1991 Starting from the core

At around six o'clock in the afternoon, He Wei and her team arrived in Shanghai from the Special Economic Zone. At seven o'clock that night, Xiao Ziming, the vice president of the marketing department, also rushed over. For a time, the entire marketing and marketing departments of Yuanxin gathered in Shanghai, temporarily treating this place as a battlefield.

In one afternoon, all kinds of information, including the current demands and status of the companies that cooperated with Yuanxin, were quickly gathered.

In Wen Xiaoqian's words, the fax machine in the science and technology park almost burned due to overheating.

…

At nine o'clock, the conference room of the Flash Memory Division was brightly lit.

Li Mingliu and Gao Xiaodi knew that they couldn't be of much help, so they just came to show their faces and then left.

Since it was an enlarged meeting of two departments, all middle-level and above leaders attended, and the roundtable conference room, which could accommodate twenty people, was packed to the brim.

Okay, everyone, please stop what you are doing. Duan Yongping saw that everyone had arrived and announced that the impromptu meeting had officially begun.

Everyone must already know what happened at today's daytime press conference, so I won't repeat it again. Now I will just talk about the motivations and consequences of price reductions by foreign friends, and then we will discuss countermeasures.

Duan Yongping glanced down at his notebook, and then glanced at Su Yuanshan sitting next to him out of the corner of his eye. He was filled with emotion - this afternoon, Su Yuanshan had been analyzing the impact of the price cuts by foreign merchants on him and Wang Chaoxin. and consequences.

In Yuanxin, it is well known that Mr. Shan is vigilant in times of peace. Judging from the price cuts of his competitors this time, if he were an ordinary person, he would probably think that he has been squeezed out of the mid- to low-end market by the cooperation of Yuanxin and Zhongxin for a long time. To suppress the expulsion of foreign brands, this price reduction is a desperate move.

The best way to deal with it is to just lower the price.

However, Mr. Shan believes that foreign businessmen have more far-reaching intentions in this collective price reduction incident.

Based on the information and intelligence we have obtained so far, we must first admit that this price reduction means that foreign counterparts have a thorough understanding of our country's policies, market direction, people's purchasing power and other factors.

Coupled with the current turmoil in the financial market in Southeast Asia, a large amount of investment has been withdrawn from Southeast Asia and transferred to our country. Through cooperation with domestic enterprises and local governments, the cost of mobile phones currently produced by foreign brands in China can be reduced. To very low.”

“Reducing costs means increasing profits, but they did not enjoy high profits. Instead, they chose to lower prices and spread them across the board... This means that foreign brands have increased their emphasis on the domestic market.

Frankly speaking, this is good for Vidoo, but it may not be a good thing for other domestic brands.

And among the models released this time, the solutions adopted by foreign brands are still the same old solutions. In a sense, they are using mature, low-cost, and backward solutions to prevent the SOC baseband integration solution we have adopted. .In order to gain opportunities for their baseband integration solutions to catch up.

Duan Yongping knocked on the table as he spoke and his expression became serious: You should all know what the YX architecture means to us - the future we are targeting is the digital age, and mobile phones are only the most representative product in the digital age.

In the future, Yuanxin will be Intel in the digital field, and YX architecture will be X86.

If you turn to the fifth page of the document, you will see the current international companies and situations of baseband integration solutions. We can see that in the field of baseband integration, we have the highest degree of completion and the fastest progress.

Although Su Yuanshan had already read all the documents, he still followed Duan Yongping's instructions and flipped through them.

Thanks to the fact that the YX architecture killed ARM's advantages, coupled with the advance layout of communication protocols, Yuanxin naturally took the lead in the integration plan.

Of course, compared with later generations of SOC chips from Qualcomm, MTK, Samsung, Apple, etc., the current level of integration is certainly not good enough. It only integrates processors, modem modules and various interfaces. DSP, channel coding and other functions also require plug-ins. .

Among them, the ones that are catching up the most are Qualcomm and Motorola's integration solutions based on the MIPS architecture, followed by Huaju and Lianhua Technology's integration solutions based on the YX architecture.

As for Europe, because ARM has been completely crushed by the YX architecture, Apple's withdrawal has lost the opportunity and ability to integrate chips...

Obviously, with the 3G standard being put on the agenda, major communication equipment companies have realized that in the mobile Internet era, high-performance SOC is the best or even the only solution and way out.

But now it seems that the fastest runner on this road is undoubtedly Yuan Xin, the dark horse.

If we don't stop it... Yuanxin may be in more trouble than Intel in the future.

And according to the news, Intel also plans to intervene in the field of low-power processors. Duan Yongping looked at the crowd with a serious expression: This is related to Yuanxin's right to speak in the future baseband chip field. Therefore, we cannot be ignored by foreign brands. They were confused by the behavior of lowering prices to seize the market.”

Duan Yongping's words set the tone for this meeting.

Let's talk about our opinions and see where we need to start in order to respond perfectly. Who comes first?

As Duan Yongping's eyes swept across, Cao Xiaoliang glanced sideways again. He Wei smiled at him and stretched out her hand to invite him.

I'm at the press conference today, so let me start by talking about it. Cao Xiaoliang cleared his throat, looked at the crowd and said: The press conference has not ended yet, and our marketing team who stayed in Shanghai went everywhere to buy new products. Cell phones. Bought a lot too - everyone saw it.

Through the disassembly analysis in the afternoon and the information faxed by Mr. Jiang, we can roughly get the cost and gross profit of the brand with this price reduction. Of course, this is not important. What is important is the mobile phone shipments and gross profit sent by Mr. Chen. The number of clearances, as well as the data on the growth rate of mobile users in the past few months.

According to these data, domestic mobile phone sales this year will be significantly higher than last year. This range is not as simple as doubling - by the end of the year, mobile phone users are very likely to reach 20 million. In other words, in Stimulated by the significant reduction in network access fees, the average monthly sales this year will reach 1.1 million units.

Even if 10% of old mobile phones are excluded and recirculated online, an average of 1 million new mobile phones will appear in the hands of users every month - even if each mobile phone only sells for 2,000 yuan, this is an emerging market of more than 24 billion yuan. ! Not to mention the large domestic population, the economy is in a state of rapid development, and the future is extremely promising.

It can be said that whoever can capture half of the domestic mobile phone market this year will capture US$1.5 billion in revenue - last year in the semiconductor industry, the revenue of the tenth ranked player was exactly US$1.5 billion.

In this case, making money is secondary, occupying the market is the main thing. What's more, Mr. Duan also said just now that foreign brands are using backward solutions to occupy the market, which is why they lag behind ours. Integrate the architecture to gain breathing space.”

So, price reduction is the only way to deal with it. But how to reduce it specifically, I have two plans here.

Cao Xiaoliang said, picking up the tea cup and taking a sip, and said in a deep voice.

The first plan is to directly use the advantages of our complete industrial chain to launch low-price series mobile phones as quickly as possible and go into battle personally.

I made a simple calculation in the afternoon. If we go into battle in person, we can make an MP3 mobile phone at a cost of 2,000 yuan. Based on a 20% gross profit, that is about 2,400 yuan. In terms of cost performance and configuration, it can be It will become a crushing competitive force against Nokia, which is currently the cheapest.

The second option is for our Vidoo to keep its current model and price unchanged, and position it at an absolutely high-end position. Speaking of which, according to feedback, our peers actually helped us this time, allowing Yuanxin's The brand value was instantly raised.”

Everyone just smiled.

But because we have to consider the promotion of the YX architecture, we want to support our cooperative companies more - in addition to giving up profits, we may also have to provide cheaper solutions to the cooperative companies, otherwise they will be very It’s difficult to compete with foreign brands that act rogue.”

When Cao Xiaoliang saw Su Yuanshan nodded slightly, he breathed out softly.

At this time, he certainly knows what Mr. Shan’s mission arrangement is for Yuanxin - Yuanxin wants to become a company with world-class influence and standing at the top of the ecological chain. Then the promotion of YX architecture must be unswerving.

It seems that the only option is the second option.

Let me add something. He Wei saw that Cao Xiaoliang had finished speaking and the others had no intention of answering, so she pursed her lips and said: Although I have been working with Chengdian Hi-Tech recently, I am also paying attention to the mobile phone industry. I have data here on newly registered mobile phone brands last year and the first half of this year - frankly speaking, for some workshop-style factories, they don’t care what structure or plan, as long as they can make money, it is a good plan.

Now, in addition to the solutions we provide, foreign countries such as Sagem and Siemens provide cheap baseband solutions. Coupled with cheap batteries and LCD panels, coupled with small workshop-style production, there is no tax cost, and even There are also domestic components and so on, and their cost can even be reduced to less than 700 to 800 yuan.”

Of course, let's not talk about the quality or functions of these mobile phones. We can only say that they can make and receive calls.

These mobile phones have already appeared in the secondary and tertiary markets, and the new prices can even be as cheap as about one thousand...

And these low-quality mobile phones, some are branded as Vidoo... In short, they are just trying to fool people.

Copycat machine. Su Yuanshan gave a more smooth name.

He Wei was stunned, nodded and said: Yes, a copycat phone.

Compared to foreign brands, whether in terms of the entire 'domestic product' or in terms of the competitiveness of our SOC, these copycat phones are our biggest enemies.

Su Yuanshan nodded slowly.

Indeed, it is obvious to all that copycat phones have lowered the overall value of domestic brands - although those who buy them also know that cheap products are not good. But after actually using it, they will still scold me and blame the blame on the domestic brand. When you have some financial ability, you will start to worship foreign things.

Now, with the release of copycat phones and the general price reductions of international brands, it has suddenly become difficult to buy regular domestic mobile phones - among other things, if Yuanxin cannot come up with a solution, it will be difficult for these mobile phone manufacturers to continue to support Yuanxin .

Su Yuanshan frowned and looked at He Wei with eyes full of expectation.

Facing Su Yuanshan's gaze, He Wei took a deep breath: Mr. Shan, Mr. Duan. The two options Xiaoliang just mentioned are reasonable, but I prefer the second option - because we are a regular army, And for a long time, we have been trying our best to maintain the brand value of Yuanxin, and the difficulties involved... Mr. Wan should be deeply aware of this.

As He Wei's old superior, Wan Yongliang couldn't help but smile at this moment and said with emotion: Yes, we are making promotional videos, inviting international celebrities to speak for us, and inviting writers from all walks of life to constantly praise... even if it is just a village Auntie, I can also be promoted to the palace as a noble concubine.

Haha, yes, so our Yuanxin mobile phone is now a noble lady. If you let her go to work in the fields again...then she will feel down and out.

What's more, if we end it in person, it means that we have pushed all our partners to the opposite side... This is obviously against our original intention.

So, the second option is our only choice - I am not very technical, so I want to ask, can our YX architecture keep the cost to the lowest? Can we be like a computer board? , design a very low-cost public version PCB?

In this way, our partners do not need to invest in any technical design, they only need to determine the appearance.

To put it bluntly, they go to the foundry, and then the foundry gives them PCBs, LCD panels, batteries, microphones and even appearances with different prices for them to choose from. As long as they are confirmed, they can be assembled and shipped immediately. They only need to consider the channels and market.”

In this way, I believe the cost can still be reduced. At the very least, it can compete with international brands.

Cao Xiaoliang turned around and looked at her: Mr. He, do you mean to treat mobile phones like computers? Create a market for assembly machines?

right!

The corner of Su Yuanshan's mouth moved when he heard this, and after a moment he smiled slightly: He Wei, have you ever stayed in Huaqiangbei?

Ah? Yes, Mr. Shan, the electronics market in Huaqiangbei is very active. Although computers are currently the main market, second-hand mobile phones are also in circulation.

Su Yuanshan laughed meaningfully.

Huaqiangbei...

This magical place has created countless miracles and is even called a holy place by some geek players...

Indeed, there is nothing more inclusive than it.

I have here the costs of various series of Yuanxin chips provided by Deyuan. Su Yuanshan opened the file and his eyes fell on YX0333.

YX0315 is the earliest baseband chip. We don't use it much. We mainly supply it to Japan and Southeast Asia. If the shipment volume can reach 50 million units, its factory cost can be as cheap as 25 US dollars. We take I’ll take $10 to pay for various patent fees and earn some money on the way, which is $35.”

Coupled with other components, the bill of materials cost of a mobile phone with basic functions can be as low as $80.

Su Yuanshan said and looked at everyone: If you want to lower the price, then I will lower it.

My only requirement is that you must be able to push it, and then... push it with lithium batteries as much as possible.