“Whether it is from the perspective of an entrepreneur or from my personal perspective, I am happy to see such a situation emerge.
China's chip industry has developed slowly in the past, and core technologies have been unable to make breakthroughs. In my opinion, the fundamental reason is that companies have not participated in the global competition in the chip industry. The role of national will in a highly competitive field such as the chip industry is limited.
Only if more companies need to participate can it be possible to essentially promote the development of China's chip industry, and the state's will can only support it in terms of capital and talent. This is a good thing for China’s chip industry.
It is also a good thing for these companies themselves. More participation in the research and development of upstream and downstream core technologies will help them reduce costs and improve their competitiveness. "
Later, Huawei enjoyed dividends for a long time by relying on HiSilicon Kirin. This dividend did not stop until TSMC stopped manufacturing for Huawei.
After Huawei reaped the dividends, Xiaomi's Pinecone Semiconductor, OPPO's Zheke, and VIVO also began to develop self-developed chips. However, the environment for developing chips 20 years later will be much worse than now.
After Zhou Xin's Xiaomi started, although there are computer companies like Lenovo that mainly focus on gimmicks, Zhou Xin believes that there will also be companies that are really serious about developing chips.
As Xiaomi gains more and more technological dividends from its self-developed chips, more and more companies will want to make a career in the chip industry.
Zhou Xin continued: "Like Lenovo, it relied on the vast Chinese market to become a large personal computer company. I have also talked with Lenovo's executives at the past few Internet conferences. Their main source of profits lies in Service and supplier integration.
When we talk about whether Lenovo has developed any technology, they will talk about Lenovo's efforts in the supply chain. At that time, Xinxin Technology had just been established, and I actually hoped to cooperate with Lenovo.
As the leading domestic PC manufacturer, Xinxin and Lenovo naturally have a lot of room for cooperation. Even if we can't make CPUs, we can also make some other chips, such as Bluetooth chips, power management chips, and multimedia decoding chips used in laptops. wait.
But when I was talking about joint development with Lenovo, I could clearly feel that Lenovo’s executives were far more interested in NewPay’s supply chain finance model than cooperating with New Core.
After the meeting, Lenovo's executives wanted to visit NewPay's Huaguo branch to learn about our innovations in the field of supply chain finance, and hoped that NewPay and Lenovo would cooperate in the field of supply chain finance.
Judging from my past experience with Lenovo, they don’t quite have the technical DNA. "
The host was obviously very interested in this question and hoped to let Zhou Xin talk more, "Oh~ Mr. Zhou, can you talk about it in detail?
In my mind, NewPay has always been an electronic payment company. Are you still doing other businesses besides payments?
And I'm also curious about what the technology gene is in your understanding. "
Zhou Xin said: "I'll start with NewPay Huaguo. After I invested in Alibaba in 2000, NewPay's Huaguo branch was established in the same year. At that time, NewPay Huaguo branch did not have an electronic payment license. We only did one type of electronic payment at that time. Electronic rights confirmation business.
That is to say, when a Chinese enterprise sells goods to foreign customers, the foreign customer's funds are first transferred to NewPay's virtual account through NewPay. After the foreign customer confirms that the goods have been received correctly, the money in the virtual account will be transferred to the customer's bank account. The transaction is confirmed and completed.
Of course, there is an upper limit on the transaction amount. I remember that our initial upper limit was 5 million yuan. At first, it only did this kind of electronic confirmation business. Later, NewPay Huaguo added a business called electronic debt certificate, which is a variant of bill pledge loan.
Because NewPay Huaguo has gradually become famous and has gained credibility in the foreign trade industry of the entire Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. The companies we serve include large companies and small companies, and these small companies can be regarded as suppliers of large companies. , providing services or goods to large enterprises.
Suppliers of large enterprises like to give notes instead of cash. The meaning of the note is that you can come to me with this note to exchange for cash at some time in the future, which means that I will give you a certificate of creditor's rights.
But it is useless for small businesses to get bills, because bills are only recognized by the large companies that issue the bills, and not elsewhere. If you want to use the bills to go to a bank for a mortgage loan, firstly, the interest rate is very high; The interest rate is at least 10 points. Secondly, it is difficult for banks to trust private enterprises. Private enterprises have always had difficulty in financing. Even for large private enterprises, banks still remain suspicious of them.
Under this premise, NewPay launched electronic bond certificates. We first found leading companies to make electronic bond certificates. This is a kind of electronic bill. The advantage is that we can accumulate data and track the performance of these companies on the bills for a long time. Acceptance capacity.
Precipitate these data into data assets, conduct risk analysis in combination with some other data of the enterprise, and provide this set of services for banks to use. About a year later, the entire Yangtze River Delta region began to use our electronic bond certificate system.
Banks have also begun to recognize the results of our risk assessments for private enterprises. At least in the Yangtze River Delta region, NewPay's supply chain financial services have become an indispensable part of the financial system here.
After obtaining the electronic payment license in the third quarter of this year, NewPay can play a greater role.
Lenovo is such a company that involves a large number of downstream suppliers. At the same time, their downstream suppliers will also have further downstream suppliers, which also leads to the generation of a large number of bills throughout the Lenovo system, but they do not want to use the NewPay system.
Using the NewPay system means that all your business data is in my hands. I already know your business data well before your financial report is released. Lenovo's data sensitivity is obviously higher than that of companies in traditional industries. , they want to learn from NewPay’s experience and build a similar platform themselves.
Even if it is provided exclusively for Lenovo's internal use, it will not be a loss.
When I talked with Lenovo executives at that time, NewPay was not mentioned at all. What I mentioned at that time was that New Core Technology had just been established. New Core is a company specializing in integrated circuit design. We can jointly develop a multimedia decoding chip. Installed on Lenovo computers.
Chen Jin's Hanxin is a multimedia decoding chip. If you think about Lenovo's annual shipments of one million units, such a large market, if we cooperate with Lenovo to develop decoding chips, we naturally don't have to worry about the market.
Lenovo's executives are obviously not very interested in research and development. He has been asking me how NewPay's supply chain finance is done, and then hopes to visit Newpay's Chinese branch.
From the inside, I feel that Lenovo's executives lack interest and acumen in technology. They care more about the company's profits and revenue. As a company listed on the Hong Kong stock market, Lenovo is right to care about these.
But caring too much about these will lead to the company's lack of long-term strategy. Dell has always been a learning target for Lenovo. Even Dell, I also think they lack technical genes.
The same was true for Apple in the past. After Jobs came back, he fired most of the managers and made R&D staff managers. This reshaped Apple's technological DNA and brought it back to the Steve Jobs era. This is why Apple was able to launch the iPod. Products that change the world.
Lenovo also gives me the feeling that there are too many managers and no emphasis on technology. This is not necessarily bad, at least judging from the financial report, Lenovo is doing a good job. "
The biggest advantage of a reborn person is vision. You naturally know where the future technical route will develop, and which technical route will pay off if you invest money, resources, and energy.
This advantage will be fully demonstrated when you have completed your initial accumulation and compete with competitors later.
Therefore, both Xinxin Technology and Matrix can invest all their R&D efforts in the right direction. Even if Apple has more than 100 billion US dollars in cash on its books in the future, it can only concentrate on investing in two or three projects. Go in the direction.
The host asked: "What do you think of your competitors? We just mentioned Lenovo, which is Xiaomi's domestic competitor.
Xiaomi is only a small part of your business. You are better known for Matrix and Mphone. Mphone was hailed as a product that changed the world by Time magazine just two days ago.
With the advent of Mphone, we actually noticed that after you acquired ARM at a valuation of US$4 billion, ARM's market value has tripled as mobile phone chips have become more and more important.
When you acquired ARM, did you anticipate that mobile phone chips would become more and more important in the future? "
Zhou Xin said: "Yes, we were already developing Mphone at that time. As we were developing Mphone, I realized that mobile phone chips would become the next opportunity comparable to personal computers, so I acquired ARM."
The host flattered: "Your vision is indeed much sharper than ours. We just mentioned Lenovo. What do you think of Matrix's competitors, Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung? Seeing that these traditional mobile phone manufacturers have Do you feel any pressure to launch your own smartphone?”
In 2001, these mobile phone manufacturers did not understand how to use smartphones, but by 2002, everyone began to understand what the focus of smartphones was, and each manufacturer launched smartphones that fit their own characteristics.
Nokia has launched a dual-layer mobile phone with a horizontal screen. The first layer is a whole screen, and the second layer is a keyboard. Push the first layer of the screen up to reveal the second layer of keyboard.
Samsung launched its own Samsung note, which uses a pen to achieve full-screen operation. At the same time, the entire screen adopts a color screen, and the color screen plus resistive pen also attracts a lot of attention.
The resistive screen is still not sensitive enough and has not caused a sensation, but smartphones made by different manufacturers have given consumers more options.
Zhou Xin said: “It’s hard to say that there is pressure. In the field of smartphones, it is more like the early days of personal computers. No one has figured out how smartphones will develop in the future and what form they will take.
Traditional mobile phone manufacturers are like IBM, while Matrix is like new personal computer manufacturers such as HP and Dell, so I am actually not afraid of competition and do not feel too much pressure.
But for me, what is very distressing is that I came up with the concept of smartphones and launched the first smartphone, the Mphone. This leads everyone to think that I naturally know what smartphones should be in the future. What kind of form is it.
Mphone's R&D engineers and product managers face poaching from major mobile phone manufacturers almost every day. They offer two to three times the salary in order to poach core R&D personnel from me. They hope to know Matrix's business secrets. Know where I see the future of smartphones going.
In particular, Samsung has gone too far. Not only do they poach R&D and products, they also poach executives. "Zhou Xin looked helpless.
It is precisely because these mobile phone manufacturers are poaching people that almost all mobile phone manufacturers know that Mphone's next mobile phone will be a touch screen.
The technical problem of touch screen has troubled Matrix for two years, and it is naturally not easy to solve. Even if they develop it, the technical details will still make Mphone's touch screen experience far better than other mobile phone manufacturers.
This also led to Samsung's head start. Even if it launched a resistive screen, it had to launch a touch screen smartphone first.
The host smiled and said: "This is the charm of the King of Silicon Valley. Although you have been mentioned less in recent years, you have always been the best product manager in my mind. When Quora was first launched, I really felt that An astonishing feeling.
Your vision has been proven countless times in the past, and no further proof is needed. "
Zhou Xin wore sunglasses and grinned reluctantly: "Do you want to say that this is the trouble of happiness?
To be honest, I still wish I could keep a low profile. "
Before the iPhone was launched, extremely strict confidentiality was maintained, and all participants signed a strict confidentiality agreement.
The same is true for the second-generation Mphone. The engineers involved in it all signed non-compete agreements, but they were unable to withstand the willingness of major manufacturers such as Samsung, Motorola and Nokia to pay liquidated damages.
Samsung is the most stubborn, not only poaching people from Mphone, but also poaching people from Xinxin Technology. They want to pry into the secrets of the A1E chip and want to know how Xinxin can commercialize large-scale mass production of mobile chips with such superior performance.
The host said: "I can see from your absence from this year's Internet Conference that you really want to keep a low profile.
It's just that the Internet conference without you is a bit boring. I saw Li Yanhong's interview at the Internet conference in the media. He was very official. I am curious whether Li Yanhong would be so official in private? "
Zhou Xin said: “He is also a very official person in private, and it is rare to see him lose his temper, maybe only on the day he acquired Google.
After drinking too much, his wife finally came to pick him up.
The rest of the time he was always serious. "
Later, the host also talked about China's chip industry, Zhou Xin's future plans and other topics. After the program was broadcast, although Huaguo could not watch Phoenix TV, the content of the interview still appeared on various channels in China. On the big forum.
The internet was disconnected at home yesterday, and the underground parking lot was being repaired. The network cable at Crow's house was broken. I asked the master to check it this morning. It will still be there tomorrow morning.
(End of chapter)
