The rise of nanometers

Cook left BYD headquarters with an ugly expression and casually told his secretary to make an appointment with the Patent Committee.

When he returned to the hotel, he immediately held a video conference with Li Zhongding and Du Qing, the executives of the Huaguo branch, and asked them about the situation of the Patent Committee.

The mature Li Zhongding opened his mouth to explain when he heard Cook ask about this matter.

"...Mr. President, with all due respect, if it doesn't involve the core patents of the Suiren series, we still have to talk about it, but many of the spare parts we need involve their core patents. With Huang Xiuyuan's character, eight out of ten Nine will be rejected.”

"Is there any other way?" Cook still refused to give up. This feeling of being stuck made him really uncomfortable.

Li Zhongding shook his head. The business he is responsible for is Apple's supply chain maintenance in China, and he is very clear about the current domestic situation.

In his view, Cook's move to relocate the foundry is tantamount to shooting himself in the foot.

Now Apple's technical competitiveness has plummeted, and prices are obviously too high, causing their sales in China to decline severely.

Even if Dragon Totem spare parts are not used, spare parts from Chinese suppliers still account for 44.9% of Apple’s supply chain.

Once micron screens, Thor batteries, thermoelectric power generation modules, etc. are purchased, the proportion of Chinese suppliers will increase to 60 to 70%.

He wanted to ask Cook, where did he get the courage to say that he wanted to go to China for such a huge proportion of the supply chain?

In Li Zhongding's view, this strategy is no different than seeking death.

Apple, which is already in jeopardy, is OEMing in Tianzhu and Samba, which will lead to rising costs and possibly a decline in product quality.

After all, Ah San's unreliability is an open international secret.

The cost is rising while the quality is declining. Isn’t this looking for death?

"Mr. President, let's face the reality!" Li Zhongding advised.

Cook, with a straight face, was silent for a while, weighing the pros and cons in his mind for a long time. Finally, he nodded dejectedly: "OK, let's keep the foundry business in China for the time being."

Li Zhongding and others were relieved to hear that Cook had returned from his lost way. If the other party insisted on having his own way, Apple would be really in danger.

In fact, Cook did not give up completely. He temporarily abandoned the Tianzhu foundry, but the Samba foundry that has already started construction will not stop.

At the same time, he plans to gradually support other regions and let them replace Chinese suppliers bit by bit. The Samba OEM is a core.

Once the substitutability rate of Chinese suppliers increased to a certain level, he would gradually ask Foxconn to withdraw from China and go to Tianzhu to open a foundry.

In Apple's research report, they believe that among all regions today, the only one with superpower potential is Tianzhu.

This is actually the judgment of the major financial groups in North America. Their current power in the Asia-Pacific region is under unprecedented pressure, and they urgently need an ally that can echo from afar to curb the expansion of the East.

The attention of a group of large financial groups fell on the magical Asan. They planned to support Tianzhu's manufacturing industry, copy China's success in manufacturing, and then weaken China's manufacturing influence.

Apple's transfer of foundries is just a small microcosm.

In addition to Tianzhu, Southeast Asia and Samba are all backup targets for major consortiums in North America. Although these guys want to support new manufacturing industries to weaken the manufacturing advantages of the East, they do not want to support another serious enemy.

Therefore, their current operation is to make separate bets in multiple places and divert these manufacturing industries, which not only achieves the purpose of weakening the enemy, but also prevents these areas from becoming the core of the new manufacturing industry.

In fact, the Suiren Department and the Strategic Think Tank had already anticipated this situation.

Hence the all-or-nothing crude oil confrontation.

Huang Xiuyuan has discussed several times with scholars from strategic think tanks that the country’s previous advantages were in the entire industrial chain, minerals, environmental protection, electricity, manpower, some technologies, and self-sufficient food.

But he found that in this big cycle, if we want to complete the closed loop, there are still two things missing, namely "force" and "energy".

Therefore, Huang Xiuyuan developed a canopy defense system, a Huo Qubing-class nuclear submarine, and high-energy materials to increase the domestic force value.

The last link of energy is actually the only energy source that is difficult to be self-sufficient in China, which is petroleum resources. Coal and natural gas are not a big problem.

This is the underlying reason for the outbreak of the crude oil incident. It is not only to compete for the right to speak in the world currency and weaken the dollar-oil system, but also to complete its own complete closed loop.

The petroleum link is crucial and affects whether the country can completely lock in the industrial chain.

If the country does not have the right to speak about oil, the big conglomerates will definitely make a big fuss about it.

For example, a double-standard price could be set to raise the price of crude oil supplied to China and lower the price of crude oil supplied to Tianzhu, Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan.

Through this method, the country will lose its competitiveness in synthetic ammonia, synthetic resins, chemical fibers, and plastics, thereby tearing apart the industrial chain and achieving the strategic purpose of weakening the domestic manufacturing industry.

Huang Xiuyuan, who predicted this possibility, persuaded his superiors to promote the energy self-sustainability plan, successfully seized control of part of the global energy, and completed his own closed loop.

The current international crude oil market has a typical dual-track price system. The crude oil and natural gas prices obtained by the Energy Alliance are only about 35.6% of the market price on average.

The competitiveness gap caused by this price difference is enough to make other backward regions despair. Unless there is crude oil production locally, there is really no need to compete.

For example, Luzon does not dare to jump now. It also purchases millions of tons of refined oil products from China, sells bananas, pineapples and durians honestly, and opens some mines to the mining alliance.

This is what creates all-round suppression after closing the loop.

So what if labor costs increase? China still has advantages in energy, materials, environmental protection and technology.

Now Apple is experiencing a bottleneck. According to relevant research reports, if the entire Apple mobile phone is OEMed in Tianzhu, the final cost may increase by 20 to 30%.

Already, domestic mobile phones have been forced to cut prices. If the cost increases by another 20 to 30%, Apple will not make any money.

Capitalists are sometimes so realistic. The strategies formulated by major consortiums look very good, but when implemented in practice, they are full of loopholes and hold each other back.

If industrial transfer cannot bring about cost reduction and profit, I believe no capitalist will do such a thing.

Sure enough, when Cook and his people came to Shanmei, they discovered a very thorny problem as soon as they got the patent package sales plan from the Patent Committee.

The 4G patent package solution Apple obtained has two patent lists. The patents in the two lists are exactly the same. The difference lies in the price.

If Apple chooses to assemble the entire machine in China and leave the factory, the total patent licensing fee will be 75.6 Chinese yuan per unit.

If Apple chooses to OEM the entire machine overseas, the total patent fees will reach 185 Chinese yuan per unit.

This extra patent fee is called technology export surcharge.

You must know that Foxconn currently manufactures an iPhone 4, and the price is 62 yuan.

This surcharge is almost double the OEM fee, which is simply a pitfall. Add in spare parts shipping, tariffs, and warehousing, and Apple cannot handle such a skyrocketing cost.

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