The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 248 The ghost of technology has not left
For Lenovo, the most painful thing is that your ideal path is taken away by others.

The road taken by Xiaomi Computer is actually the road that Lenovo has been publicizing in public and the public. Yang Yuanqing, the successor after Liu, has been habitually speaking harshly when facing doubts about Lenovo’s lack of technology:

Such as "Lenovo does not disgrace the title of the high-tech industry", "If the best high-tech enterprises in Huaguo do not have technology, then the high-tech enterprises in Huaguo cannot be called high-tech", "Lenovo has not yet passed the IT winter. In fact, both net profit margin and gross profit margin have risen, which shows how valuable Lenovo's technology is."

Lenovo's lack of core technology did not attract the attention of the public after 2018. As early as the end of the 90s to the beginning of the 21st century, because of Ni Liu's argument, and Lenovo's fiscal year performance after listing, Lenovo's lack of technology was recognized by the media, Experts and scholars took turns to talk about it.

Therefore, Lenovo's various executives have publicly stated that Lenovo has technology, but Lenovo's technology is different from what everyone thinks.

After Yang Yuanqing answered reporters' questions about Lenovo's technology, he said that Lenovo would jointly develop a CPU with Intel, and a reporter immediately asked: "Lenovo's Chief Technology Officer He Zhiqiang said in a public interview:

If Lenovo makes a CPU tomorrow, it will die.

Mr. Yang just said that Lenovo wants to jointly develop CPU with Intel. Is there a contradiction between the two? "

He Zhiqiang is also a wonderful person. He is Ni Guangnan's subordinate. He followed Ni Guangnan in the research and development of Chinese cards, and later stood on Liu's side.

When he was interviewed, his original words were: "Lenovo has technology. It has product technology and application technology. If Lenovo makes CPU tomorrow, it will die. The core technology is the technology that can continue to bring sustainable value to the enterprise. It only makes one thing. It cannot be called the core technology of the enterprise."

This is not the most ridiculous thing. The most ridiculous thing is that He Zhiqiang is quite complacent about the current situation of Lenovo Research Institute: Three years ago, Lenovo Research Institute could only do projects with 5 people. Last year we could do projects with more than a dozen people. We can also do projects for several people.

This is what he said in 2002. For a company with a revenue of 100 billion Hong Kong dollars and a profit of 5 million Hong Kong dollars, a project that can be jointly developed by 20 people is called technology.

(The reason for denominating in Hong Kong dollars is because Lenovo was listed in Xiangjiang at that time, and the public statistical caliber was only Hong Kong dollars)
After the reporter finished asking, Yang Yuanqing did not answer, but looked at He Zhiqiang. He Zhiqiang took the microphone from the host without feeling embarrassed at all:
"As for this question, what I meant at the time was that if Lenovo developed the CPU purely by itself, it would be a dead end, and it would be different if it was jointly developed by a company like Intel.

Intel has technology, and Lenovo has been deeply involved in the Huaguo market for many years, and understands what consumers in the Huaguo market need. The joint development of the two parties is a major benefit to Huaguo consumers.Lenovo can also take advantage of this opportunity to further master the core technology. "

Because Lenovo hopes to make the Legend World technology conference grand enough, it invites a large number of media. Not all of these media want to see Lenovo, and Lenovo can't influence so many media, especially in this era when most of the media are still surnamed China.

Not to mention the fast-running Xiangjiang reporter present: "Mr. He, I would like to ask is it because Xinxin Technology first cooperated with Intel, so Lenovo started to cooperate with Intel?"

He Zhiqiang nodded: "Yes, Xinxin has given us new ideas. We can get more involved in the upstream of computers. This cooperation with Intel is an attempt."

Lenovo’s abacus is not the same as Xinxin’s. Although the cooperation between Xinxin and Intel is more superficial, it just sends a group of employees to Silicon Valley to jointly do chip design with Intel. In fact, it is only doing some peripheral auxiliary work. During the process, Xinxin Technology has the idea of ​​letting employees learn something.

The most important thing is to help Intel foundry and train the foundry team, which is the core purpose of Xinxin.

Lenovo is completely superficial. They don't even plan to send people. They will hold a few remote conference calls and pay Intel a sum of money. At that time, they will buy a joint authorization of Intel Huaguo's special chip. It is to spend money to hire someone to make a joint name.

The reporter continued to ask: "Will Lenovo, like Xinxin, get involved in chip foundry? And in the future, will Lenovo take advantage of this opportunity to set up a dedicated chip design company?"

He Zhiqiang can't answer this kind of question related to the specific operation of the company. Yang Yuanqing can only answer it. He said: "We will not consider doing chip foundry for the time being. Chip foundry is an asset-heavy industry. Lenovo's current foundation is still too weak. Yes, the risk of chip foundry is huge, and we need to consider this matter with extreme caution.

The establishment of a dedicated chip design company also needs to be considered.

Both of these things depend on whether the chips we cooperate with Intel can be recognized by consumers, and then the difficulty level, the chip design company is obviously ahead of the chip foundry.

Lenovo has always hoped to make every step stable enough, and even if we are a chip foundry, we will consider more ways to cooperate with external companies.

Xinxin’s Xinxin Technology is the leading chip company in Huaguo. Their chip foundry accepts external financing. If we want to do chip foundry, we have considered Xinxin’s chip foundry business cooperation model. "

"Mr. Yang, Lenovo and Mr. Zhou's Xiaomi are in direct competition, and Xinxin Technology and Xiaomi can be regarded as different subsidiaries under the same group. Under such a background, Xinxin Technology may not accept Lenovo's investment. Bar?
Will Lenovo consider taking the industry model of Mr. Zhou?Promote the coordinated development of upstream and downstream supply chain enterprises through consumer-oriented enterprises, that is to say, the model of simultaneously making computers and computer core components. "

Yang Yuanqing reacted quickly: "Huaguo's PC market is not a zero-sum game, it is big enough to accommodate enough players, and we are not in direct competition with Xiaomi.

Lenovo's product line is priced from 2000 yuan to tens of thousands of yuan. Xiaomi can only affect the market between 3000 yuan and 6000 yuan. We are only part of the competition.I don't think it will affect the cooperation between Lenovo and Xinxin.

Second, Lenovo will not consider the development model of Xiaomi and Xinxin for the time being, because we have no experience, and it will take a lot of energy to start exploring again, which is far less cost-effective than purchasing chips directly.

With the development of science and technology, the division of labor of enterprises is becoming more and more clear. What we need to do is to integrate the supply chain. It is not Lenovo's responsibility to do what the supply chain should do. Now is the era of highly segmented globalization.

I know you still want to ask why Xin Zong can do it, but we can’t, because Xin Zong has been starting a business in Silicon Valley for a long time, and he has enough appeal in the world. Xin Zong’s name is equivalent to companies such as Intel, Motorola or IBM. The endorsement of his name can attract a large number of talents.

Lenovo is only famous in China, and we cannot attract enough professional talents in the chip field. We do this kind of thing with half the effort, ignoring Lenovo's own advantages, and fighting against others in areas that Lenovo is not familiar with. "

This kind of thinking is wrong. After all, in 2002, no one could predict that chips would not be available in the future, but Lenovo did not have to worry. Let alone 20 years later, even 40 years later, Lenovo’s purchase of chips would not be affected.

"Mr. Yang, I would like to ask what do you think of Xiaomi and Xiaomi's technical strength? Compared with Xiaomi, Lenovo has a longer history, but Lenovo does not have the core technology that can be seen at a glance like Xiaomi. , how do you understand the reason behind it?"

Yang Yuanqing thought to himself, whether this is Lenovo's technology conference or Xiaomi's technology conference, one or two of you are here to ask questions that have nothing to do with the technology conference.

No one cares about the related applications that Lenovo mentioned before, and the smart home that has been built with great effort, which makes Yang Yuanqing a little bit overwhelmed.But since there were all media reporters present, he had to manage his expressions:
"That's right, Xiaomi also doesn't have any technology. The technology is in the hands of Xinxin Technology. Although Xinxin Technology was established for just over two years, almost all of their core R&D teams are from Silicon Valley.

Their technical reserves far exceed those of Lenovo, which is the most important reason why Xinxin can possess these core technologies.This is what I just mentioned. The success of every enterprise cannot be replicated. Lenovo has no way to replicate the appeal of Xinzong among the engineers in Silicon Valley.

Xinzong can attract a large number of Chinese engineers and R & D personnel to return to Zhangjiang to help him work. Can Lenovo do this?
In the early days of the establishment of the new general manager, regardless of the cost, the unit of [-] million and the unit of US dollars was used to invest in the R&D department. Can Lenovo do it?According to my understanding, Xinxin's R&D investment is in billions of dollars, which is close to Lenovo's annual revenue.

Taking Lenovo's Shenteng 1800 server that passed the appraisal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences last month, our R&D investment is only about 5000 million, and the unit is only RMB.

The two are not comparable at all. "

Xinxin Technology is not on the market, and the reporters present were not aware of Xinxin’s R&D investment. After hearing the investment of 10 billion US dollars, the reporters were surprised at the large number, and then they felt that it seemed like Zhou Xin was connected with this number. Not much either.

"Mr. Yang, you just mentioned the Shenteng 1800 that Lenovo just launched. According to the answer of Chairman Suguang in an interview, Lenovo relied on poaching a large number of core R&D personnel of Sugon, including Sugon's vice president in charge of R&D. Successfully completed the research and development of Shenteng 1800.

Is it possible for Lenovo to copy the success of Shenteng 1800 and dig some core R&D members of the new core? "

Shenteng 1800, Huaguo's first supercomputer with a performance exceeding one trillion floating-point operations, is composed of 526 Intel Xeon processors and 256 computer function node machines. It is Lenovo's best research and development achievement.

Yang Yuanqing didn't want to offend Zhou Xin, even if Zhou Xin's company entered the personal computer field: "In the field of personal computers, I am confident that I can poach people from Xiaomi, but in the field of chips, I have no confidence that Lenovo can poach people from Xinxin.

We haven't even entered the chip field yet. "

Lenovo's Legend World conference was held gorgeously, but the effect was a failure. No one cared about the concept of related applications they launched, and no one cared about the supercomputer Shenteng 1800 they just launched. Everyone is concerned about the technical strength of the new core. powerful.

Xiaomi's model is a shock to all computer companies in Huaguo. With the help of self-built supply chain, Xiaomi can reduce the cost to the extreme, and through online and offline marketing methods, it can quickly build a network covering most parts of Huaguo. marketing network.

This set of play is limited by production capacity so that they don't hurt their bones.But whether it is Lenovo, Founder at the head, or domestic brands such as TCL and Ziguang at the back, they all feel the chill. The price of Xiaomi is so low that few consumers actually buy it, but the number of consumers affected is not small.

Because of the ultra-low price of Xiaomi computers, there are also many bad phenomena in the market. For example, after buying them, they resell them at a price of [-] and sell them. An exaggeration can increase the price by three thousand.

After Lenovo's Legend World Conference ended, public opinion further pushed Lenovo and Xiaomi to the forefront, especially on the Internet:
"Recently, as a company representative, I was invited to participate in Lenovo's Legend World Conference. I will not disclose the specific company. I can only say that it is a company among the diamond-level sponsors of Lenovo Legend World Conference."

Lenovo legend world conference diamond sponsors are Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Texas Instruments.

"After listening to Xiaomi's press conference some time ago, I only have one thought. In the IT industry, what will be long-lasting and what will be immortal. Many things we take for granted at the moment may not be recognized by history at all, and will change. Time is cruel and fair. There are not many things left that can stand the test of time. In the end, it is not money, but technology that is needed to determine the length, weight and durability.

Lenovo really wants to prove that it has the technology, and spends a lot of space to describe its past achievements. It is hoped that through this conference, we will be notified that we are no longer the Lenovo we were before. We have realized the transformation of trade, industry and technology, and have reached last step.

But the fact is that the gold content of the technologies they announced is not as high as the gold content of the self-developed technology at Xiaomi's press conference.This is the harsh reality.Today, many people think that Lenovo's battle between Liu and Ni has already been settled.today

Liu Bei is affiliated with the huge Lenovo Group, and Ni Guangnan is a scholar with a breeze in his sleeves.It's not a level contest at all, it's not a matter of level.

Indeed, in terms of wealth, fame and media opinion, the debate has already been won and lost, and it can never be 'corrected' again.But the competition is far from over.Because the specter of 'technology' still hovers in this seemingly determined struggle, unwilling to leave. "

(End of this chapter)