Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1411 IBM Headquarters
In fact, in Duan Yun’s view, the prosperous scene of New York and the infrastructure of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in later generations are not much stronger, and even some are old and backward. But at that time, China had already developed after 2010, and in the 80s At the end of the year, the United States was so prosperous, which is indeed very shocking.

Infrastructure cannot reflect the strength of a country or city as a whole, but what can reflect the strength of a country is often the vitality of talents and regions.

On the streets of Manhattan, in addition to white people, there are yellow-skinned and black-skinned pedestrians from various countries, and it can be seen that the United States is a very inclusive and open country. In order to bring together top talents from all over the world and push the United States to the status of a superpower.

So this time coming to the United States, Duan Yun's biggest thought is that he wants to become the world's top technology company. It is not enough to build a car behind closed doors in China. He also needs to broaden his horizons and let elites from all over the world Talent joins its own company, and only in this way can Telling others become a multinational technology company.

Duan Yun and his party sat in New York for a whole day, and even took a taxi to Chinatown.

The Chinese can be regarded as the most industrious group in all parts of the world. In the 80s, clothing factories were the main industry in Chinatown, just like in a relatively popular TV series "BJs in New York". There are many Asian workers, and the most popular shop on the street is the lottery shop. It is everyone's dream to hope to get rich overnight. In this materialistic society, people's desire for money is beyond imagination.

After a day of shopping, Duan Yun and his team finally returned to the hotel. On the second day, IBM sent a special car to take them to the headquarters in Acmon, New York.

Not long after entering Akmon City, Duan Yun saw the IBM headquarters building with a huge logo printed on the roof. Although the headquarters building is not high, it has an indescribably heavy feeling.

Founded in 1911, IBM's main business was commercial typewriters, word processors, and later evolved into computers and related services.In the 70s, IBM was the well-deserved hegemony in mainframe computers.

In the 80s, IBM changed the traditional mainframe leasing to sales, and also launched its own personal computer after Apple. These two operating changes greatly increased IBM's operating income and profits.

1980-1985年期间，IBM的销售收入年增长13.8%，净利润年增长14.1%，从33.9亿美元增长到65.5亿美元。IBM的股价也从1979年末的16.09元增长到38.88元。

Chinese people think that IBM is a personal PC computer company, but in fact, IBM's main business and source of profit are their mainframe computers. Until later generations, IBM's mainframe computers are still the strongest in the world, even if they were acquired by Lenovo. Computer business, but this company still has a very strong strength and status in the global computer field.

At this time, IBM is in a period of decline in the company's business.

After experiencing the peak period of IBM personal computer sales from the early 80s to 1984, IBM made a fatal mistake. When launching personal computers, it chose to use Intel chips and Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system.While convenient at the time, other competitors also adopted Intel's chips and Microsoft's operating system, and the result was that PCs quickly became little-differentiated, price-competitive commodities.Manufacturers such as Dell and Compaq have lower costs than IBM, gradually surpassing IBM.

Another problem facing IBM is that due to Moore's Law, computers are updated quickly and costs drop rapidly.By the mid-80s, personal computers could do a lot of the work of mainframes and gradually replaced them.By 1990, the price for users to purchase an IBM workstation with powerful computing power was only $10, while products with similar functions sold for millions of dollars a few years ago.In the early days, many companies relied on IBM's technical experts. By the mid-80s, these companies had enough in-house experts to no longer rely on IBM's services. IBM gradually lost its pricing power.

It is precisely because of this that in order to maintain its dominance in the field of personal computers, IBM has been looking for new technological breakthroughs over the years, and the NAND flash memory chip developed by China Telling Group quickly attracted the attention of IBM. The scene of the IBM company delegation visiting China before.

For Duan Yun's visit to IBM headquarters this time, IBM executives also paid more attention to it. Although some executives in the company still looked at Chinese technology with colored glasses, after the NAND chip passed various rigorous tests and showed extremely excellent performance , Tianyin Group has become a new partner that IBM values ​​very much.

"Hello, Mr. Duan!" After Duan Yun got off the car, a man came from the entrance hall of the headquarters and greeted Duan Yun enthusiastically.

"Hello, Mr. McKess!" Duan Yun greeted with a smile on his face after seeing that the person who came was McKess, the deputy general manager of IBM's PC department who visited Shenzhen last time.

The Chinese pay attention to reciprocity, and the Americans are the same. They also pay attention to business etiquette. At this time, there are several other executives of IBM, including the vice president of IBM, Bloch. .

Bloch was originally a German, born in Salzburg on January 1925, 1.During Hitler's reign, his family emigrated to Switzerland in 9.After studying electrical engineering for two years at the famous Zurich Institute of Technology, Bloch immigrated to the United States in 1939. He obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Boudreau in 1948 and obtained American citizenship by working part-time.After that, he joined IBM and served in IBM for more than 1952 years.

In IBM, the top executives are basically promoted from low-level technicians. IBM is a technology company, so it is impossible for a person who does not understand related technologies to be in charge of IBM. This has become the company's development philosophy and rules.

It was Bloch who first discovered the paper on NAND flash memory chips through the "Scientific American" magazine, which aroused his great interest. He was keenly aware that this is a revolutionary chip product that can change the development of computer technology. , It is precisely because of this that he made the decision to let McKays and others come to China for inspection immediately.

Some time ago, after various tests on the chips brought by McCase from China, it was determined that their performance was excellent, so Bloch immediately sent an invitation letter from Duan Yun, hoping that he could come to IBM headquarters to visit.

For a Chinese company to be able to develop such a high-performance chip, Bloch felt a little unbelievable, but after receiving the report from McKess's visit to China, he learned that the general manager of this company was actually a man in his 20s. After seeing the young man, Bloch was even more surprised and wanted to see Duan Yun himself.

"Mr. Duan, you are welcome to visit our IBM!" At this moment, without waiting for McKess to introduce, Bloch had already extended his hand to Duan Yun with a smile on his face.

(End of this chapter)