Reborn: Billionaire in College

Chapter 246 Obtaining CDMA Patent License
"What time is it, little brat? Why aren't you getting up yet?"

At around 11 o'clock in the morning, Chen Pingjiang felt a chill on his body, and then the voice of Empress Dowager Xu sounded in his ears.

Chen Pingjiang rubbed his sleepy eyes, checked the time, and fell down again, snatching the quilt from Empress Dowager Xu.

Chen Guangming appeared at the right time and said with a smile: "He has been running around recently, so it's nothing for him to take a day off."

Then he pulled Xu Fangjuan out of Chen Pingjiang's bedroom, and after closing the door, he said earnestly: "Your son is already so old, and his status is different now. He will get married again in a few years. You should pay attention when you should."

Empress Dowager Xu wanted to defend herself: "Isn't this my old problem coming back? And it's almost time for lunch."

When I returned to the living room, the hired nanny had already brought four dishes and a soup to the table, and the bowls and chopsticks were neatly placed.

Just as Chen Guangming was about to fill his bowl with rice, the nanny who came over hurriedly snatched the bowl from his hand: "Sir, please sit down, I'll do it."

This was not the first day he was served. Although Chen Guangming had been diligent all his life, he still felt very uncomfortable. The same was true for Xu Fangjuan.

The four nannies in the house are carefully selected and they take special care of us. It’s easy, but I just feel bored.

Old Chen went fishing and Empress Dowager Xu planted flowers, but they couldn't do these things every day, and soon they both got a little bored.

I don't know anyone here, I don't have any friends or relatives, and I don't even have anyone to talk to or play mahjong with.

After a while, Chen Pingjiang finished washing up and came to the living room downstairs, sitting down on a chair.

"Let auntie pack some food for you?" Chen Guangming asked.

Chen Pingjiang shook his head: "I just woke up and have no appetite. I'll just sit for a while and then go to the company."

At this time, Empress Dowager Xu thought for a moment and said, "Son, your father and I want to go out and travel around."

Chen Pingjiang was stunned, and then he realized that the Queen Mother was indeed restless: "Okay, I'll have someone book tickets for you to go around and have fun."

My mother doesn’t have any special hobbies and doesn’t have any relatives or friends here, so it’s nice to go out for a walk.

…………

Zhou Guangping returned to the company from abroad in the afternoon, and Chen Pingjiang met him first.

"How about it?"

Zhou Guangping looked relaxed: "Not bad, I brought back two R&D teams from Texas Instruments and Taiwan Island. The performance of these two companies is not very good now, and they are planning to lay off employees. There are more than 20 people in these two R&D teams. They will rush to Dongjiang with their families in half a month. Housing and other things are easy to solve, the main problem is the children's schooling."

"It's not like there aren't any international schools in Dongjiang, they're just a little far away. If nothing else, I can get them into a key middle school, but the language barrier is a bit of a hassle."

Zhou Guangping said: "This time I visited all the suppliers, both domestic and foreign, and paid a deposit for the first batch of one million units. The price is basically the lowest price we can get with our scale."

Chen Pingjiang nodded: "That's great. Once the samples are in place, we will try to get the prototype out in the shortest possible time."

Lin Bin at the side was also laughing: "I thought you would be lazy now that you have become the richest man."

"How is that possible? Mr. Lei is so rich, he must be planning a second business. In comparison, what I have is just empty talk, just shares. Besides, I am not too old now, I can't retire now. It's just that after I have money, I can make some of the things I want to make, such as mobile phones."

Zhou Guangping reported the prices of the components to Chen Pingjiang, but Chen Pingjiang waved his hand and said, "Don't doubt a person you employ. Old Zhou, I don't know whether the prices you told me are too high or too low. Anyway, I trust you to do the job."

Just like Zhou Guangping said, Orange mobile phone is not well-known, so it is impossible for them to give you the same price as the old cooperative customers of the old big manufacturers right away.

If the scale is not expanded, the order price of Orange mobile phones will definitely be higher than that of other competitors. This is a no-brainer.

Chen Pingjiang himself did not plan to make much money from the Orange S1 mobile phone, as long as he did not lose money.

"Combining the software and hardware engineering and your opinions, Mr. Chen, we have determined the shape, color, function, performance and other details of the mobile phone. Once we get the components, we can start the printed circuit board manufacturing immediately."

The printed circuit board is the core component of the mobile phone, on which many components are connected, which involves processes such as circuit design, plate making, printing, etching, and gold plating.

After this step, it is time for assembly and assembling. Various components are placed on the printed circuit board manually or with automated equipment, then soldered and fixed. Then, the phone case, display, battery, etc. are put on. After quality inspection, a mobile phone is born.

Then install the operating system and some other software to ensure that there are no bugs.

This is called a prototype, also known as a sample.

After continuous testing, adjustment, modification and optimization based on the prototype, production of engineering machines begins.

About 2 to 30 engineering machines are produced, with the number varying from company to company. The purpose is to expand the scope of testing, allow people to use them in reality, and promptly modify any problems. Finally, the final design is finalized and mass production begins.

Zhou Guangping seemed to have thought of something, and suddenly said: "By the way, Mr. Chen, I forgot to tell you that I bought the CDMA patent from VIA alone." "What is that?" Chen Pingjiang's voice rose. "Well done."

Many people have never heard of VIA, but this Taiwanese company was very powerful around 2000. As a world-renowned motherboard chipset design and manufacturer, its market share once reached 50%, and it produced chipsets for both Intel and AMD processors.

VIA is the third company in the world after Intel and AMD to obtain the X86 architecture license, and is known as "Taiwan's Intel."

VIA is the only company besides Qualcomm that has CDMA baseband licenses. Well-known companies such as Huawei and MediaTek do not have CDMA licenses and need to purchase them from third parties.

At that time, VIA was the only manufacturer in the world that could produce both X86 architecture and ARM architecture processors, and its products were widely used in various embedded devices.

In addition, VIA also owns a large amount of intellectual property in the fields of CPU and GPU design and manufacturing.

If it were not for certain factors that prevented Chen Pingjiang from acquiring VIA, he would have spared no expense to acquire it.

Speaking of CDMA, it was first launched by Qualcomm. Like GSM, CDMA also has 2G, 2.5G and 3G technologies. CDMA is considered the first choice for the 3G mobile communication technology, among which cdma2000 is a technical standard under the CDMA framework, and all patents are in the hands of Qualcomm and VIA.

Therefore, if Orange Mobile wants to launch a full network or telecom mobile phone, it must use the baseband products provided by these two companies. Currently, the Orange S1 mobile phone is pre-ordered with Qualcomm's SOC overall solution, which saves time and effort, but the disadvantage is that it is expensive and may be a bottleneck.

Zhou Guangping smiled and said: "We have already obtained the ARM instruction license and the CDMA patent license, so we can start the chip design work."

Lin Bin lamented: "VIA is a good company, but unfortunately it is almost ruined by patents."

"Well, now their market share is less than 10% because they have been losing money in recent years and have no money to change production processes and develop new products. They have fallen far behind Qualcomm. Their new cheap baseband CBP55D based on 8.2nm process technology is also a solution, but it is not mature enough. Therefore, I can only choose Qualcomm."

Chen Pingjiang nodded: "There's nothing we can do about it. Qualcomm is still doing well. It makes money without doing anything. It's impossible not to buy from them."

Qualcomm currently has the most mature solutions in the world. Not only the CPU, GPU, and baseband, but also a series of technical standards such as WIFI and memory are all the latest.

In high-tech fields such as communication networks, communication terminals, and chips, a silent patent war is underway.

Those companies in the United States are reaping the benefits of emerging markets through patents. If you dare to challenge them and don't have patents, you will be beaten to a pulp like HTC.

To give the simplest example, in the 90s, there was an initial installation fee for installing telephones door to door, ranging from 3 to 5000 yuan. This money was paid to Cisco. It was not until Huawei grew that the initial installation fee was greatly reduced.

If you want to enter the international market, you can either purchase other people’s patents or develop your own.

Purchasing a patent for a specific person means working completely for big companies like Samsung and Qualcomm. As a mobile phone manufacturer, you can only earn a meager profit, and the bulk of the profit goes to others.

Self-research is also not easy. You may spend a lot of money but may not get the desired results.

Chen Pingjiang plunged into this field, and his competitors all had a sea of ​​patents.

If you don’t have a patent, you either have to pay the money honestly or never think about selling your products abroad. Even if you try to sell them domestically in a few years, you will be shut out.

Didn’t we often hear news in the past: Apple sued Qualcomm, Apple sued Samsung, Samsung sued Apple, Samsung sued Qualcomm, and Qualcomm sued everyone?

These were all patent wars, and in the end everyone settled.

If you sue me for infringing your patent, I will sue you for infringing my patent.

Everyone holds a deck of cards in their hands. You play a card, I play a card, and finally I have played all my cards. You have a bunch of cards in your hand that you can't get rid of. Sorry, you have to cede land and pay compensation.

Why has Huawei risen in the communications field?
It’s because there are so many patents.

Even if Chen Pingjiang were given ten thousand choices, he would not want to kneel down, but would rather become another Huawei or Apple.

China Telecom sold its soul to Qualcomm back then, and ended up being completely cheated out of CDMA.

Zhou Guangping said: "Qualcomm is getting more and more greedy. The core idea of ​​3GPP's discussion on LTE is to 'de-Qualcommize'. Now Qualcomm has given up UMB technology. We should work hard on LTE research and development to avoid being controlled by others in the future."

In the 3G era, Qualcomm exhausted all its resources, and the high patent fees stopped other manufacturers from entering. Unexpectedly, Qualcomm still wanted to play the same trick in the 4G era. UMB is just another patent barrier that Qualcomm has painstakingly built. Even a fool knows that using this standard will lead to death. All major European and domestic manufacturers have gone to study LTE and don't care about UMB. Now Qualcomm is in trouble and can only watch helplessly as it follows suit to develop LTE.

There is more than one patent holder for LTE, including major manufacturers, but there is basically only one patent holder for UMB, Qualcomm.

This situation is like the new energy vehicles in a few years. The ordinary companies will make hydrogen energy vehicles, set up high patent barriers, and intend to reap the benefits while sitting back and ignoring anything related to hydrogen transportation.

Later, the whole world abandoned hydrogen energy and started to make lithium battery cars. The small-scale players were dumbfounded and had no choice but to focus on making hybrid cars.

In order to compete, LTE patent holders signed a document that established an upper limit on patent fees, which was lower than the 3G patent fee standard (but higher than 2G).

No matter what, companies in various countries are trying to prevent Qualcomm from dominating the market. If Qualcomm really succeeds in developing UMB, it will become a vampire.

　The inspiration for this chapter comes from a patent war narrated by a big shot in Su Xun Technology on a certain audio channel I saw some time ago. It took me three hours to write it.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)