Rebirth 2010: I taught Mr. Lei how to make a mobile phone

Chapter 373: Bosses Are Different
"Got it. I will call you every day to report the results of the battle!"

The voice coming from Zhou Shouzi on the other end of the phone contained a kind of passion and excitement, even with a hint of trembling.

Bottom fishing also requires methods and techniques. You won't buy all at once, otherwise Nvidia's stock price will suddenly rise from its dying state, forming a deep V line. Perhaps the actresses on the red carpet wearing revealing clothes like this are very attractive, but behind every deep V in the stock market are bloody storms caused by countless capitals.

And from the perspective of bottom fishing, the cost will be much higher.

Therefore, Zhou Shouzi adopted a step-by-step approach of boiling the frog in warm water. As long as the price fell below the price threshold they had calculated, they would buy it. If it fell again, they would buy again. They would keep Nvidia's stock price stable within a certain range until they had used up all the ammunition in their hands.

It has acquired potential unicorn companies and handled multi-billion-dollar acquisitions of listed companies. Now it has started a stock market acquisition war worth tens of billions of dollars against graphics card giants.

Ever since Zhou Shouzi came to the other side and followed Chen Mogan, it was like entering a colorful new world.

The most important thing is that Chen Mo dares to use people and is willing to delegate power, allowing himself to maximize his potential. This feeling, which is similar to unlocking the seal and giving it a try, is simply too exciting for him!
Afterwards, Zhou Shouzi began to deploy and command step by step, and began to sustainably bottom-pick Nvidia.

On the other side of the ocean, NVIDIA headquarters.

The sweat on Huang Renxun's head was pouring down like Nvidia's stock price.

He knew that the consequences of terminating the contract with Xiaomi would be serious, but he didn't expect it to be so serious. Looking at Nvidia's stock price plummeting, his heart gradually sank to the bottom.

A sudden drop from $13 to $9 is an extremely rare scene in the more than ten years since Nvidia went public.

9.119.079.029.069.11
"Report, suddenly there is a large amount of off-market funds entering the market, the stock price is temporarily stable at 9 points, and is slowly stopping the decline and rising again."

Although he didn't know where the funds would come from to save Nvidia from the dire situation, Huang Renxun finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He quickly convened a meeting of Nvidia's board of directors to discuss emergency plans.

Looking at NVIDIA's development history, in the PC era, NVIDIA had only one rival in the graphics card field, ATI. The relationship between them was like Intel and AMD in PC chips, KFC and McDonald's in the fast food industry, sports brands Adidas and Nike, and Tony Ohki and Kato Toru in the AV industry.

Later, AMD, which started out as a PC chip maker, saw the prospects of GPU (graphics processing unit) and merged with ATI, hoping to combine the two forces to focus on both CPU and GPU at the same time and dominate or even monopolize the entire PC industry.

As a result, imagination is beautiful, but reality is cruel.

Originally, a fierce battle was inevitable for Nvidia, but unexpectedly, the opponent had a stupid teammate, which led to a dramatic ending for the battle. Huang Renxun was also at a loss whether to laugh or cry, and felt that he was the son of destiny.

This stupid teammate is ATI. In order to get a good price when it was acquired by AMD, it bought a large number of outdated GPU technology patents before the acquisition. After the acquisition, not only did AMD become indebted year after year, it also slowed down the pace of GPU integration. AMD became lost in the crowd in the continuously iterating chip industry.

It is very common in business to raise one's own value before being acquired. Before Blizzard was sold to Microsoft, it also tried its best to exhaust all resources. Otherwise, it would not have been possible to "divorce" NetEase, and after being acquired by Microsoft, it secretly sought to get back together.

The success in the PC market made Huang Renxun very proud. At the same time, he knew better than anyone that in the field of chips, companies with leading technology can often get a bigger piece of the pie and have a deeper moat.

Therefore, when it switched to mobile chips, NVIDIA also implemented the "technology-driven" approach: the Tegra series chips have been madly piling up computing power regardless of the consequences, becoming a powerful tool for running scores. This also laid the groundwork for its subsequent defeat to Xiaomi, and now it has finally tasted the bitter fruit.

After a day of communication and consultation in an emergency meeting.

Nvidia executives discovered that the demand for mobile chips was at odds with Nvidia's pursuit of extreme performance. If Nvidia wanted to continue pursuing mobility, it would have to compromise on performance.

This is not in line with Huang Renxun's style as a "technology maniac".

Therefore, at the meeting, Huang Renxun decided to take drastic measures, against all odds, from graphics card chips to mobile chips and then to creating a general computing scenario, that is, the CUDA platform. In other words, Nvidia is undergoing a difficult transformation and re-transformation.

Huang Renxun also knew that this would be his last chance. He did not want the GPU to be used only to draw images for gaming. He wanted the GPU to take on more functions and be competent for larger scenarios. The greater the responsibilities the GPU takes on, the greater the say it will have.

He's willing to risk everything for this!
Finally, NVIDIA released an announcement overnight, announcing that it would "gradually withdraw from the smartphone and tablet chip market and turn to general computing platforms, with an estimated annual investment of $5 million in research and development. In the future, the computing power provided by NVIDIA graphics cards will be applied to various cutting-edge technology scenarios."

Nvidia then left a reason to save its reputation for its withdrawal: "The fierce price competition among mobile phone manufacturers has forced upstream companies to continue to lower prices, but price wars are not Nvidia's strong point, so it had no choice but to withdraw."

After the announcement was released, the market obviously did not buy into Nvidia's remarks. The annual R&D cost is $5 million, and you have to know that Nvidia's annual revenue is only $30 billion.

And what kind of project is it invested in? Nvidia's huge general computing power sounds very good, but unfortunately, at this time, there is no obvious market demand for huge computing power. It is used in unpopular fields such as advanced physics laboratories and quantitative trading at most, and the number of GPUs required for a single project is limited to single digits.

Previously, Wall Street valued CUDA technology at zero.

Once the announcement was released, it did not boost market confidence, but instead served to add insult to injury.

As the market continues to be pessimistic, some institutional shareholders and retail investors behind Nvidia are rushing to cut their losses and leave the market, staying away from this bottomless pit.

Nvidia's stock price, which had stabilized at $9, has returned to $8 again.

On the other hand, Zhou Shouzi was still a little worried when he saw that Nvidia's stock price was not recovering. He felt that if it continued like this, he might not be able to spend all the funds in his hand within a month.

As a result, Huang Renxun handed me a pillow just as I was dozing off.

Nvidia's stock price plummeted again, which made Zhou Shouzi smile. He spent money even more enthusiastically and started buying like crazy.

Spending tens of billions of dollars every day, I feel that this life is worth it.

The other side that the stock market cannot see is the short-selling force.

Subsequently, Nvidia's stock price started a tug-of-war between shorts and longs at $9.

During this period, on September 9, China, Meizu's new product launch conference was held as scheduled.

At the press conference, Huang Zhang, Bai Yongxiang and Li Nan took turns to introduce their new products, the Meizu MX2 flagship phone, Meizu Blue Note2 and Flyme2.0 system.

(Left: MX2, Right: Meizu Note2)

At the end, Huang Zhang bared his teeth and excitedly announced the prices of these products.

MX2（16GB）价格2499元，（32GB）2699元。

魅蓝Note2（16GB）价格599，（32GB）799元。

Its configuration is comparable to that of flagship phones priced over 3 yuan, far lower than the prices of its peers, and even 500 yuan cheaper than Xiaomi, which is known as the king of cost-effectiveness.

After the price was announced, the audience at Meizu's press conference cheered, second only to Xiaomi's press conference when the price was 1999.

In the next few days, both the media and netizens gave enough respect to Meizu's product.

"Meizu has suffered several losses, and finally learned its lesson and learned to strike back!"

“Although the appearance is not as good as Xiaomi X3, but it is cheaper!”

"It seems that with the financial sponsor, Meizu has gained confidence and is indeed different."

"Lei Jun must be very nervous. The recall is going on in full swing here, while the sales of the rival are booming."

"Huang Zhang: Don't look down on the poor Mei clan!"

For three consecutive days, Meizu's new mobile phones have topped the daily sales list, which also proves the market's recognition of Meizu's pricing.

For the first time, Huang Zhang felt proud. Is this the feeling of winning?

However, it seems that Xiaomi did not take any action, which made Meizu's victory this time not perfect. It always felt that the full force it had accumulated for several years hit cotton, making him feel happy, but also unhappy.

So that night, Huang Zhang, who had been busy all day, browsed his own Meizu forum and saw an article about everything from Xiaomi's pricing to the development history of Xiaomi mobile phones, which reminded him of some unpleasant past events.

He no longer concealed himself and began to vent the emotions that had been suppressed in his heart for a long time.

As soon as this reply came out, within a few minutes, it was followed by a string of praise and flattery from Kerosene (a nickname for Meizu fans and Meiyou) and Mi haters. Due to the previous grievances between the two families, they are mortal enemies with Mi fans!
Of course, there will be 25ers in any team. This screenshot quickly spread widely on Weibo, Tieba and other public opinion platforms.

Not only did it attract Mi fans, but even originally neutral netizens were dissatisfied. Although they are not Mi fans, the brand power that Xiaomi has created in the past two years still leaves a good impression in people's minds.

The Xiaomi X1999, priced at 1 yuan, directly forced its competitors to cut their prices one after another. Although it did not drop to the yuan level, it broke the rule that flagship phones are priced above yuan.

The emergence of the 799 yuan Redmi has dug up the grave of copycat phones, and now copycat phones have disappeared.

The emergence of the 69 yuan Xiaomi router has brought down the price of routers from 200 yuan to less than yuan now.

The easy-to-use and user-friendly MIOS operating system has even brought about certain changes and impacts in the corresponding industries, including small household appliances, power strips, desk lamps, and styluses.

The phrase "Let everyone enjoy the fun brought by technology!" is no longer an empty talk, but a promise that has been fulfilled. Although Xiaomi has problems now, not everyone can blame it.

When there is a problem with their product, the after-sales compensation is impeccable, giving people the impression that there is a "beginning and end, and guarantee" when something goes wrong.

The nearly 100 million sales volume corresponds to a large consumer group. Even if most of them are not Mi fans, they themselves or their relatives have more or less used Xiaomi products, and they have a sharp eye for the specific quality.

Less than an hour after the screenshot was circulated, #贱人贱自己贱行业# ranked in the top three on Weibo’s hot search list.

This attracted a lot of criticism from netizens.

"You keep saying that you are a jerk to others and a jerk to your industry, but now you can't beat them and start to be a jerk to others and yourself, right?"

"That's right, when villains succeed, they become arrogant. They eat with a bowl in hand and curse their mothers when they put the bowl down."

"This is simply too much. It's just that Mr. Lei has a good temper. If you change to another mobile phone manufacturer, you will be able to elevate your patriotism in every minute."

"Ah Huang is a good product developer, but he has a foul mouth. The current situation is hard-won, so he should just shut up."

"If a company boss has such bad character, I won't use his products no matter how good they are."

"Everyone underestimated Da Huang. Maybe he said that on purpose. No matter how much he hated Lei on the surface, he might actually love him in secret. In order to make Lei better, he was willing to destroy himself. He had taken on too much. What an emotional drama of old love and new love between Lei, Chen and Huang."

Some bosses are able to turn the tide when their companies encounter a crisis, find opportunities in the crisis, turn difficulties into opportunities, and everything can be marketed.

Some bosses can pool the wisdom of their colleagues when their company encounters a crisis and make difficult transformations in an attempt to break through difficulties. Although the results are counterproductive, their intentions are good.

However, some bosses start to stir up trouble as soon as their company gains the upper hand. They have four twos and two kings in their hands, and they can play them all out at once, and in the end they end up with a Zhang San in their hands.

In the middle of the night, the head of Meizu's public relations department was urgently called online. His scalp tingled when he saw his boss and the online public opinion. Damn, this was the first time he had to deal with such a thing and he had never experienced it before. He immediately contacted the forum administrator to delete the reply that was the source of all evil.

It is better to share happiness with others than to enjoy it alone. Then he called his subordinates, and one person told ten people, ten people told a hundred people, and half an hour later he led his subordinates to put out the fire everywhere.

While racking his brains to think of the wording for the crisis public relations draft, he was cursing in his heart. If he wanted them to work overtime, he should just say it clearly. Why do this!
Of course, they cannot make a public statement to correct the inappropriate remarks made by their boss, as this would be like shooting themselves in the foot. Therefore, the management only explained and set the tone on the Meizu official website forum, and then hired an army of internet trolls to try to smooth things over, which ended up making things worse.

Meizu's senior executives also saw the online public opinion and couldn't help feeling frustrated that their company was just a makeshift team. They had worked hard on technology and R&D for a year, but they never expected that they would be stabbed in the back by their own boss in the end. The public relations team made an outstanding contribution by adding fuel to the fire.

Influenced by this public opinion, Meizu, which had only won the daily championship for three consecutive days, dropped to second place on the fourth day, and Xiaomi fell to the top of the list.

It’s just like the saying goes, if you put consumers in your heart, consumers will hold you high.

At this moment, the brand value that Xiaomi has accumulated in people's hearts over the past two years exploded.

Xiaomi didn't even have to take any action personally, its users took care of the matter.

What is Lei Jun doing, Meizu? Huang Zhang? He has heard of these public opinions, but he never takes them seriously. Instead of worrying about them, it is better to put these energies into polishing products and running the company rather than fighting verbally.

Now Lei Jun turned a deaf ear to what was happening outside and focused on chatting with Chen Mo.

Because he has figured it out during this period of time, his own decisions combined with Chen Mo's opinions are the ultimate weapon that has always made Xiaomi successful.

As a result, Xiaomi X3 was playing alone and almost got into trouble, which forced Xiao Mo to sell her body and seduce Lee Boo-jin to bring in Samsung, which gave Xiaomi another way out.

Lei Jun still feels a little guilty towards Chen Mo about this matter.

Now that Xiaomi X3 Samsung version has been tested by the technical team, it has no power consumption issues at all, and is even better than Qualcomm's performance. However, in terms of performance, different people have different opinions.

There is no such thing as having the best of both worlds. Lei Jun made the decision to go directly into the production line. Now the production capacity of the new Xiaomi X3 is being accelerated in full swing to resume supply before the inventory can no longer hold up.

Another thing is to think about the appearance and research and development of Xiaomi X4. After all, as the first generation of 4G mobile phones, it will lay the foundation for the domestic mobile phone landscape in the next few years and occupy the first-mover advantage, so I have to be cautious.

Now Xiaomi’s only competitor is itself. Only by constantly surpassing itself can it surpass everyone else!

During this period in late September, Lei Jun and Chen Mo were very busy. Either one of them ran upstairs or I ran downstairs. They were often in each other's office and would chat all day long.

Of course, in addition to Lei Jun, who is always there, there are also Xiaomi executives who come and go. Lin Bin, Hong Feng, Zhou Guangping, Li Wanqiang and others are like students on duty, and every day is different. Sometimes it is one person, and sometimes it is several people.
Chen Mo also gained a better understanding of Xiaomi's current development status.

The Xiaomi X3 series has survived the chip incident without any major problems. Although its sales performance is not as good as X2 and X1 overall and has declined, the base is still there and it is still very competitive.

It is not certain that Xiaomi will be able to maintain its position in the top three in the world by the end of the year, but it will be in the top five for sure. It will not be a problem for Xiaomi’s overall annual sales volume to exceed 5 million, and its sales revenue including tax will reach billion yuan, not counting other products in Xiaomi Home.

When this figure was placed in front of Chen Mo, he couldn't help but be amazed. Although Xiaomi's profit could not catch up with Bi'an, the turnover was really fierce, more than twice that of Bi'an. Of course, Bi'an's net profit was more than ten times that of Xiaomi.

In nearly 10 days, with the strong assistance of Chen Mo, Xiaomi formulated the grand strategy of three old and one new ecological layout.

[Three Olds] refers to the upgrade of old products. The concept drawings of Xiaomi X4, Redmi H4, and MiPad2 have been released one after another, and several new directions have been proposed based on the current technological background. Some of them have been adopted and some have been rejected.

For example, fingerprint recognition, fast charging, large battery, dual cameras, and drop and waterproofness are among the adopted features, while curved screens and folding technology are among the rejected features.

At the beginning, everyone had different opinions and the disagreements were quite large. Later, Chen Mo's opinion played a key role. After all, as an absolute contributor to Xiaomi, although he has now left Xiaomi's management and only has the title of senior consultant, no one dares to underestimate his opinion, because it has been proved in the past that everything Chen Mo insisted on is correct, without exception.

As for not making curved screens and folding phones, Chen Mo's reason was very simple: flashy and impractical. First of all, the current technical reserves are insufficient, and even Samsung has not yet produced a curved screen. Moreover, the technical implementation is quite complex and belongs to future technology.

Instead of investing energy in these two directions, it would be better to consolidate the practical functions mentioned above and take them to a higher level.

After some discussion, everyone nodded and finally followed Chen Mo's advice.

This is the voice brought by Chen Mo's influence. Of course, the most important thing is that Lei Jun took the lead in agreeing with this point of view because it is very pragmatic.

【一新】 was proposed by Chen Mo. This is because with the arrival of 4G, mobile gaming will no longer be dominated by one superpower and many strong players. Instead, there will definitely be a hundred schools of thought and the competition will be even more intense.

According to data released by the Internet Conference, the number of smartphone users in China will exceed 2013 million in 3, and mobile game users will account for more than 80% of them. In other words, there will be a huge user audience of at least 2 million, which has great market prospects.

By then, a gaming phone specially designed for mobile games will have a big market, so this new one refers to the Xiaomi gaming phone.

For the sake of gaming performance, the ultimate imaging system was abandoned, and certain sacrifices were made in thickness and weight, but the CPU, heat dissipation, storage, screen display, battery life, etc. were increased, and finally matched with a radical shape and appearance.

In fact, Chen Mo planned the above gameplay by referring to the Red Magic gaming phone, which became the best-selling gaming phone in later generations.

This is a vertical sub-brand of Nubia, specially designed for gamers. It even castrated the front camera for the sake of a true full screen, and focuses on just being able to take selfies.

Finally, after Chen Mo's suggestion, Lei Jun decided on the spot to add a new G (game) series product line to this gaming phone. In order to keep it consistent with other product lines, he personally named it Xiaomi G4.

This is also an attempt by Xiaomi to explore the vertical track of mobile phones. If gaming phones are recognized by the market, subsequent camera phones focusing on extreme imaging functions and business phones customized for business people will gradually be put on the agenda.

Of course, for consumers who want all the functions and are well-balanced, the Xiaomi X series is the best choice.

Xiaomi's subsequent development strategy is to differentiate horizontally by price and configuration, and vertically segment according to the user portraits of mobile phones, and customize mobile phones to target their pain points.

Of course, the reason why Chen Mo suggested making gaming phones first instead of camera phones and business phones was also for the sake of his own interests. He did not hide this, and Xiaomi executives were also aware of it.

However, in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes, we are also planning to conduct research on mobile phone heat dissipation, such as exploring and trying technologies such as heat conduction, heat convection, and liquid cooling.

Finally, we discussed the proportion of the mobile phone supply chain. At present, the domestic production rate of some non-core components can reach 30%. Although they have no brand power, the quality control is very good, and they are of good quality and low price.

It’s the second to last day of September. There’s no one else here today except Lao Lei and Xiao Chen.

The previous week's discussion was all about the development direction of Xiaomi mobile phones, but this day the two talked about something at a more macro level, which was the supply chain for mobile phones and smart homes.

The subsequent core components of smartphones are chips, screens, batteries and images, which correspond to performance, display, battery life and photography respectively.

These are also the four major areas that consumers are most concerned about.

After a whole day of communication, the two selected a group of high-quality supply chain companies based on the information they had previously compiled and included them in the scope of subsequent negotiations.

And set an overall priority principle: acquisition > equity investment > cooperation.

Now, whether it is Xiaomi or Shunwei Capital, their cash flow starts at tens of billions, so they have enough ammunition.

As for the scope of attack, it includes but is not limited to: BOE (screen), CSOT (screen), German Leica (lens), Swedish Hasselblad (lens), domestic OmniVision (lens), CATL (battery), Kioxia (storage).
(End of this chapter)