Technological Hegemony

I was close to four in the morning, and the joint press conference between Sony and Samsung was finally over.

The content of the press conference is very simple. Samsung President Lee Jae Hyun and Sony President Yoshida Kenichiro jointly announced that Samsung will acquire Sony's mobile phone camera unit for $ 2.7 billion in cash.

This acquisition includes Sony ’s camera module factory in Kumamoto Prefecture, the entire mobile phone camera development and design department, and Sony ’s worldwide patent rights for camera patents.

As for Sony's camera and camcorder division, it is not included in the acquisition.

Luo Luojia lit a cigarette.

Sony's optical department is a very large organization. In addition to SLR cameras, professional cameras used by major television stations, and image compilation and acquisition equipment, Sony also has the largest market share in the world.

But these areas of expertise are not included in this acquisition.

Just for the mobile phone camera, this small component costs 2.7 billion US dollars, Luo Jia easily concluded that Samsung is now crazy.

Sony's mobile phone camera unit is worth at most one billion US dollars, while Samsung has paid almost three times the purchase price, it is a fool not to sell it.

After all, in the field of optics, the mobile phone camera is just a small part, SLR camera, video camera, medical imaging system, astronomical imaging system, those are the more technologically existent.

What's more, Sony's patents are not sold, but they are only used by Samsung. Intellectual property rights are still in the hands of Sony.

Although Samsung did not say explicitly at the press conference, everyone knows that they will definitely cut the supply of Huaxia mobile phone manufacturers in the next step.

In terms of business rules, the company's operators have undergone major changes, and all previously signed business contracts need to be re-drafted.

And Sony is an absolutely strong supplier in the market, and the contract signed has great flexibility.

In this world of weak meat and strong food, the so-called high penalty is only effective for weak suppliers.

You come up with a contract with a high penalty, and Sony doesn't even care about you, because people have the technology, not to ask you to sell to you, but to you to ask others to supply, what kind of contract you give, you sign It's over, there is no room for bargaining.

For example, semiconductor foundry giant TSMC, they always make Apple's order first, and after completing Apple's order, they can turn to Hisilicon, Huawei's Hisilicon.

So when the new mobile phone processor is released every year, Huawei always lags behind Apple. Who can I justify?

Samsung can completely end its cooperation with Huaxia manufacturers only by paying a small amount of liquidated damages, and Huaxia manufacturers can only eat this dumb loss and go to court abroad, there is no hope of winning.

After all, in the business world, the law of the jungle is also a weak one.

Luo Luojia annihilated the cigarette **** and opened the secret database in Aliyun.

数据库 This database is specially used to collect the information of global mobile phone users. After being processed by the encryption technology of extraterrestrial civilization, no one can access the data except Luo Jia.

Gradually, Luo Jia's face showed a smile. There were a total of 120 top-level cloud servers, which contained first-hand big data that is more precious than gold. It is one of Luo Jia's ace.

In addition to industrial design, mobile phone cameras are more importantly software and algorithms.

Apple ’s main camera has only 24 million pixels. Huawei ’s IMX600 has 40 million pixels. The difference between the two sides is huge, but when it comes to the DXO scoring link, it is only four points away.

Why?

Not yet because Apple is more experienced in software tuning and is able to tap the greater potential of hardware.

Optics is a very magical technology. The reason why Huawei spends a lot of money to ask Leica Germany to tune the camera for them is because Leica has been a hegemony in the camera field for many years. It has far more experience in optics than Huawei.

Now, Luo Jia has installed mobile assistant software on more than 1.8 billion mobile phones around the world, and has quietly collected envy and jealous massive data. This is the first-hand information that no other company can spend.

In this era, any mobile phone manufacturer, when it comes to the camera, has to boast about AI assistive technology.

The primary artificial intelligence of the extraterrestrial civilization owned by Luo Luojia is undoubtedly far superior to all its competitors.

As for industrial design and manufacturing, Luo Jia has the primary optical sensing technology of extraterrestrial civilization, and an intelligent robotic arm that can be accurately manufactured.

With the advantages of hardware and software, as well as big data and artificial intelligence, Luo Jia may take advantage of this opportunity to forcefully enter the field of optics and grab a big piece of meat from the mouth of international giants.

Of course, the difficulty is still very large.

The layman always thinks that this small component of the mobile phone camera is a whole.

In fact, that's not the case at all.

A small mobile phone camera module, but the inside is extremely complicated, divided into seven parts.

Protection film, lens group, focus motor, infrared filter, image sensor, main control chip, circuit connection substrate, all seven components are indispensable, and they must be extremely precise to finally present a perfect image.

The most important part is undoubtedly the image sensor.

At present, there are three main players of image sensors in the world, Sony, Samsung, plus American Howe Technology.

It is worth mentioning that Howell Technology has actually been quietly acquired by China's Weir Shares, and has become an authentic domestic company.

In the process of technology transfer and acquisition, China has been working hard, but because these things are very far away from ordinary people's lives, most people don't know.

The reason for the establishment of the trade war and global siege is largely because our country is really strong in the technology field. As long as you are willing to sell, I buy it all. This kind of aggressive offensive of the entire industry chain is quite scary to say.

Low-end products first, as long as the high-end goods on the market, regardless of the module made by Opfilight or Sunny Optical, take it apart, most of them are Sony image sensors.

Therefore, this big action made by Samsung will set off a terrible wave. They were originally the second largest player of the image sensor, and now they have acquired the largest player Sony, which is equivalent to monopolizing the sensor market.

Once they stop supplying, all domestic high-end camera modules will be discontinued.

As for the third largest player of the sensor, Howell Technology, they are relatively small, and their technology is worse than Samsung and Sony, which makes them a large number of supplies in a short period of time, it is completely impossible.

Luo Jia, who didn't originally smoke, was smoking one by one at this moment, and his brain was running at an amazing speed.

危机 The crisis in most people's eyes is actually an opportunity.

Samsung ’s supply cut this time gave up a lot of market share. The key is who can stand up and fill this huge vacancy the first time.

Wu Tian gradually lit up, Luo Jia picked up the phone and called Li Moran to explain to him the company's decision to enter the optical field.

那 On the other end of the phone, Li Moran should have just fallen asleep. He stumbled upon Luo Jia's words and was taken aback immediately, marching into the completely unfamiliar optical field? This is too risky, right?

"Adventure is nothing, technology is not a problem, time is the real issue." Luo Jiaxin said that he has the confidence to master the technology of extraterrestrial civilization.

The phone calls one by one. Li Moran is in charge of software development, Luo Jia is responsible for the architecture, writing core modules, and other company programmers to complete auxiliary work.

Hardware is led by Enron, a PhD graduate from MIT, Luo Jia is responsible for the main design, and Enron is responsible for bringing the hardware team to improve.

Sha Zhan and Gu Pengdong were responsible for contacting universities and colleges, and urgently recruited an optical team to be managed by Enron and responsible for sensor design. Then Luo Jia made some changes based on the original design, including material applications, imaging analysis, algorithms, etc. Wait.

声 Anyway, the momentum must be loud, and it will be said that it is the credit of teamwork. Don't take all the auras by Luo Jia himself.

Finally, Luo Jia called Hong Tao.

Xi Hongtao is from Beijing. UU reads www.uukanshu.com. He is full of Beijing movies, and he is very slippery. His social ability is second to none in the company's many otakus, and it is best for dealing with the outside world.

Luo Luojia found on the Internet that a few days ago, there was a mobile phone module factory in the Wuxi Industrial Park named Yingtai Optical, which was ready to go bankrupt because she could not make ends meet.

Thousands of workers are unemployed and sit idly outside the factory to ask for salaries. The labor department and localities are negotiating with manufacturers to let them pay the wages owed to workers.

I was so confused that I couldn't even get my salary. The head of Yingtai Optics should be very anxious. The Luo family asked Hong Tao to talk about it and buy this factory at a low price as the company's production base.

布置 After the task was arranged, Luo Jia drove to the Wuxi electronics market and bought a whole car of raw materials and parts. In addition, he bought 20 latest models of Huawei MATE series mobile phones.

Then he closed the door and went into the workshop for research.

Almost all the components in the camera module can be purchased from the market. Only Luo Jia needs to make the sensors.

The reason why Yingtai Optics failed was because the sensors were too poor, but their production line was ready. When they replaced the high-precision robotic arm, and then redesigned and improved the raw materials, the sensor performance could be greatly improved.

While researching the camera module, Luo Jia also kept in touch with the head office in Hudu to advance the work of the design department. The key technologies were in Luo Jia's head.

三 After three days and nights of tossing, the first batch of camera modules of Xingchen Company finally calculated the furnace. Each of the 40 million pixel sensors was created by robots with their deft handwork.

Luo Luojia contacted the sand show in Hudu, and then took the samples and rushed to Huawei's 2012 laboratory in Hudu overnight.