Chapter 81 Zhiyun Semiconductor
Chapter 81 Zhiyun Semiconductor (th update)
On February 20th, Zhiyun Technology officially established its wholly-owned subsidiary 'Zhiyun Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
At the same time, multiple projects have been launched, including processor chips, graphics processing chips, RF/baseband chips, power management chips, etc. Basically, all chips that can be used in mobile phones will be researched to a certain extent, but the degree of emphasis is different.
In order to carry out chip research and development, Zhiyun Technology has specially recruited several technical experts.
One of them is Mei Jianye, a senior engineer who used to work at Texas Instruments. He went abroad to study early and joined Texas Instruments after graduating with a Ph.D. from MIT. After working for many years, he has grown into an important engineer in Texas Instruments' mobile phone chip team.
However, due to his skin color, he encountered a promotion ceiling which seemed non-existent but actually existed... He was not satisfied with his job and resigned at the end of last year.
After resigning, I originally wanted to take a break for a while and then switch to other international companies to continue my career.
However, Luo Yinian, who happened to learn that Zhiyun Technology was planning to develop chips and was recruiting people at the same time, has always been a boaster, and he exaggerated the various benefits and prospects.
Of course, this is not just bragging. The treatment offered by Zhiyun Technology is indeed generous. The annual salary is directly based on the standard when he was at Texas Instruments, which is actually rare for domestic companies.
In fact, when many domestic companies want to recruit talents working abroad to return to China, they basically like to talk about various feelings and prospects and then paint a pie, but they often ask the other party to reduce their salary before joining...
There is no other way around this. If we really want to pay wages in US dollars, the labor cost will be too high and most companies cannot afford it.
But Zhiyun Technology is different. Zhiyun Technology has always been willing to spend money to recruit such top-level senior talents. An annual salary of just a few hundred thousand US dollars is only a few million Chinese yuan.
For Xu Shenxue, as long as he could recruit more people and increase the number of research quotas, he would not lose anything...
Besides, as long as this person can develop the Zhiyun chip, the annual salary of several million is nothing. In addition to the regular salary, he is also given a large number of options, which can be exercised after meeting certain conditions.
He also promised to solve a series of problems including housing, household registration, and children's schooling.
In addition, Mei Jianye has been abroad for so many years and has never been able to integrate into the local society, so he also wants to return home in his heart.
In the end, the two sides hit it off, and Mei Jianye returned to China and joined Zhiyun Technology, serving as the R&D director of Zhizhiyun Semiconductor Co., Ltd., mainly responsible for the research and development of the most important mobile phone SOC and communication baseband chips.
Xu Shenxue even specially gave Mei Jianye a C-level scientific research quota.
The SOC and communication baseband, which were the focus of early research and development, are both relatively important, one related to performance and the other related to signal.
Xu Shenxue is looking forward to waiting for the year after next or even next year, to be able to brag about his own self-developed chips at a press conference... instead of using other people's chips like now, which makes him feel no sense of accomplishment when bragging about them.
The most important thing is other people's chips, what are you talking about...
Zhiyun Semiconductor was officially established, but this news was not publicized on a large scale and was even kept very low-key… After all, nothing has been produced and there is no way to publicize it. Besides, the face of some supply chain companies still needs to be considered.
Xu Shenxue explained to Mei Jianye the reason for keeping a low profile: "Qualcomm is our important partner at this stage. They just gave us a platform at the press conference and announced that we are Qualcomm's strategic partner, giving us priority in chip supply and preferential prices."
"Then we're talking loudly about making our own SOC chips for mobile phones... This is not good."
"In addition, we are still negotiating with Qualcomm for the next round of strategic cooperation, so we have to pay more attention to it!"
Mei Jianye naturally expressed his understanding. He actually didn't want to make a big fuss and then add pressure out of thin air.
At present, the cooperation between Zhiyun Technology and Qualcomm is relatively smooth. Zhiyun Technology wants chips, while Qualcomm wants to open up the smartphone market and promote their chips.
To this end, the two parties are still negotiating the next stage of cooperation, mainly for Zhiyun Technology's next-generation top flagship model, which is ready to use Qualcomm's current top flagship mobile phone chip, namely Snapdrago (Xiaolong) 8250/8650 chip. At the same time, in the fall, the existing C1 model will be upgraded and the C2 series will be launched, which will be ready to use Snapdrago's 7227/7627 mid-to-low-end chips.
The cooperation between the two parties is still relatively close. Under such circumstances, Zhiyun Technology will naturally not easily stimulate the sensitive nerves of suppliers!
The establishment of Zhiyun Semiconductor was very low-key, without even a press conference.
If you don't pay special attention, you won't know that Zhiyun Technology has set up a semiconductor subsidiary to make chips. Even if you go to investigate, you will most likely find out that Zhiyun Semiconductor is working on some auxiliary chips such as power chips.
In fact, even if it was not deliberately concealed, outsiders would most likely not believe that Zhiyun Technology was planning to develop the two tough areas of SOC and baseband chips.
With the size of Zhiyun Technology, it is impossible for it to handle this level of research and development.
No matter how outsiders view it, Xu Shenxue will unswervingly carry out comprehensive research and development. Anyway, he is unwilling to have his neck strangled by others and then eat on his knees... There is no need for that!
No matter what, he is still a billionaire, a reborn billionaire with a system... Don't expect him to be humble...
Otherwise he would rather the company go bankrupt!
----
The entire month of February is destined to be a period that will go down in history for Zhiyun Technology and even for the entire Chinese mobile phone market.
In February this year, Zhiyun Technology released the C1 series of mobile phones, and Meizu, as a competitor, also launched the M8.
Then Warwick also released the U8220 overseas in Spain... It is worth noting that as a mid-to-low-end mobile phone, it does not support multi-touch function, but like HTZ's mobile phone, it uses a trackball solution.
The most important thing is that U8220 is not mature enough and cannot even be put into mass production. If you want to truly put it into mass production and launch it overseas, you have to wait several more months. As for the domestic launch, it will be even later.
But no matter what, in February, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers released three smartphones at once!
This was unimaginable before. It seemed as if domestic mobile phone manufacturers entered the era of smartphones overnight.
Of course... this is actually an illusion. In fact, the only ones that can be sold at present are still Zhiyun C1 and Meizu M8, and unfortunately, these two manufacturers are newcomers to the smartphone market.
As for a large number of traditional domestic mobile phone manufacturers, Huawei should be the best, but the system it uses is still the native Android system... The Canvas system they developed is still very immature and was thrown back for recycling before it even passed the test.
But the current native Android is not easy to use, and it doesn’t even have a virtual keyboard... So they have to wait for Google to come up with an upgraded Android version that supports a virtual keyboard.
Otherwise, their phones don’t even have a virtual keyboard, so they can’t use it at all…
So even though it has been released overseas, it is still a long way from being put on the market.
Not to mention other domestic mobile phone manufacturers... There are only a few who are willing to spend money on research and development, and the few who are willing to spend money are not doing it well now, and can't even produce a semi-finished product that can be released at a press conference.
Therefore, in the past February, and even in the next few months, the real smart phone market in China was basically a competition between Zhiyun C1 and Meizu M1... and Zhiyun C8 was the one that was suppressing Meizu M.
Of course... there are actually a lot of pseudo-smartphones that claim to be smart phones, but don’t even have two-point touch screens and yet they shamelessly call themselves smart phones.
Then they made various comparisons with Zhiyun C1 and Meizu m8...trying to confuse consumers' perception and judgment of smartphones.
In response to this, Zhiyun Technology unceremoniously announced a shocking sales report in March.
I believe that 600 orders should be enough, so I will add more in advance.
(End of this chapter)