Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1548 Pivot
"Your company's storage chip technology is impressive. Last year, our company tested the first-generation chip you developed, and the performance is indeed very good." John Cohen said approvingly.

"Thank you Mr. John for your affirmation. Our company's ultimate goal is to produce the world's best chips. Although our chip company has not been established for a long time, the company has assembled the best domestic microelectronics experts. In addition In addition, we have also set up relevant R&D centers and laboratories in the United States and Europe, technology knows no borders, and we also hope to cooperate with such excellent American technology companies as Western Digital to establish long-term business relationships." Duan Yun said.

"We also hope to cooperate with outstanding Chinese companies like you." Cohen said with a smile.

Afterwards, the two began to visit the chip workshop.

Duan Yun's chip factory is now getting bigger and bigger. Although the relationship with Toshiba has been broken before, according to the contract, Duan Yun must pay them 5000 million US dollars within three years.

In fact, at the end of last year, all the 5 million US dollars had been settled, so Tianyin Group now has the permanent right to use the flash chip and is no longer restricted by Toshiba's patents.

Entering the dust-free workshop, Cohen was shocked by the scene in front of him. He did not expect that China would have such an advanced chip production line. When he learned that all the production line equipment came from Toshiba, Japan, he suddenly realized.

In the field of chips, the United States and Japan can be described as sworn enemies. Under the strong offensive of Japanese chip companies, Intel Corporation finally gave up the storage chip market and specialized in CPU microprocessors. It can be said that in terms of storage chips, Japan is now the world leader. overlord.

However, American companies have always wanted to suppress Japan's chip industry, so they are looking for substitutes for Japanese products around the world. great importance of the enterprise.

In fact, Cohen has always been dismissive of the development of China's high-tech industry. In his opinion, Chinese products have low technological content and low quality. In the past, only China's energy minerals and some primary processed products had some market, China does not have the ability and technology to produce high value-added electronic products.

Relatively speaking, Cohen prefers Japanese products, including the hard drives currently produced by Western Digital. Some of the components are produced by Japanese suppliers. The quality is good and the price is low, and there is no better substitute in the United States.

So when Cohen saw that the Tianyin Group used a Japanese chip production line, he no longer questioned the quality of the chips produced by their group company.

Because Western Digital, where Cohen works, has only just been involved in the solid-state hard drive business, and has also received orders from medical device companies, he has very high requirements for storage chips. However, after learning that Tianyin Group uses Toshiba chip production lines in Japan , he was relieved.

After visiting the chip workshop, Duan Yun led him to visit several other subsidiaries, including the video recorder factory, the electronics factory, and the company's R&D center.

This visit left a very deep impression on Ke, which also gave him a new understanding of Chinese companies. In his opinion, Tianyin Group is indeed a very powerful company, although it cannot compare with multinational giants.

At noon, Duan Yun and Cohen had lunch together.

During this period, Duan Yun also proposed to cooperate with Western Digital.

Western Digital needs chips from Telling Group, and Telling Group also needs hard drives from Western Digital.

At this time, Western Digital's hard drive market share was not high, and its annual sales volume accounted for less than 1% of the global hard drive industry. The main reason was that the quality was relatively mediocre, but the price was more expensive than those in Japan and South Korea.

The current overlord of the hard disk in the world is IBM. In 1973, they manufactured the first hard disk using Winchester technology. At the same time, the development of hard disk technology has a correct structural foundation. Until later generations, this structural foundation has been is widely adopted.

Until the early 90s, IBM maintained its dominance in the hard disk industry. The 1991-inch hard disk they developed in 3.5 used MR magnetic heads, making the hard disk capacity exceed 1GB for the first time. Since then, the hard disk capacity has entered the order of GB.

However, although IBM has mastered the most advanced hard disk technology and relies on the company's own computer platform to maintain a very high market share for IBM hard disks, this situation has begun to be broken by Japanese companies. At that time, hard disks with a maximum of 90MB could only be produced, but because the price had a great advantage over IBM hard disks, in addition to IBM computers, more and more PC manufacturers have adopted Japanese hard disks.

However, Western Digital has a very strong advantage in hard disk research and development. Their design agencies are located in the south and north of the family, Colorado and Thailand, and their business departments are all over the world. Western Digital does not take the high-end route like IBM. A relatively low product price provides high-quality services, so Western Digital's hard drives are still very competitive.

In addition, as an American company, Western Digital has strategic partnerships with many American technology companies, including some national scientific research centers. It is precisely because of this that Western Digital has been the leader in the global hard disk industry since the mid-to-late 90s. By 2010, their hard disk production once reached 50% of the world's total production.

Duan Yun has now developed his own computer brand, and the real competition in China is actually Lenovo Group.

Because Lenovo Group uses IBM's hard drives, Western Digital's hard drives have more advantages in terms of cost performance, so if Duan Yun wants the domestic computers developed by his company to beat Lenovo computers, then he will cooperate with Western Digital and use their high-quality Cheap hard drive products are undoubtedly a very good choice.

When he learned that Duan Yun had developed a domestic computer and was considering using their company's hard drive, John Cohen was very excited and immediately introduced him to the new products currently developed by his company.

Of course, John Cohen wants to sell his products to China, but there is no suitable PC platform. In the early years, IBM relied on their company's PC brand to sell their hard drives to China, but Western Digital did not have such a platform. , the Great Wall computer, the best domestically produced computer currently sold in China, still uses the hard disk from Japan.

If Duan Yun's computer brand can open up the market in mainland China, then Western Digital will also have a fulcrum to enter the Chinese mainland market...

(End of this chapter)