Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1983
The CES exhibition in 1994 was unprecedentedly grand, and in this year, the CES conference broke the pattern of one event a year, but prepared four exhibitions in one breath, including one in Las Vegas and two in Chicago. In addition, the number of visitors reached a staggering 75. It can be said that the CES exhibition has the largest number of visitors in the past ten years.

At this exhibition, the world's top electronics manufacturers have also tried their best to present the company's most advanced technology products, so as to show their company's strength, and hope to expand their reputation in the industry through this exhibition. popularity and status.

As the world's strongest electronics company, Sony is naturally one of the most eye-catching focuses of this exhibition.

In fact, at this year's CES exhibition site, the three most watched companies are Martin Technologies, Motorola and Sony.

In the brochure of the exhibition, Duan Yun saw an advertisement for exhibits that shocked him. The product in this advertisement was not an ordinary electronic product, but a digital satellite system developed by Martin Corporation of the United States.

Duan Yun had never imagined that the digital satellite system had already appeared in this era, and what was even more incredible to him was that it was not the American scientific research department that developed this product, but a private American company named Martin. Electronic company.

Later, when Duan Yun saw the company profile, he suddenly realized that this Martin company was the famous Lockheed Martin company in later generations, but before 1995, Martin and Lockheed were two independent companies. The company has not yet merged.

However, in 1994, it was able to develop a civilian-level digital satellite system, which can be described as an epoch-making event in the global communication industry. You must know that China has just begun to develop its own satellite communication system at this time. As for the real development of domestically produced The digital satellite communication department is still a matter of many years later, so it can be seen that the scientific and technological strength of Martin Company is definitely the top in the world.

This digital satellite system can be carried on Hughes HS601 three-axis stabilized satellite in the United States. Each satellite has 16 120W Ku-band transponders. MPEG-1 digital compression technology is used to enable each transponder to transmit 4 to 8 TV channels. The system The capacity is 175 digital channels, the user antenna D=0.46m, the system effect is good.

In addition to Martin, the other two high-profile companies are the communications giant Motorola and the electronics leader Sony.

At this exhibition, Motorola also brought their new generation of communication products, Cd928 mobile phone.

this product.The amazing thing is its size and weight. Speaking of Motorola, Duan Yun has become the first batch of mobile phone users in mainland China a few years ago, but for this mobile phone product, Duan Yun’s use The experience can be described as indescribable, the battery life is short, the communication signal is poor, and the call fee is very high, which is definitely not affordable for ordinary Chinese. In addition, Motorola uses a 1G cellular communication network.

And at this CES show, this is considered a magical event, because the phone weighs 3.9 ounces - less than the weight of a hamburger, Motorola can say that the small and light weight of the mobile phone has reached an incredible breakthrough .

Speaking of the overlord, or even the pioneer, of the first generation of communication technology, it is Motorola.

Motorola has also had enough of the dividends of the 1G era.At that time, Motorola could be said to be the same as Huawei in the field of telecommunications equipment, and the only one that could match it at that time was Ericsson.

In 1993, Motorola's annual revenue exceeded 200 billion U.S. dollars, ranking among the top [-] in the world's top [-] list; in the United States, six out of every ten mobile phones came from Motorola.

But entering the 2G era, Motorola obviously did not keep up with the pace of the times.

But after the new president Chris took over, because of the unprecedented popularity of Motorola mobile phones, the internal balance of the company finally lost its balance.

At that time, although the public security department still had orders in hand and made a lot of money, the mobile phone business department was extremely popular. Many colleagues got huge bonuses overnight, bought luxury cars for large parties, and invited male models to the scene Performance.

The internal competition at this time has seriously damaged the cohesion of the entire company, and this impact has directly caused the blockage of internal communication channels.

The most direct consequence is that the communication network department's sensitivity to and use of 2G technology has not been synchronized to the mobile phone business department. Colleagues in the department think that analog signal mobile phones are very easy to sell, and have no intention of learning about GSM.

The final result of this is that Motorola's mobile phone business began to plummet, and its dominant position was gradually overtaken by other companies, and finally began to become unknown.

But after seeing Motorola's products, Duan Yun also had some more ideas.

In fact, as early as years ago, Duan Yun had already had the idea of ​​getting involved in the communication industry, but considering the actual situation of the group company, he did not intend to engage in independent research and development, but through Huawei and ZTE, he strived to be in the communication industry. A breakthrough has been made in the field of 2G communication mobile phones, while Tianyin Group focuses on the research and development of related core chips, thus firmly occupying the most upstream of the industry.

As for Sony, the main product at this year's CES show is the PS game console.

With Sony's strength in manufacturing hardware, it would be easy to make this kind of game console. After all, it is a world-class manufacturer of electronic components, and it can be said that it has a green light all the way in the manufacturing process.

However, in terms of game software, this is not Sony's strong point. If a game console wants to be recognized and purchased by players around the world, it must have the assistance and support of a large number of game manufacturers.

Not stopping at Atari and 3DO, Sony is still committed to guiding third-party developers.However, Sony is also well aware that they also need the support of millions of arcade players, so they also shifted the battlefield to Sega, including Namco, Konami and Williams have confirmed that they will help Sony develop games, among which Namco announced Having debuted Ridge Racer, Williams launched Mortal Kombat 3, which allowed Sony to battle it out in Sega's turf.

Of course, with the support of the outside world, Sony also wanted to build an intermediate force for internal game development. They then acquired a little-known European developer called Psygnosis for US$4800 million and cultivated it into Studio Liverpool. The developer later contributed "Crazy Little Mouse", "Anti-Gravity Racing" series, "Formula One" series and "Colonial Warfare" series of games for PS and handheld.

Sony's PlayStation has landed in North American and European markets, and the price of $299 is lower than its initial price of 37000 yen (about $387) in Japan, and it is also about $100 cheaper than its old rival Sega's Saturn machine. (After that, Sony's PlayStation 2 also continued to use this price when it was released in North America).

Just like the sensation caused in Japan at the end of last year, 10 Sony consoles have already been ordered before it was released in North America. At the same time, after the release, many of the 17 games that participated in the first launch in stores across the United States appeared on sale. , and this phenomenon also occurs in the aftermarket (controllers and memory cards).

As Sony's general agent in China, it is expected that this PS game console will also bring huge profits to Tianyin Group, and at the same time, it will be able to maintain the current "honeymoon period" with Sony through this product.

(End of this chapter)