"You stinky brat, what time is it? Aren't you getting up yet?"
Around 11 AM, Chen Pingjiang felt a chill on his body, followed by Empress Dowager Xu's voice ringing in his ears.
Chen Pingjiang rubbed his sleepy eyes, glanced at the time, then flopped back down, taking the quilt from Empress Dowager Xu's hands in the process.
Chen Guangming appeared at the right moment, smiling and saying,
"He's been running around a lot lately, it's fine if he rests for a day."
He then pulled Xu Fangjuan out of Chen Pingjiang's bedroom, and only after closing the door did he earnestly say,
"Our son is already so old, and his status is different now. He'll be getting married in a few years, you should be more careful when you need to be."
Empress Dowager Xu intended to argue,
"Isn't this just my old habit acting up again? And it's almost lunchtime."
Back in the living room, the hired nanny had already served four dishes and one soup on the table, and the bowls and chopsticks were neatly arranged.
Just as Chen Guangming was about to serve rice, the nanny who hurried over took the bowl from his hand, saying,
"Sir, please sit, I'll do it."
It wasn't their first day being served; Chen Guangming, who had been hardworking his entire life, still felt uncomfortable, and Xu Fangjuan on the other side felt much the same.
The four nannies at home were carefully selected, with special care given, making things easy, but also a bit boring.
Old Chen fished, Empress Dowager Xu gardened, but they couldn't do these things every day. Before long, both of them felt a bit bored.
They were unfamiliar with the place here, had no friends or relatives, and usually didn't even have anyone to talk to or play mahjong with.
After a while, Chen Pingjiang finished washing up and came downstairs to the living room, plopping down onto a chair.
"Shall I have the nanny get you some rice?"
Chen Guangming asked.
Chen Pingjiang shook his head,
"Just woke up, no appetite. I'll head to the company after sitting for a bit."
At this moment, Empress Dowager Xu thought for a moment and said,
"Son, your dad and I want to go traveling and explore different places."
Chen Pingjiang paused, realizing that the Empress Dowager indeed couldn't sit still.
"Alright, I'll have someone book plane tickets for you to travel around."
Mom doesn't have any special hobbies, and there are no relatives or friends here, so going out to explore is a good idea.
......
Zhou Guangping returned to the company from abroad in the afternoon, and Chen Pingjiang met him immediately.
"How was it?"
Zhou Guangping's face was relaxed:
"Not bad. I brought back two R&D teams from Texas Instruments and Taiwan. Their companies aren't doing very well right now and are looking to downsize. These two R&D teams have more than twenty people. They'll arrive in Dongjiang with their families in half a month. Housing and such are easy to resolve; the main issue is their children's schooling."
"Dongjiang isn't without international schools, they're just a bit far. If absolutely necessary, I'll get them into key middle schools, though language might be a bit of a hassle."
Zhou Guangping said,
"This time, I visited all the suppliers, both domestic and international. We've paid deposits for the first batch of one million units, and the price has essentially reached the lowest we can get at our volume."
Chen Pingjiang nodded,
"That's excellent. Once the samples are in place, everyone should strive to produce the prototypes in the shortest possible time."
Lin Bin, standing nearby, also smiled,
"I thought you might slack off now that you've become the richest man."
"How could that be? Mr. Lei is so rich, yet he's still busy with his second venture. In comparison, what I have is all superficial, just shares. Besides, I'm not that old yet; I'm certainly not retiring now. It's just that after having money, I can do some things I want to do, like making phones."
Zhou Guangping reported the prices for various components to Chen Pingjiang, but Chen Pingjiang waved his hand:
"When you employ someone, trust them; if you doubt them, don't employ them. Old Zhou, when you tell me these prices, I don't know if they're high or low. In short, I trust you to handle things."
As Zhou Guangping said, Orange Phone is relatively unknown.
It's impossible for them to offer you the same prices as long-standing partners of established major manufacturers right from the start.
Without scaling up, Orange Phone's ordering price will definitely be higher than other competitors.
That's a no-brainer.
Chen Pingjiang himself didn't intend to make much money from the Orange S1 phone; as long as it didn't lose money, it was fine.
"Combining hardware and software engineering with your suggestions, Mr. Chen, we have finalized details such as the phone's shape, color, functions, and performance. We can begin printed circuit board manufacturing immediately after receiving the components."
Printed circuit boards are the core components of a phone, connecting numerous electronic components, and involve processes such as circuit design, plate making, printing, etching, and gold plating.
After this step, it's assembly and integration.
Various components are placed on the printed circuit board either manually or using automated equipment, then welded and fixed.
After that, the phone casing, display, battery, etc., are added.
After quality inspection, a phone is born.
Then, the operating system and other software are installed, ensuring there are no bugs.
This is called a prototype, also known as an engineering sample.
Based on the prototypes, after continuous testing, adjustments, modifications, and optimization, the production of engineering machines begins.
Approximately 20-30 engineering machines are produced, with numbers varying by company.
The purpose is to broaden the testing scope, allow for real-world usage, promptly modify any issues, finalize the design, and then begin mass production.
Zhou Guangping seemed to remember something and suddenly said,
"Oh, by the way, Mr. Chen, I forgot to tell you that I independently purchased the CDMA patent from VIA."
"What was that?"
Chen Pingjiang's tone rose.
"Well done."
Many people might not have heard of VIA, but this Taiwanese company was a force to be reckoned with around 2000.
As a globally renowned motherboard chipset design manufacturer, its market share once reached 50%, producing chipsets for both Intel and AMD processors.
VIA was the third company globally, after Intel and AMD, to receive authorization for the X86 architecture, earning it the title "Intel of Taiwan."
VIA was the only company besides Qualcomm to possess CDMA baseband authorization.
Famous companies like Huawei and MediaTek did not have CDMA authorization and had to purchase it from third parties.
VIA was then the only manufacturer in the world capable of simultaneously producing X86 and ARM architecture processors, with its products widely used in various embedded devices.
Moreover, VIA also owned a large amount of intellectual property in the CPU and GPU design and manufacturing fields.
If not for certain factors preventing Chen Pingjiang from acquiring VIA, he would have spared no expense to do so.
Speaking of CDMA, it was first introduced by Qualcomm.
Like GSM, CDMA also has 2G, 2.5G, and 3G technologies.
CDMA was considered the preferred choice for 3rd generation mobile communication technology, with cdma2000 being a technical standard within the CDMA framework.
All patents are held by Qualcomm and VIA.
Therefore, for Orange Phone to launch all-network-compatible or China Telecom phones, it must use baseband products provided by these two companies.
Currently, the Orange S1 phone is pre-ordered with Qualcomm's overall SOC solution, which saves time and effort, but its drawbacks are its high cost and the potential for being constrained.
Zhou Guangping smiled,
"We've now obtained the ARM instruction license and the CDMA patent authorization, so chip design work can begin."
Lin Bin sighed with emotion,
"VIA is a good company, but unfortunately, it's almost been crippled by patent constraints."
"Yes, their market share is now less than 10% because they've been operating at a loss for the past few years and lack funds to upgrade production processes and develop new related products.
They have significantly fallen behind Qualcomm overall. Although their new low-cost baseband CBP8.2D, based on 55nm process technology, is a solution, it's not very mature, so I could only choose Qualcomm."
Chen Pingjiang nodded,
"There's nothing we can do about it. Qualcomm is still doing great, making money effortlessly. You can't not buy from them."
Currently, Qualcomm offers the most mature solution in the world, not only for CPU, GPU, and baseband, but also for a series of other technical standards like Wi-Fi and memory, all of which are the latest.
In high-tech fields such as communication networks, communication terminals, and chips, an unseen patent war is underway.
Those companies in America use patents to harvest emerging markets.
If you dare to challenge them without patents, you'll be beaten to a pulp, just like HTC was.
To give a simple example, in the 90s, installing telephones door-to-door incurred an initial installation fee, ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 yuan.
This money went to Cisco.
It wasn't until Huawei grew that the installation fee significantly decreased.
If you want to enter the international market, you either buy other people's patents or develop your own.
Buying specialized patents means essentially working for major manufacturers like Samsung and Qualcomm; phone makers themselves can only earn meager profits, with the bulk going to others.
Self-development is also not simple; you might spend a lot of money, but not necessarily get the desired results.
Chen Pingjiang plunged into this field, and each of his competitors had a sea of patents.
If you don't have patents, you either pay up obediently, or you can forget about selling internationally.
Even selling domestically might become difficult in a few more years.
Didn't we often hear news before about Apple suing Qualcomm, Apple suing Samsung, Samsung suing Apple, Samsung suing Qualcomm, and Qualcomm suing everyone?
These were all patent wars, and in the end, everyone settled.
If you sue me for infringing your patent, I'll sue you for infringing mine.
Everyone holds a hand of cards.
You play one, I play one.
If my cards run out and you're left with a pile of cards you can't play, then sorry, cede territory and pay reparations.
Why did Huawei rise in the telecommunications field?
Precisely because it has many patents.
Given ten thousand choices, Chen Pingjiang would not want to kneel; instead, he wants to become another Huawei and Apple.
China Telecom sold its soul to Qualcomm back then, and ultimately got utterly fleeced on CDMA.
Zhou Guangping said,
"Qualcomm is becoming increasingly greedy. The core idea of 3GPP discussions on LTE was 'de-Qualcommization.' Now Qualcomm has abandoned its UMB technology itself. We should focus on developing LTE to avoid being controlled by others in the future."
In the 3G era, Qualcomm overfished the pond, with exorbitant patent fees deterring other manufacturers.
Unexpectedly, in the 4G era, Qualcomm still wanted to play the same game.
UMB was just another patent barrier painstakingly built by Qualcomm.
Even a fool would know that adopting this standard would lead to ruin.
All major European and domestic manufacturers rushed to research LTE, ignoring UMB completely.
This put Qualcomm in a difficult position, and they could only eagerly follow suit and develop LTE.
LTE has multiple patent holders, comprising major manufacturers, but UMB primarily had only Qualcomm.
This situation is like new energy vehicles years later: the Japanese focused on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, building very high patent barriers, intending to reap the benefits while disregarding anything related to hydrogen transport.
Later, the entire world abandoned hydrogen energy and shifted to lithium battery vehicles.
This left the Japanese players dumbfounded, and they could only grudgingly go into hybrid technology.
For competition, LTE patent holders signed a document, setting an upper limit for patent fee collection, which was lower than 3G patent fee standards (but higher than 2G).
Ultimately, it's all about companies from various countries preventing Qualcomm from dominating.
If Qualcomm had truly made UMB successful, it would have become a vampire.
The inspiration for this chapter came from a video on Douyin I saw recently, a patent war recounted by a senior figure from Huawei in Suxun Technology.
It took me three full hours to write.
(End of chapter)