Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1404
Obviously, before coming to China, McKess had already communicated with Wilson, a senior engineer from Texas Instruments.

In fact, this idea of ​​McKess is also very normal, and it is completely in line with the business logic of American companies. Of course, for multinational giants like them, the supply chain should be as close as possible to them, and it is best to be their own holding company. It is easy to cause extra branches and cause supply chain breaks.

Moreover, in terms of chip production technology, Texas Instruments is indeed much better than Duan Yun's Tianyin chip factory. Texas Instruments has now fully mastered the one-micron process chip technology, and is not subject to any technical blockade or suppression. To put it bluntly, it is much better for Texas Instruments to produce chips than Tianyin Group, not to mention that they have a cost advantage.

But for Duan Yun, although it is impossible to transfer patents at one time, it is actually acceptable to authorize other manufacturers to produce their own chips and charge a part of the patent fee, because in this case, Duan Yun's chip development In fact, the center has become the upstream of the chip industry, and making money through patent licensing is also a common method used by many multinational companies in the world.

"This... okay." Duan Yun nodded, and continued: "I think this is a good idea, but how much patent licensing fee do you plan to pay?"

"Currently your product has not passed our company's compatibility test, but if it passes, I think we will pay a patent fee of about US$5 per chip..." McKess said after thinking for a while.

"A patent fee of $5?" Hearing this, Cheng Qingyan, who was sitting next to Duan Yun, frowned.

Cheng Qingyan hadn't spoken before, but in fact, before the American company came to China, he had already had a thorough understanding of the performance of IBM and other microelectronics companies in the United States in recent years.

Take Intel Corporation, the largest chip manufacturer in the United States, as an example. In 1985, Intel Corporation decided to close the fifth laboratory in Oregon and completely abandon the research and development of storage chips. With great interest from the electronics industry, only one year later, in the autumn of 32, the new 80386 series was developed and supplied.

The 386's powerful ability to promote existing software has made it the microprocessor with the largest output in Intel's history. At the end of 1987, Intel had supplied about 80 80386 chips, while the 80286 chip had only supplied 50 in the same period. , In 1987, the output value of the 386 chip reached 10 billion US dollars, accounting for about 30% of Intel's total revenue.

In addition, Cheng Qingyan learned from various sources that the ex-factory price of 80380 chips is about 1300 US dollars, and the total value of 80 chips is less than 11 billion. However, Intel can earn 80 billion US dollars with these 10 chips It can be seen that the net profit of each chip is at least about 1100 US dollars, which is almost 8 to 10 times the actual cost, which is quite an astonishing profit.

But in fact, for Intel, in addition to production costs, their products also have research and development costs in them. High-tech value-added products, especially products at the monopoly level, have absolute pricing power, so Cheng Qingyan It seems that even if the NAND flash memory chip of Tianyin Group is not as good as the CPU chip in terms of technical difficulty and cost ratio on the PC platform, at least it will not be too far behind. According to the current price of 200~250 US dollars for similar storage chips at home and abroad Forget it, even if it is impossible to have 10 times the profit of Intel, at least each chip should have an added value of 150-200 US dollars, and the relevant patent licensing fee should not be lower than 50-100 US dollars at least, and IBM gave The authorization fee of 3~5 US dollars for each chip is obviously a bit ridiculously low.

"Isn't this price a bit too low?" Duan Yun said with a frown.

In fact, Duan Yun, like his wife, has already learned about the current international chip market. Although he expected that American businessmen will try their best to lower the patent licensing price, the patent licensing fee of 3 to 5 US dollars is still beyond Duan Yun’s expectations. , He also did not expect that the Americans would lower the price so low.

In fact, Duan Yun did not invest much money in the research and development of NAND flash memory chips. The most important thing was to rely on some microelectronics technology and foresight accumulated in his previous life. This product may have been developed in less than a year, but even so, the cost of various artificial raw materials plus bonuses have invested two or three million US dollars, while other companies in the world want to develop To produce similar products, the capital invested is at least tens of millions. Considering that Intel only ships hundreds of thousands of units a year, Duan Yun may not even be able to recover his own research and development costs.

"Mr. Duan, the licensing fee of $5 per chip is not low. Our IBM company ships hundreds of thousands of PCs every year, which can at least bring you millions of dollars in profit..." McKess looked directly at Duan Yun and said.

"Millions of dollars in profit..." Hearing this, not only Duan Yun, but also his wife and the two translators beside him, Li Yun and Yang Tiesheng, also laughed.

In the impression of Americans, the Chinese are very poor, and a million dollars should be a very tempting figure. However, what they don't know is that Tianyin Group is currently the largest private enterprise in China, and its net profit this year may reach 5 to 6 million yuan, even if it is not based on the listed price, according to the price of the foreign exchange market in Shenzhen, it will be more than 8000 to 9000 million U.S. dollars when converted into U.S. dollars, and more than 100 million U.S. dollars is simply a small amount of money for Tianyin Group.

"Mr. McKess, you may not know the situation of our Shenzhen Tianyin Group. Their company can be said to be the largest private enterprise in mainland China, with an annual profit of about 1 million U.S. dollars. His chip factory alone has invested 6 million US dollars, and the annual research and development expenses are also very astonishing..." At this time, Li Hao, who was sitting opposite Duan Yun, couldn't help but interject.

Seeing this, Li Yun next to him immediately translated Li Hao's words to the American business delegation present.

"1 million US dollars!?" Hearing the annual profit of Tianyin Group reported by Li Hao, the Americans present were shocked. Why did they never expect Tianyin Group to be so strong that its annual profit can reach Enterprises worth 1 million US dollars are rare even in the United States. Except for some well-known multinational giants that can achieve profits of more than a dozen to several billion US dollars a year, other companies can really reach the threshold of 1 million US dollars. Probably less than 1% of all U.S. businesses.

Even for a well-established company like Texas Instruments, whose revenue in 1987 was US$55 billion, and IBM’s revenue last year was US$24 billion, but such a company is already a top technology company in the United States. The profit is about one million US dollars.

(End of this chapter)