Chapter 510 Domestic Mobile Phones
The technical achievements of Texas Instruments in terms of chip integration and power consumption are amazing. Zhang Ke immediately said that if Texas Instruments is a bit outdated in this regard, but still quite advanced technology compared to third world countries and regions, Jin Lakes can consider paying for it.
After ESS officially acquired Kumho, Cheng Hanzhang and Xiao Jincheng joined Kumho. In nearly a month, the two of them thoroughly understood Kumho's weak technical foundation. The mp3 prototype developed by Kumho used two AAA batteries can only last for one and a half hours of playing time, which is of course not just a problem of battery quality. Novel chapters are updated the fastest
Even if you use a lithium battery with no memory effect and the largest capacity-to-volume ratio—the cost of using lithium-ion batteries in 1997 will be very high. Anyway, mp3 will be promoted in Japan, South Korea, Europe, and the United States first, so it doesn’t matter if the cost is higher—the playback time will not Satisfactory, of course, the unsatisfactory point is far more than that, the prototype technology is still far from the mature technology to bring the product to the market.
After Kumho acquired ess, it will use ess as the main force of technology research and development. In addition to spending 1 million dollars to acquire ess, which is almost insolvent, it will also inject 10 million dollars into research and development. The technical research team led by chief engineer Ding Chunjian will be merged into ess—this technical research team has almost concentrated the best technical backbones that Kumho has recruited during this period of time—and a larger technical research team will be established. "Fiction" novel chapters are updated the fastest
However, in order to perfect the key technologies required by mp3 within half a year, Cheng Hanzhang was under enormous pressure.
Of course, the product of the mp3 player must be perfect in the end, and it also needs efforts in many aspects such as product design.
Kumho’s determination is also huge. In addition to ess in Silicon Valley, Kumho will also establish a technology research and experiment base in Tsukuba, Japan, and three engineering application and industrial design centers in Seoul, Korea, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, including In Haizhou's Kumho Engineering Application and Technology Research Headquarters, Kumho's early technology expansion includes three technology research centers and four engineering application research centers.
The foundation supporting Kumho's technological expansion on such a scale is Aida Electronics' high profits of nearly 100 million yuan per month. It will also include the part of Kumho's monopoly profit from the third-generation decoding chip market.
When it comes to the power consumption and usage time of consumer electronic products, Zhang Ke is also very clear that in the future, the first problem with domestic mobile phones will be the standby time.
Mobile phones produced by overseas manufacturers can last up to one month on standby. Domestic mobile phones can last for less than a day and night, how can consumers not classify domestic mobile phones as low-end products? Not only mobile phones, but also many other consumer electronics products have related technical problems.
This involves a series of complex technologies such as chip module integration and power consumption management.
Zhang Ke is not clear about the specific technical framework. But knowing the future development direction of electronic products accurately, specific technical issues must naturally be handled by professionals.
Of course, this is also due to the lack of product research and development capabilities of domestic manufacturers, let alone core technologies. That is, product design is heavily dependent on foreign companies. This situation of almost completely relying on overseas electronics manufacturers and design companies has caused serious homogenization of domestic electronic products. Take the domestic mobile phones in the future as an example. The performance of mobile phones of domestic manufacturers is similar, and the level of advertising and marketing is almost the same. The final means of competition is to compare prices. Once the price war starts, profit margins will drop, and domestic manufacturers will maintain their livelihoods by reducing production costs. They were forced to purchase low-quality and low-priced components, but instead fell into a vicious circle of increasingly low-end domestic electronic products.
Whether Kumho can stand alone among domestic electronics manufacturers and get rid of the vicious circle of "domestic products are low-end products" is also a huge test.
In order to achieve this goal, Zhang Ke will not let Kumho get involved in too many industries. Funds will not be diverted from technology investment. At the beginning, he half-sold the shares in Century Catering to his uncle, transferred all the property in Danjing Lane to Xu Si, and never directly participated in it. That's the purpose. Most of the funds that can be raised should be concentrated in the electronics industry, and even in the strategy of the electronics industry, only focus on the consumer electronics.
The promotion of mp3 and USB disks involves key market factors that cannot be bypassed, such as the popularization of computers. Therefore, in the early stage, they can only be promoted in developed countries and regions such as Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea. This is the responsibility of the overseas operation department, but in the domestic market and Southeast Asia In emerging markets, once the disc player business is packaged and sold to Jiaxin Industrial, Kumho will have a blank business. Although it is said that projects such as electronic dictionaries and handheld learning machines will continue to be launched in the next year, the market for such products is much smaller than that of DVD players, and it will not be the focus of Kumho; the focus of Kumho's next step is cell phone.
At the beginning of 1997, mobile phones were still luxury goods in China, and the prices of mobile phones such as Edison and Motorola were still high, all above four to five thousand yuan. The most important thing was that domestic communication fees were even horribly high. To a certain extent, the cost of opening a number and applying for a card has just dropped below 2,000 yuan. In the future, the monthly fee, call fee per minute, and roaming fee between cities will exclude most domestic consumption from the threshold of mobile phone consumption.
Since the monopoly situation of mobile communications cannot be broken in a relatively short period of time, the outside world is not optimistic about the prospects of the domestic mobile phone market, but they do not know that the expansion of the mobile phone market began in 1997, and the situation is quite In October 1997, 10 million mobile phone numbers were opened in China.
Zhang Ke has a general impression of this data. Compared with the data at the end of 1996, it means that from January to October of 1997, the number of mobile phone users will increase by more than three times. Zhang Ke is not sure whether any domestic manufacturers are thinking about this market at this time, but one thing is certain, the real action of domestic manufacturers will be delayed until two years later.
Of course, Kumho launched the domestic mobile phone project in the name of "Idea" two years in advance of the historical process, and domestic manufacturers will quickly follow up, which will further change the process of the domestic mobile phone market.
Texas Instruments is the world's largest mobile phone chip manufacturer. Zhang Ke's trip will naturally focus on Texas Instruments' mobile phone chip department. Although Texas Instruments has not yet regarded China as the most important market in the future-the reality is that Texas Instruments has repeatedly underestimated emerging markets. potential - but the mobile phone chip business can develop another customer, so naturally it will not be turned away.
From core components such as mobile phone baseband chips and power management chips, to spare parts such as mobile phone batteries, display screens, and casing molds, as well as complete mobile phone product design, there are companies in the world that provide professional services. Although Texas Instruments mainly supplies mobile phone baseband chips and power management chips, some other application technologies and product technologies are quite comprehensive. Even though there is a certain gap compared with professional companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola, Kumho is going to do mobile phone projects. There must always be a foundation. Texas Instruments is still very happy to package and sell some application technologies to Kumho.
Accompanied by An Jibo and other senior officials from Texas Instruments, its staff introduced the current most advanced mobile communication technology and the future development direction of mobile communication technology to Zhang Ke and his party in great detail.
Regarding the future development direction of mobile reading technology, Zhang Ke naturally does not need to listen to the professionals from Texas Instruments. Ke directly revealed his intention to hire Chen Xinsheng to Kumho after the employment agreement between Chen Xinsheng and Texas Instruments expired.
The rhetoric provided by Zhang Ke is: "Kumho's goal is to be the largest consumer electronics company in Greater China. In this process, Texas Instruments has become more and more important to Kumho." It is true that "the relationship between the two companies will become closer and closer". Now Kumho and Texas Instruments jointly share the decoding chip market for DVD players with Skopp. In 1996, it contributed 6% of the net profit to Texas Instruments, and it is expected to increase to 7% in 1997. This situation will continue for several years. In addition, it also includes cooperation on the DVD player core project, which is expected to contribute about 0.5% to Texas Instruments. % of the net profit, Texas Instruments produces millions of dollars in profits every year for Kumho OEM products such as disc player system control and other chips. The bigger Kumho gets, the more benefits Texas Instruments will get from Kumho as a supplier of upstream components and application technologies. The connection between companies", Zhang Ke forgot that Ding Lei, the chief engineer of Tate Optoelectronics Research Institute, had actually dug it for him, "especially in the near future, Kumho hopes to introduce semiconductor packaging, finished product testing and mobile phones from Texas Instruments. The project requires a familiar person to advance the project process as soon as possible, which is in the common interests of the two companies."