profit mobile phone chips because PC and server chips have higher profits, which has allowed ARM to develop rapidly.

And Feng Yiping, only after acquiring Android, did he remember how prosperous ARM would be after the release of smartphones.

We can probably say that if the Internet era dominated by PCs was dominated by the Wintel Alliance of Microsoft and Intel, then the mobile Internet era after the release of smartphones was dominated by the Double A Alliance of Android and ARM.

Our mobile phones, my tablets, our smart TVs, our cars, our other smart home products...all of them have chips developed by ARM behind them.

Therefore, he felt that he was late. He should have stopped by ARM when he last visited Cambridge. If it could be acquired, it would be great.

Of course, it’s not too late now. At least, he will do better than the original Google. When Google established the Open Handset Alliance, ARM was not even a founding member.

Besides, in view of the subprime mortgage crisis that will intensify in the future, although it was a mistake to fail to take action on ARM before the iPhone was released, next year should also be a good window of opportunity.

"Here we are," Drucker said.

Feng Yiping could see a thin old man walking out with some people at the entrance of ARM Company.