Chapter 91 Chinese Input Solution
Billy didn't spend much time in Beijing, and the tour was only three days. For the senior management and shareholders of a large American company, three days is already a luxury.
But before returning to China, he personally promised Fan Wubing that within a week he would urge the company's board of directors to approve the letter of intent for cooperation initialed by both parties. If there were no other problems, he hoped that the FANS club would clear up Compaq PCs as soon as possible. Various obstacles to enter the Chinese mainland market, and strive to serve Chinese users as soon as possible.
Sure enough, after waiting for a week, they received Billy's overseas telegram. The American Compaq Corporation and the Chinese FANS Club have formally established a cooperative relationship. , responsible for market research, publicity, sales and after-sales service for the mainland market.
So far, the most important step in Fan Wubing's blueprint has finally taken a big step forward.
Next, Fan Wubing used all available energy to promote Compaq's personal computer products.
It should be said that personal computers in this period could not do enough things, but it is undeniable that, as the ancestor of all later IBM compatible computers, Compaq was leading in various technologies, and their product defect rate was very low. The performance of the machine is relatively stable, and the noise is also running in a small range.
Fan Wubing first set his sights on colleges and scientific research departments, the two units that are most likely to accept personal computers, and then the bank, the department that needs the most computers. Of course, although scientific research institutes and banks also need computers, they need servers with high performance and high prices.
Compaq's main product is personal computers, but the scope of application is still relatively small. Therefore, Fan Wubing immediately shifted his offensive strategic target to Hewlett-Packard, which is famous for producing servers.
Hewlett-Packard was not the same as the nascent Compaq. Since they were born in a narrow garage at 367 Edison Avenue, Palo Alto, California, in 1939, two young inventors, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, With the only five hundred and thirty-eight US dollars at hand, with a good vision for the development of future technology and a passion for invention and creation, he started the road of innovation in Silicon Valley.
Strictly speaking. Hewlett-Packard is involved in a wide range of industries, and it is not a computer manufacturer in a simple sense, but this cannot obliterate its illustrious status in the entire computer industry. As early as 1980, Hewlett-Packard launched personal computer products. In 1982, an e-mail system was developed. When history entered 1984, which is this year. Hewlett-Packard has launched the HP Thnjet printer, which is an epoch-making product. In the next few decades, HP's printer standards will also be common in the industry.
Fan Wubing's method of persuading Hewlett-Packard was very simple. On the one hand, he provided his own asset certification materials,
On the other hand, it slightly revealed the news of its comprehensive cooperation with Compaq on personal computers. As a manufacturer of personal computers, Hewlett-Packard is well aware of the great prospects for market development in this undeveloped area in mainland China. After a little consideration . Hewlett-Packard signed a cooperation agreement with Fan Wubing's FANS club, mainly to carry out comprehensive cooperation on server projects.
As far as Hewlett-Packard is concerned, they always insist that servers are the mainstream trend in the industry, personal computers are just a nice-sounding but impractical product, and the so-called digital desktop really needs to be realized. There is still a long way to go.
A server product. The selling price is often hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, and the net profit is more than 100%. As long as a hundred or ten local products are produced in a year, the company's income can be guaranteed. Since the price of personal computers is tens of thousands of dollars, the price is not embarrassing, the audience is small, and the profit added value is also low. It can sell tens of thousands of units a year, and the gains are limited. Therefore, although HP also makes personal computer products, it is not its key project.
But Fan Wubing is very clear that although server products are certainly profitable at present, the market for personal computers is indeed infinitely huge. The reason why HP and IBM despise personal computers is of course because they have made enough US dollars on server products. , But their short-sightedness will create countless new competitors for themselves.
Then Fan Wubing took advantage of the power of winning two cities in a row, and took care of IBM by the way. When International Business Machines Corporation saw that an old store like HP and a rookie like Compaq both chose Fan Wubing's FANS club as the general agent in the mainland, they signed a contract with him without thinking about it.
However, Microsoft, IBM's old partner, had different opinions. They felt that it was too early to enter the immature mainland China market, so they declined Fan Wubing's agency proposal.
"Damn! Microsoft is amazing! If you don't cooperate, I won't engage in piracy!" Fan Wubing originally wanted to secure the cooperation with Bill Gates, but he didn't want to participate in the cooperation, and he suddenly became a little ashamed and angry.
Fan Wubing immediately decided in a fit of rage that he must invest some money in the future, even if it was for nothing, he would build a piracy base somewhere, specializing in pirating Microsoft software, especially his operating system software.
"Now we have a source of goods, but where are the customers?" Fan Ting kept reminding the hot-headed Fan Wubing.
"Customer?" Fan Wubing pointed optimistically at the map of China hanging on the wall, drew a big circle on it with his finger, and said confidently to his elder sister Fan Ting, "On our land, There are customers everywhere!"
What Fan Wubing meant was, of course, seeing the widespread popularity of personal computers decades later. However, for now, the users of personal computers are still mainly limited to some special departments, such as banks, universities, research institutes, and state agencies. Units, etc., are very rare even in commercial systems.
To get rid of the biggest obstacle in the promotion of computers in China, it is necessary to solve the problem of Chinese input.
As for Fan Wubing, he happened to know that someone had been researching this issue, and he also knew where he was.
Ni Guangnan is an expert at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a pioneer in Chinese character information processing. He has a dedicated personality, is unkempt, and has the talent of a scientist. He always likes to question each other with highly technical problems.
Since the 1980s, the personal computer market has gradually recovered. IBM's computers began to enter the Chinese market. The port price of a /XT model that is lower than the 286 model in China reached 20,000 yuan. When it arrived at the agency in Zhongguancun It costs 40,000 yuan in one hand, but these expensive computers cannot recognize Chinese characters and operate the Chinese system.
Therefore, developing a Chinese character system suitable for the Chinese market has become an urgent scientific research project.
At that time, many people in China were already engaged in this research and development, including Shi Yuzhu and others who later came to Shenzhen and made great progress. These Chinese character systems are also commonly known as Hanka.
The principle and operation process of Chinese cards are similar, but what makes Ni Guangnan different is that he invented the associative function. Ni's Chinese cards use the characteristics of phrases and homophones in Chinese characters to establish their own Chinese character recognition system, which is different from other Chinese characters. Compared with Chinese card technology, it reduces the repetition rate of two-character phrases by 50%, three-character phrases by 98%, and almost no repetition of four-character phrases, which is very important for computer Chinese character input technology. It is undoubtedly an epoch-making progress.
Fan Wubing wanted to eliminate the language barrier in the process of computer promotion. The first thing he thought of was to create Chinese cards, and then bundle them into the computers he promoted from IBM, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard.
However, when he found Ni Guangnan, the expert had basically completed the entire research process of the Hanka, and another company was preparing to cooperate with him, but the two parties had not yet formally contacted.
"Five hundred thousand!" Fan Wubing said to Ni Guangnan very directly.
"What five hundred thousand?" Ni Guangnan was confused by the words of the young man in front of him.
Fan Wubing met Ni Guangnan under the recommendation of others. The expert in front of him gave him the impression that he was like an inventor in a cartoon, so he painfully put forward his own acquisition conditions.
"500,000 yuan, buy your Hanka system." Fan Wubing explained clearly.
"What's the use of asking for so much money?" Ni Guangnan didn't expect to reply with such a sentence.
Will the money be useless? Fan Wubing's head froze suddenly. He might have considered many kinds of answers, but he didn't expect that Ni Guangnan would give him such an answer, so that he immediately turned cold, not knowing how to answer Ni Guangnan's question.
Ni Guangnan was also looking at this young man. If he hadn't been introduced by an acquaintance, saying that this person was a senior executive of a newly established large company, he would really not have talked to Fan Wubing. After all, his own research work was still very busy. Where is the time to play house for children?
"Since you don't need a lot of money, what is your greatest wish?" Fan Wubing felt that his expression at the moment was a bit like a devil tempting others to commit crimes.
"Wish?" Ni Guangnan didn't want to answer this question at first, but when he saw Fan Wubing's focused face, he changed his words and said, "The wish of an inventor is naturally to hope that each of his inventions can be transformed into real products. , this is my wish!"
Fan Wubing immediately replied, "Join our company! I promise, we have the ability to transform every invention of yours into a real product! This is definitely not just talk!"
In this way, Fan Wubing hired Ni Guangnan as the chief engineer of the FANS club, and took a set of research materials and samples of the Hanka system without spending a penny.