The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 293 Same and Different

Compared with Bill Gates, Ballmer has no personal relationship with Zhou Xin. He has only dealt with the Silicon Valley rookie a few times. In meetings organized by some organizations, it was difficult for him to distinguish this casually dressed Chinese man from others. Products such as Quora, NewPay, and Mphone that have changed the Internet ecosystem are linked together.

What impressed Ballmer the most was that Zhou Xin not only had an amazing record as a product manager, but also had top-notch vision as an investor and could see the value behind Internet startups at a glance.

Therefore, every time when he talks to Bill Gates about Zhou Xin, he will remember that when Zhou Xin first came to Silicon Valley, he interned at Microsoft.Ballmer often thinks that if Zhou Xin had stayed at Microsoft back then, Microsoft's market value would have returned to its peak.

"Then I'm relieved. If it's Newman's favorite cash transaction model, Microsoft may still need to raise funds through some financing. I believe Wall Street will be very interested in Microsoft's acquisition of Weibo, but this will take time after all.

Since Newman is willing to accept equity swaps, we can sign an agreement first and then obtain permission from the Nasdaq Exchange. "

Looking at 2004 from a future perspective, it was a year of strong recovery.It can be seen from an analysis report written by the Market Operation and Consumption Promotion Department of the Ministry of Commerce of China in 2005:
"In 2004, the world economy showed a strong recovery trend, and the economic growth of most countries and regions exceeded expectations. Despite the impact of adverse factors such as the sharp increase in international oil prices, the world economic growth rate was the fastest in the past 30 years."

The key reason is Americen's series of expansionary fiscal policies after the Nasdaq bubble burst, which led to unprecedented liquidity in the market.

In human terms, everyone has money but lacks good projects. Weibo has no worries about not having buyers who can pay high prices.

Ballmer changed the topic: "Newman is indeed a product master. I didn't feel much about WeChat's WeChat red envelopes before, but the WeChat flower delivery event they launched during Christmas not long ago made me feel like I can still play like this. a feeling of.

From the logic of the Internet, I just sent a string of information to my wife, but she can indeed use this string of information to go to Wal-Mart, Metro, or other chain flower stores to pick up a bouquet of flowers.

This kind of creativity quickly made WeChat payment popular among the public and has created a certain scale effect.

I always feel that Newman and other Internet product managers are not at the same level of thinking and logic. He stands in a higher dimension and has infinite creativity, and he can fire at will. "

WeChat flower delivery was launched two days before Christmas. When it was first launched, it did not cause much waves because it was a short time and a lot of advertising was done, but only a limited number of users actually used it.

Until Christmas, users who were impressed by WeChat flower delivery began to share their WeChat flower delivery stories on various social media, such as Weibo, Moments, Face Chat, etc., and this product quickly exploded in popularity. , becoming another top case of Internet products.

Compared with Christmas, WeChat flower delivery increased 100 times on New Year's Day, and after Valentine's Day, the number increased threefold again.

“In a very classic Newman style, Melinda clamored for me to send her a bouquet of flowers using WeChat, and then she went to the supermarket to complete a payment using WeChat Pay and successfully received the flowers.

Top-notch marketing techniques, users pay for themselves, WeChat Pay only costs marketing expenses, and it completed the accumulation of millions of initial users in just one week.

It is estimated that other electronic payment software licensed with QR code technology did not respond to this move. I originally thought that my competitor was NewPay, but I did not expect that Newman has another electronic payment platform, and this electronic payment platform has become a big success as soon as it was launched. It has become the second largest player in the electronic payment market. "Bill Gates said.

Sending flowers on WeChat does not mean sending a bouquet of flowers on the WeChat chat interface. After user A completes the payment and chooses to accept the payment, user B will not receive a message reminder or even know about it.

The coupon code of the flower will appear in the background data of user B. When user B only makes offline payment through WeChat payment, if the offline payment place supports WeChat for picking up flowers, the WeChat interface will have an animation effect of a bouquet of flowers, and then the cashier will The clerk will also ask you to wait and then give you a bouquet of flowers.

To put it simply, the user who receives the flowers needs to complete the payment offline to know whether he has received the flowers. After seven days, if the user still does not go offline, the money will be automatically returned to the account of the user who sent the flowers.

The main theme of this gameplay is a surprise.

Compared with WeChat red envelopes, which did not cause much splash, WeChat flower delivery quickly became popular with Amerikan after its launch. A large number of female users use WeChat Pay for offline payments simply to see if they have been sent flowers by others.

WeChat flower delivery has caught all electronic payment software off guard. .

Everyone is still engaging in traditional discounts and fancy ways to send money, but WeChat Pay’s offline and offline linkage has once again successfully won at the starting line.

Later generations of WeChat raided Alipay by relying on WeChat red envelopes. Now in Amerikan, which is not interested in red envelopes, WeChat Pay relies on another trick to successfully break through again.

So much so that the New Year's Day holiday has just ended, and all payment software are internally discussing the WeChat flower delivery activity, and want to replicate similar functions online, but only NewPay can play it.

Because this requires contacting a large number of offline stores and linking with offline stores, this involves the accumulation of your offline resources. Only NewPay has completed this level of accumulation. Tencent relies on enterprise-level office software and WeChat public accounts to complete it. Accumulation, other electronic payment software did not have this awareness at all before.

Bill Gates and Ballmer both believe that sending flowers on WeChat is Zhou Xin's work. In fact, sending flowers on WeChat is an idea that was thought up by the Tencent team. It will create a sense of surprise especially when paying offline. This is Tencent's domestic employees. ideas proposed.

Ballmer said: "Other electronic payment software has moved too slowly, or they have not understood the essence of offline payment. The significance of offline payment lies not only in the payment behavior. Compared with Newman, they have poor product knowledge. Too far behind.”

Bill Gates nodded in agreement.

Ballmer said: "So we need to acquire Weibo. Weibo represents the most cutting-edge Internet product direction. We can make up for Microsoft's shortcomings in the mobile Internet and even the Internet field.

Bing and MSN are not enough. "

After the news was released, there were many manufacturers who wanted to acquire Weibo, and a lot of preliminary communication work under the water has already begun.

Zhou Xin was pacing in his office, looking at the abstract paintings on the wall and lost in thought.

It is now the beginning of 2004. Zhou Xin's previous strategic plan was to return to China in 2008 and stay in the country and not go out.

Because in the original time and space, 2008 was a critical time node.But Bush and John Kerry came to visit, which made Zhou Xin feel a sense of crisis. He felt that his return to China needed to be advanced and not according to the time in memory.

Because of him, China has not changed much in other aspects, but in the two industries of the Internet and chips, it is completely different from the original time and space.

In the field of chips, domestic production of 130nm has been achieved nationwide, but the yield rate has not increased. The investment company jointly established by Xinxin Technology and Shenhai City has invested in a large number of upstream and downstream companies in the chip industry in the past three years.

Xinxin Technology is responsible for providing funds and market. As long as your product meets the requirements, Xinxin will let your product enter the production links of some of our production lines. It is nothing more than slowly increasing the yield rate and improving quality.

Whether it is domestic equipment or raw materials, there is indeed a quality gap with the products of Neon and Amerikan, but the price is low enough, the service attitude is good enough, they are all in Zhangjiang, and the response time of the service is timely enough.

Relying on its technological advantages, Xinxin Technology can tolerate the cost increase caused by low yield rate.

In the past two years, Xinxin Technology has almost monopolized the entire Bluetooth chip market. From mobile phones to laptops to other electronic devices, as long as it is related to Bluetooth, there is only one choice for the products launched in the past two years, and that is Bluetooth chip launched by Xinxin.

The huge market and profits brought by the monopoly allow Xinxin Technology to be very willful in chip production.

And because of the patent wall built by Xinxin Technology in the field of Bluetooth chips, most companies have given up on this market.

Of course, there are those who have not given up. For example, the former Bluetooth chip monopoly manufacturer Cambridge Silicon is already on the verge of bankruptcy. They are trying to use non-commercial means to prevent new chips.

The European Union's Patent Investigation Committee is investigating Xinxin Technology's monopoly on the Bluetooth market. In an interview with local media in Brussels, a senior official of the committee said that administrative measures will be taken to force Xinxin Technology to transfer Bluetooth patents.

England's Competition and Markets Authority is more direct and is suing Xinxin on the grounds of monopoly, requiring Xinxin Technology to accept a penalty of up to 8000 million pounds.

The European Patent Commission is still investigating, and the penalty judgments in England have been handed down. However, because Xinxin Technology did not accept it, it found Housfield Law Firm to go through the appeal process.

After the verdict in England came down, netizens were very angry when the news reached China:
"Does Xinxin have a monopoly? If it's a good monopoly, Intel can monopolize it, but Xinxin cannot monopolize it?"

"Strongly support Xinxin Technology to continue to appeal. England is just looking for trouble."

"Before, the Bluetooth function was useless. Xinxin Technology used technological advancement to make Bluetooth headsets so convenient. What happened to the monopoly?"

"If New Chip were replaced by an English company, do you think England would still say half a word?"

"I work in a chip design company. Before, Bluetooth chips were almost monopolized by Cambridge Silicon. They occupied 70.00% of the market share. I haven't seen England sue Cambridge Silicon!"

For Xinxin Technology, this type of prosecution is a badge of merit. Companies that have not been fined by European countries are not considered giants.

Google and Facebook are fined hundreds of millions of euros every year, and they would not feel comfortable if they were not fined.

Xinxin Technology has also eaten up the domestic mobile phone integrated chip market. If it were not for Xinxin Technology, MediaTek would have taken the lion's share of this market, and other chip companies would follow suit.

Now Xinxin is taking some of it, and then other domestic chip manufacturers are coming to get a piece of the pie. For example, a large part of SMIC's business comes from foundry work for Xinxin.

If Xinxin's own factory capacity is insufficient, it will distribute orders to SMIC and TSMC. SMIC's priority is still ahead of TSMC.

Another industry that has been completely changed is the Internet. Tencent’s main battlefield is abroad, and Tencent’s main products in China are QQ and WeChat.

Unlike later generations, after starting on QQ, they took advantage of traffic to get involved in all fields, from portals to e-shopping to anti-virus software.

Alibaba has also gone overseas. In other words, domestic Internet companies have formed a new path. After the company becomes big, it will go overseas. If it has limited funds, it will go to Southeast Asia, and if it has sufficient funds, it will go to Europe and North America.

This has also led to China's Internet companies, with the support of Americen Capital, to go overseas to compete with Internet companies in Silicon Valley. Americen Capital is mainly behind both sides. No matter which side loses to Wall Street, it will not lose.

But this kind of ecology has given small Internet companies more ways to survive. In the past, everyone could not defeat the big companies. Now, small companies also have ways to survive, and game companies are also blooming.

After Riot Games entered China in advance, there are many more console game manufacturers in the gaming field than before.

Games are one aspect. The most important thing is that the Internet ecosystem is not a monopoly of two companies. Everyone is involved in it. They rely on capital advantages to become the leader of the monopoly, and then use the monopoly advantage to engage in all kinds of crazy involution.

Only when everyone has room for survival can there be soil for innovation. The biggest advantage of Silicon Valley compared with Zhongguancun is that companies that focus on technology also have room for survival. A large number of open source communities and companies that focus on technology can survive and do well.

For products of the same form, GitHub has more conscience than CSDN. This is the result of involution.

Moreover, China's Internet industry has gone overseas, allowing domestic Internet dividends to arrive early. Capital hot money is pouring in, talent demand is exploding, global operations are gaining greater profits, and a positive cycle has been formed. Internet income has become high in 2004. reached the consensus of Chinese society.

Of course, the number of Internet users in China is not large enough now. This consensus is only among the Internet groups. For the wider group, we have to wait for the launch of cheap smartphones and the large-scale rollout of 999 smartphones. Everyone will be able to obtain similar services. information.

China's rapid rise in the chip field and its competition with Silicon Valley in the Internet field made Zhou Xin worry that Amerikan would pay attention to China's rival in advance.

(End of this chapter)