"No, really not. Even if it is a Blade phone, the Blade phone may be more beautiful in design and have more features, but once functionality is taken into consideration, we found that Mphone is the best model."
The major mobile phone manufacturers of Mphone2 can be described as facing a formidable enemy. From market response to industry reputation to media public opinion, Mphone2 has given them tremendous pressure.
If Mphone1 is just the beginning, then Mphone2 unabashedly shows Zhou Xin's ambition, hoping to use Mphone to define the direction of smartphones and even future mobile phone development.
Judging from the history of Silicon Valley for more than 30 years, at the beginning of an era, companies with the power to define are often able to get the biggest piece of the cake. This is also the standard for so-called first-class companies.
In the past, there were very few companies in Silicon Valley that could set standards. Those who could do this were without exception well-known giants, such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. In the field of mobile phones, Motorola was once such a standard-setting company.
However, with the rapid rise of Nokia, Motorola lost its original position. Since the end of 1999, it has lowered its profit expectations almost every year. The stock price has been falling all the way, and the heads of the communications division have been changed one after another. .
Motorola's Communications Division is one of Motorola's three pillars, contributing 70% of Motorola's business volume. Its Personal Communications Division is responsible for manufacturing Motorola mobile phones.
The direct competitive pressure brought by Nokia was already great enough, but now a competitor has emerged from other fields. This competitor's business strategy and product positioning are completely different from Nokia's.
At the beginning, Motorola had a wait-and-see attitude. The name Newman was enough for them to pay attention to. After the Mphone1 was launched, Motorola began to study and launch direct competing products, trying to get a share of the Internet mobile phone field.
At that time, smartphones were still defined by the media as Internet phones. As a result, sales were lower than expected and the market response was mediocre. From an application perspective, if there were not enough users, there would not be enough information flow. This was a vicious cycle.
After the Mphone2 came out, Motorola quickly summoned all managers to analyze the Mphone2. The more they analyzed, the more pressure and gaps they felt. Because Mphone1’s leading point is software, the software gap can be filled by spending manpower or looking for external partners.
Although Motorola President Galvin does not believe that anyone can beat Newman in the software field, this gap is acceptable and can be made up by copying Mphone applications.
After Mphone2 came out, the gap expanded from the software level to the hardware level, especially the Mphone's multi-touch screen.
After the R&D department conducted a comprehensive analysis of Mphone2, Gilmore, the head of the communications division, seemed very frustrated when reporting to Galvin. Originally, Motorola's 2002 annual report was inconsistent with expectations and exceeded the expectations of Wall Street analysts.
Motorola's stock price has plummeted again in the secondary market. Why? Because this scene has happened repeatedly over the past five years, Gilmore is almost on the line as vice president and head of the communications division.
Gilmore said: "The Blade is worse than the Mphone 2 in terms of feel and appearance, but this is at the expense of performance. The Blade does not have as many built-in chips as the Mphone 2, and is naturally inferior to the Mphone 2 in terms of functionality.
The most important thing is that the content of the Mphone2's app store is much richer than before, and the applications are no longer limited to games. In the past, when the Mphone1 was used, mobile applications were mainly games, and what consumers were willing to pay for were only games.
On the Mphone2, various software such as music player software, video software, e-reading software, time management software, etc. are emerging one after another. The efficiency and comfort of browsing text information on the mobile phone have made a qualitative leap. If it were simply better than the Mphone2 in terms of appearance and feel, it would be difficult for the Blade to gain recognition from consumers.
We judge that the functionality of mobile phones will be increasingly emphasized in the future, and the CPU of mobile phones will become the most important factor in determining the life and death of mobile phones. Communication will no longer be the most important function of mobile phones. "
Motorola and Zhou Xin have a good relationship, but this good relationship is not with the communications division, but with Motorola's semiconductor division. The semiconductor division is another pillar industry of Motorola.
Xinxin and Motorola's semiconductor division have a lot of cooperation in China. At the beginning of the millennium, Motorola was the company with the largest investment in China besides Xinxin Technology. In 2000, the total investment scale reached 28.5 billion RMB.
What's even more ridiculous is that Motorola established its first semiconductor joint venture in China in Leshan, saying it was in response to China's call to go to the west.
By 2003, Motorola had one wholly-owned enterprise, one holding company, and seven joint ventures in China, with a total number of employees of more than 10,000. Annual sales are approximately 26 billion RMB.
Even before 2001, Motorola had always firmly supported China's accession to the WTO. This support was not just verbal, but it repeatedly went to Capitol Hill to lobby and persuade members to support China's accession to the WTO.
Motorola's behavior can be said to be based on self-interest considerations, but Nokia and Ericsson, the other two companies in China's three-point mobile phone market, are far inferior to Motorola in terms of investment scale and support.
"I know that chips are going to be the most important component of future phones, maybe one of them, maybe not," Galvin said.
I have already been in contact with Michel Meier, and he has verbally agreed to come to Motorola. After Meier arrives, he will be fully responsible for Motorola's chip business. "
Michelle Meier is the former general manager of IBM's chip division and has worked at IBM for twenty years.
"I plan to spin off the Freescale semiconductor business unit and become an independent company. This is also a model learned from Matrix and Xinxin. The independent chip company is more conducive to the overall operation of the company, and the semiconductor department will also have performance pressure. "
It's very common in the chip industry to select managers from within the industry who are familiar with the tidal swings in the semiconductor business.
AMD hired Hector Ruiz, the former head of Motorola's semiconductor division, who left Motorola in January 2000. Hector Ruiz became AMD CEO in April 2002.
"There will be dedicated people in charge of the chip level, but what about the screen? How can we implement a multi-touch screen similar to Mphone?
With the Mphone2, if we provide consumers with a pen and then tell them that using a pen can better highlight the style of successful business people, this will be a bit too underestimated for consumers with a price of $700. "
Gilmore said: "We are currently communicating with some companies on the market that focus on touch screen solutions. The implementation of multi-point touch is mainly based on two technologies: infrared projectors and infrared cameras or LED current sensing mechanisms.
After we communicated with suppliers, they generally responded that they could not match the sensitivity and smoothness of Mphone. The infrared touch screen does not meet the application scenarios of mobile phones, and this technical solution has been passed away. We can only choose LED current sensing mechanism, but this technology is very immature.
Either it is insensitive or it leaks electricity. With the exception of Matrix, other supplier technologies can only choose one of the two.
The technological maturity of Mphone screens is far beyond their imagination. We plan to talk to Mphone screen suppliers about their technical implementation details, and then see if there is any way to circumvent Matrix's technology patents. "
The main part of the earliest resistive touch screen is a resistive film screen, whose surface is coated with a transparent oxide metal conductive layer, which contains two layers of transparent conductors.
There are many small transparent partitions between the two conductive layers to separate the two conductive layers. A strip of silver glue is coated on the edge of the working surface of the two conductors. One end is applied with voltage and the other end is grounded. A uniform and continuous equal voltage distribution can be formed in one direction of the working surface.
When a finger or contact tip touches the screen, the two conductive layers come into contact at the contact position. The pressure causes the two conductive layers to make a contact at the contact position, because the voltage is increased between the two conductors and divided by resistance. Pressure, different currents will flow on different contacts, and the control device can distinguish the coordinates on the display screen where pressure is applied.
After its introduction, the resistive touch screen was mainly used in personal handheld computers and a few mobile phones. However, compared with button mobile phones, it did not have many advantages in use, so it was quickly abandoned. Only a few companies are still trying this technology solution.
The capacitive touch screen used by Mphone2 is a technological breakthrough. Another point is that Zhou Xin adopts a mature architecture of later generations, positioning through the combination of X-axis and Y-axis. This is a solution that was not explored until iPhone4. This technology This solution makes the touch screen sensitivity of Mphone2 qualitatively different from that of ordinary capacitive screens.
Mobile phone manufacturers are studying the technical principles and technical implementation solutions of Mphone2, and are exploring the core suppliers of Mphone2 through various methods.
Zhou Xin’s next move is to make a big splash at this year’s E3 exhibition.
The 2003 E3 exhibition can be said to be an exhibition where masterpieces gather. During this period, many masterpieces such as Warcraft 3, Halo 2, and Final Fantasy 11 were released during the year.
As the largest sponsor of the E3 exhibition, Riot Games naturally has the power and qualifications to define the main topics of this year's E3. Under Zhou Xin's instructions, this year's E3 exhibition will spend a lot of space focusing on mobile games.
At the same time, Flamingo Games, owned by Zhou Xin, also participated in this E3 exhibition with several mobile games. The top priority is "Legend of Heroes" created with League of Legends game characters.
This is a mobile game modeled after the "Dota Legends" game model. There is almost no difference except that the characters are changed from Dota characters to League of Legends characters.
Zhou Xin has high hopes for this game. This kind of card-drawing game has limited network bandwidth requirements, and the 3G network is sufficient to meet the network requirements.
At the E3 exhibition, the Flamingo booth was almost entirely filled with COSER and figures, and there were no computers for players to experience.
There are only QR codes for games such as "Legend of Heroes", "Temple Run", and "Subway Surfers" launched this time.
Above is the title, below is the QR code, "Please download the QR code to experience the above game."
Mphone2 is equipped with a wifi function that supports the latest IEEE 802.11g standard, with a maximum transmission rate of 54Mbps.
Charles is a loyal fan of Newman and Flamingo. He started playing Teamfight Tactics and experienced it live when the first generation of Teamfight Tactics was released at the E3 exhibition.
In the past three global ladder competitions, he has reached the top 500 in the Amerikan region, and is only one step away from the requirement of 128th in offline competitions. This time he saw that Flamingo Games had brought a large number of new games to participate in the E3 exhibition, and he was very happy.
For game lovers, what could make you happier than your favorite manufacturer launching multiple games at once?
But what made Charles a little disappointed was that when the game brought by Flamingo was displayed this time, he felt it was a bit monotonous.
Swipe left and right to control the character. Subway Parkour and Temple Escape are just a different scene. What’s the point of this? This is too simple.
Charles feels that these two games are not games, but tools to promote the touch screen function of Mphone2.
But he still wanted to try it, because Flamingo is known for its simple operation and interesting game. Maybe they can make the game interesting with this mode alone?
When Charles stood in front of the Flamingo Game booth and prepared to experience it, he discovered that there was only a QR code and he needed to download it himself. The Flamingo booth did not provide an experience session.
"It's the damn QR code again. How much does Newman like QR codes?" Charles complained in his heart.
Zhou Xin has many nicknames in Silicon Valley. King of the Internet is a positive nickname, while Captcha Demon and QR Code Fanatic are relatively negative and derogatory nicknames.
Every time Amerikan's netizens feel irritated when entering the verification code, they will secretly curse Zhou Xin twice, thinking that he is responsible for making the current Internet environment so complicated.
Charles took out his Mphone1 from his jacket pocket, then held it up to scan and looked at the app size. "It's okay. It should only take fifteen minutes to download."
"Should I buy Mphone2? There are so many upgrades in Mphone2. I'm really excited about it, but the problem is that the price is too expensive. It's almost half a month's salary." Charles was very entangled in his heart.
The wifi function of Mphone1 supports the previous standard, and the transmission speed is extremely limited.
After spending an hour experiencing Temple Escape and Subway Parkour, Charles thought to himself: “It’s okay, it’s not bad if you play it on the subway or in your free time.
Although not as good as Angry Birds, the problem is that the mobile version of Angry Birds only supports Mphone2. Simple operations such as Subway Surfers and Temple Escape can also be played on Mphone1.
Try "Legend of Heroes" again. "
At Flamingo's previous game conference, Charles was actually most interested in "Legend of Heroes" because this game uses the same world view as Teamfight Tactics, and it also looked the most complicated during the presentation.
He walked to the QR code of "Legend of Heroes" and scanned it, and sadly discovered that "Legend of Heroes" only supports Mphone2.
Mainly because I’m too busy at work and working overtime every day. Crow couldn’t even add an update if he wanted to, so he added a chapter on weekends! That’s four thousand words.
(End of chapter)
