Reborn: Billionaire in College

"In fact, the development of domestic operating systems began in the 2000s, led by Academician Yang Fuqing of Peking University. I still remember taking Yang Fuqing's operating system course when I was in college. But unfortunately, this research and development work has not made any breakthroughs because it is too complicated. It was not until the year that the path of independent research and development was finally abandoned and secondary development based on Linux was carried out, which gave rise to China's operating system, such as the Kylin operating system."

"In fact, both Kylin and our current OrangeOS are secondary developments based on Linux. Although the shell is domestically produced, the kernel is still foreign, and is not completely independent. Developing the first truly fully independent mobile phone operating system in China has always been the goal of our team."

In Orange Technology's small conference room, Wen Weichen, the chief engineer and project leader responsible for the development of the OrangeOS system, gave a passionate introduction to the PPT.

Everyone in the audience is a giant in the company, especially Mr. Chen who is sitting in the middle, who is the boss among the bosses.

"Many people may not have an idea of ​​how difficult it is to develop an operating system. Even though WPS is considered quite complex, it only has 150 million lines of code and took only three years to develop. In comparison, a version of Windows has 5000 million lines of code, and it takes tens of thousands of people years to develop it. With every additional million lines of code, the complexity increases exponentially, and the probability of bugs increases significantly. The difficulty and cost hidden behind these 100 million lines of code are hard for ordinary people to imagine."

"In particular, the background of our OrangeOS development is the new era, with various terminals emerging one after another and a wide range of applications. Once the operating system needs to handle networking, interaction and collaboration between devices, especially after the emergence of new devices such as smart homes and cars, the requirements of the operating system have become more complex."

"The most important thing about an operating system is security. This is the significance of the operating system to China. It is related to people's livelihood security, financial security and national security. We will not follow Microsoft's example and make the operating system an independent profitable product. Instead, we will treat the operating system as part of the ecosystem like Apple. It is free for users, but the cost is recovered through hardware devices and smart services. Although this model has invested billions, it is possible to spread these costs through the sales of Orange Technology's mobile phones, smart cars and other hardware."

"Following Mr. Chen's strategic thinking, when we were developing the operating system, we did not aim to be different or unique, but we learned from Apple's philosophy in terms of overall design style and interaction methods, which not only saved time but also made it easier for users to adapt to the new system. I think we are the only one who can do this in China, because only Mr. Chen and Orange Technology have such appeal. If an operating system does not have rich application support, no one will be willing to use it no matter how advanced it is, even if it is self-developed."

This meeting was specially arranged by Lin Bin. Not only Chen Pingjiang was invited, but also executives from other sister companies, such as Li Xi of Renren and Gao Songbin, who was leading Renrengou to prepare for its IPO.

Therefore, when Wen Weichen introduces the product, he often uses simple language to explain it in a simple way, abandoning professional terms so that everyone can understand it.

The reason why we invited these people here is that no matter how good the operating system is, it still needs major companies to do software adaptation. When the pure-blooded version of OrangeOS is released in the future, relevant companies will need to specially develop the OrangeOS version, otherwise no matter how good the operating system is, it will only be a shell.

Li Xigao, Song Bin and others naturally had no objection to this.

"OrangeOS has now been updated to version 3.0. According to Premier Wen's estimate, how long will it take to upgrade to the full-blooded version? From what you just said, once it is upgraded to the full-blooded version, it will no longer support current Android applications?"

Wen Weichen nodded and said, "In OrangeOS 2.0, we have improved the distributed soft bus, data management and security performance, and supported more devices to join the super terminal. In this 3.0 version, we have achieved breakthroughs in multi-screen cross-device projection and other aspects, providing powerful intelligent interconnection capabilities. According to our planned project schedule, we will release the Next version by the end of the year at the latest. For the first time, we will use a full-stack self-developed programming language and compiler, mainly for developers. And by the end of next year, no later than the beginning of the year after, the OrangeOS Galaxy version will be available."

Following Wen Weichen's words, Lin Bin also said: "OrangeOS features distributed architecture, adaptive deployment, atomic services, multimodal interaction, etc., which can achieve seamless collaboration and experience innovation across devices, scenarios, and platforms. In addition, it has been comprehensively upgraded in terms of privacy security, AI large model capabilities, and personalized interaction, providing a richer and more personalized user experience. But in the final analysis, no matter how good the product is, it still needs everyone to adapt it."

Gao Songbin laughed: "Of course there is no problem with adaptation. Not to mention that we are all comrades in the same trench, even if it is an unrelated domestic Internet company, I think we have the obligation to support it. Just don't charge such a high Apple tax like Apple in the future."

Although Gao Songbin is a layman in IT, he finally understood what was said today.

The early versions of OrangeOS were still developed based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project), but as time went on, it began to gradually break away from Android, adopted a self-developed microkernel architecture, and began to gradually eliminate the Linux kernel and Android AOSP code. In the future, it will be completely incompatible with Android applications and will completely evolve into the world's third largest operating system.

Thinking of this, Gao Songbin smacked his lips. Only his boss could have such courage, guts and ability, right?
Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and others all have to stand aside.

Not to mention the courage and boldness, the first thing they lack is their ability.

Of course, as a qualified professional manager, Gao Songbin occasionally has to wonder whether it is worth spending huge amounts of manpower, material resources and funds just to build an operating system that others already have.

The investment involved is more than one or two billion, and it requires a large group of people to continue to develop and improve it.

Over the next ten or twenty years, the total R&D cost could even reach tens of billions.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just use the Android system like Samsung?

But Gao Songbin suppressed all these doubts in his heart. His intuition told him that he just had to do whatever Brother Chen said. There must be a hidden meaning behind the other party's arrangement.

When it came to the summary speech, Chen Pingjiang smiled slowly and pointed to the PPT: "The plan for the pure-blooded version should not be disclosed to the public for the time being. We will classify it as top secret. If asked by others, we will still answer that the purpose of developing OrangeOS is to satisfy users' multi-terminal experience." Seeing the puzzled eyes of the crowd, Chen Pingjiang did not explain too much. They would know it later.

In the final analysis, Orange Technology can be temporarily unused, but it cannot be eliminated. Otherwise, if it is sanctioned in the future, I am afraid it will be too much to cry about.

"How did the talks with BOE go?" Chen Pingjiang asked as they walked out of the meeting room.

"Of course there is no problem. They have just recovered. Although the production is sufficient, the orders are average. It is natural for us to be included in the supply chain of Orange Technology. However, I have also made it clear that there is a one-year trial period. After the trial period, if BOE's OLED screens still cannot meet our requirements for product quality and yield, we will reduce our share."

Chen Pingjiang nodded and said, "We also need them to speed up the development of AMOLED so as not to delay our folding phone project."

When talking about the folding machine project, Lin Bin, who is in his early sixties, seems very excited.

This folding phone is not an old-fashioned flip phone, but a screen folding phone.

When Lin Bin first heard this idea, he was shocked, but after connecting with BOE, he found that it was very feasible, but the screen did not meet the requirements yet.

Once the screen meets the usage requirements, future Orange folding phones will be able to capture the business market as well.

Another pre-research product that also excites Lin Bin is Orange Pocket.

Just thinking about it makes Lin Bin's hands tremble. Once these two products come out, Orange phones may really beat Samsung and kick Apple.

But before that, we still have to keep whipping BOE with a whip.

It is only natural to include BOE in the Orange supply chain, as BOE is the leader in domestic screens.

This old company with a long history and has experienced many ups and downs has been lingering on the brink of life and death. After hitting bottom and rebounding, it has done quite well in the past two years.

BOE has a clear advantage in the research and development of the next generation product AMOLED. All patents for the two key materials required for AMOLED are in the hands of BOE, which makes it very difficult for Samsung and LG to research. As a large amount of funds and R&D personnel are invested in the research and development of AMOLED, the original LCD panel production and continued research and development are fatally affected. The screens of their own display products cannot be supplied due to production capacity issues, and they have to purchase LCD panels from BOE instead. In 2013, the screen supplier for most mobile phones in South Korea was not Samsung and LG but BOE.

For the first time, BOE achieved technological parity. Its mature technology led to a continuous decline in the price of LCD panels, and BOE gained the right to speak in the market. No matter how Japanese and Korean companies lowered their prices, BOE would make a profit, which directly led to the breaking of the back of the dying Sharp.

On the other hand, BOE has shown great interest in joining forces with Orange Technology.

Although it has made rapid progress in the past two years, its foundation is weak after all. BOE still has a large amount of debt and really needs a "living father".

And Orange Technology is the perfect fit to be the "living father".

The reason is that although BOE's production and sales volume has increased, its shipping price has always been very low, and the gap compared to Samsung is extremely obvious.

But the price offered by Orange Technology is very attractive.

This is also part of the strategy to support the domestic supply chain that Chen Pingjiang had previously set.

This allowed BOE to develop AMOLED earlier than the original timeline, and then quickly launched the Orange XT business folding screen and the Pocket specifically for female users, thereby seizing the global market share to the greatest extent before the US sanctions came.

At that time, with the pure version of OrangeOS, we were not afraid even if we were banned or sanctioned! (End of this chapter)