Top of the big era

Chapter 1451 Consumer Electronics + Content Entertainment

Zhou Buqi had originally flown to Manchester to preside over Manchester United's transfer situation. However, Sony's matters were more important, and the meeting with Manchester United executives could only be held via conference call.

Anyway, Dad and Zhu Jun are there to control the situation, so there won’t be any big problems.

This summer is destined to be the most shocking summer in the European football transfer market. Ibrahimovic, whom Ferguson is interested in, has officially transferred to Barcelona, ​​and he even took a salary cut to join.

Fortunately, Manchester United has officially finalized two transfers. They defeated Bayern to introduce Dutch winger Robben from Real Madrid for 30 million euros, and introduced German midfielder Schweinsteiger from Bayern for 35 million euros. .

Next, we have to talk to Barcelona about Yaya Toure, Tottenham to talk about Bale, Bayern to talk about Lahm, and Arsenal to talk about Van Persie... The most difficult one among them is Lahm.

Bayern has been at a low point in the past few years, and they are thinking about rebuilding. So much so that Real Madrid offered 60 million euros to buy Ribery, but Bayern did not sell him.

Now that Manchester United has bought a main midfielder from Bayern, it is very difficult to buy their main right back.

Fortunately, the player value bubble in the 2009 transfer market is not too big. The best Ronaldo in the Premier League is worth 92 million euros, the best Kaka in Serie A is worth 65 million euros, the best Franck Ribery in the Bundesliga is worth 60 million euros, and the best player in Ligue 1 is worth 60 million euros. Zema 35 million euros.

Van Persie's transfer transaction is mainly handled by David Gill and Ferguson. This is an internal transfer in the Premier League. Lahm's transfer may require Zhou Buqi to personally take action, and it will have to be operated with something other than football.

Right now, the biggest news story in English football is Manchester City.

Manchester City's tycoon owner offered 50 million pounds for Chelsea's fierce captain John Terry and gave him an after-tax annual salary of 12 million pounds. You know, after moving to Real Madrid, Ronaldo received the world's largest annual salary of 13 million euros. If Terry really transfers, he may be the highest paid player in the world.

This is not surprising. In the past four years, Terry has always been the Premier League's first-paid player, higher than Ronaldo.

During the conference call, Zhou Buqi rejected Ferguson's suggestion to waive the signing of Mike Owen. How could a player like this who couldn't play well at Newcastle be qualified to play at Manchester United?

Let’s run Van Persie first!

Ferguson has always liked Dutch players, and Zhou Buqi happened to be very optimistic about this deal.

The next day, Zhou Buqi flew to Japan, accompanied by Xu Liangjie and Shen Xiangyang. Ning Lu, who is proficient in Japanese, has also flown from Los Angeles to Tokyo and is ready.

In fact, it is two businesses.

Ziweixing wants to buy the robot project of Sony Computer Science Laboratory, and Ziweixing Global wants to buy the "Spider-Man" copyright from Sony Entertainment.

Xu Liangjie represents Ziweixing. He is very relaxed, "Ziweixing has been split up now, and there are no obstacles to this business. If we trade in the name of Ziweixing International, it can be easily concluded."

Shen Xiangyang nodded, "Robotics is a conceptual scientific research direction. It belongs to the cutting-edge scientific research. For now, there is no prospect of commercialization. Many large companies have robot projects. In fact, it is... Use some money from your profits every year to pay for your dreams.”

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "It can be understood as marketing."

Shen Xiangyang agreed, "Yes, it's marketing. Just like there is a guy in the United States who shouts about going to Mars every day. This is a marketing master. Through a illusory plan that shocked the world, he attracted the attention of the world. Then he used this Focus on doing business that can be truly commercialized, saving a lot of marketing expenses.”

Zhou Buqi has had a close relationship with Musk and knows that besides being lecherous, this guy is actually a pure idealist. He feels that Shen Xiangyang’s comments are as biased as the mainstream views in Silicon Valley.

Shen Xiangyang continued: "The significance of the robot is more to reflect the scientific research strength of a technology company. It is a symbolic marketing product."

Zhou Buqi smiled and said: "The current head of Sony is Howard Stringer, a professional manager from the entertainment industry. How can he have any technological dreams? It is indeed easier to deal with this guy than the idealists at Sony. "

Xu Liangjie pondered: "I'm afraid they are too defensive and the materials, data, technical projects and solutions they provide are not complete enough. How is the level of the robotics laboratory in Silicon Valley?"

Shen Xiangyang said: "With a first-class level, even if the project received is not complete, the scientists in the Robotics Laboratory are enough to supplement, improve, and upgrade the design. In fact, there is another way to go."

"Um?"

"Go and dig out the core members of Sony's robotics project."

"I'm afraid it's difficult."

Zhou Buqi didn't think this idea was feasible. It was really difficult to get Japanese people to work abroad. So much so that Japanese companies go abroad every year to recruit a large number of employees to work in their headquarters. The direction of their work is international business, and they often go abroad for long-term business trips. This is how Ning Yaxian went out back then.

Shen Xiangyang said: "Japan's robotics technology is the best in the world. We might as well take advantage of this opportunity to set up an artificial intelligence robot laboratory in Japan. I heard that after the Sony robot project was disbanded, the team members were transferred to the camera department. Yes, they will definitely not be willing to accept it."

Zhou Buqi agreed to the proposal, "Okay, then you can do this. If Sony doesn't have enough, you can also go to other companies to recruit people."

When making a robot, the most important thing is precision.

The more precise it is, the rounder the robot will be and the better the overall feel will be.

It can also be seen from this that Americans are not good in the field of robotics. Americans are rough and rough, and domestically they are even rougher. Germany and Japan are the world's top countries in this field.

Xu Liangjie asked: "What exactly does Stringer mean? Has Sony's strategy really changed?"

Zhou Buqi said: "It seems that it has really changed and is going to adopt a 'consumer electronics + content entertainment' model."

Xu Liangjie smiled and said: "This is an enhanced version of Apple. Apple has three products: iMac, iPod and iPhone. Sony has many electronic products, including computers, Walkmans, TVs, digital cameras, game consoles, and mobile phones. There are also handheld TVs, handheld game consoles, and other integrated learning machines..."

Zhou Buqi said: "We are all old, and our competitiveness is no longer good. In the home game console business, Microsoft is so powerful now. Except for cameras, which are extremely precise electronic products, Sony can continue to dominate the world, and other businesses are No more."

The computer market has entered the era of the three giants: HP, Dell, and Lenovo.

The Walkman market is coming to an end with the emergence of smartphones.

In the TV market, Sony, like many Japanese companies, was tricked by Samsung in the "choose one" problem between plasma TVs and LCD TVs. Because the domestic TV industry is relatively backward, it does not compete to be the first in the world like South Korea and Japan, and can be a follower with peace of mind. Instead, it has huge vitality. You can just follow whoever wins. Although it did not master the core technology, it became the biggest winner in the major appliance industry.

Sony's mobile phone business is a joint venture with Ericsson, called Sony Ericsson, each holding 50% of the shares. It is difficult to reform.

Excluding the digital camera business, which has no rivals, overall, Sony’s “consumer electronics + content entertainment” strategy’s profit point is only the game console business, which is currently Sony’s main promotion of PS3.

From a strategic perspective, this design is completely correct and can compete with the Apple model.

However, there are big problems with product selection.

The mobile phone chosen by Steve Jobs is a necessity in life!

Game consoles are not just needed products!

The annual sales of home game consoles around the world is 40 million to 50 million units.

Where's the cell phone?

Sales of 1 billion units a year!

But this cannot be blamed on Howard Stringer, let alone a media person who does not understand technology. Even among technology experts in Silicon Valley, there are still a large number of people who do not believe that smartphones can replace traditional feature phones.

Smartphones are so unstable!

It crashes at every turn.

There are always problems with the operating system, apps often crash, and the failure rate is very high.

Moreover, the battery capacity is also small, and the phone often runs out of power while talking on the phone, which is too painful for many business people. In comparison, Nokia's functional phone is pure.

Judging from the current market size, iPhone sales in a year are not much different from PS3. This is probably the reason why Howard Stringer dared to challenge the iPhone with PS3.

To some extent, PS3 is indeed better than iPhone.

First, Sony has been making home game consoles for many years, with stable performance;

Second, the PS3 uses a powerful cell processor developed by Sony, which is very powerful and far better than the iPhone. It is also equipped with its latest 1080P Blu-ray high-definition format and the latest visual imaging technology.

It is said that Apple's products have better visual images and color contrast effects. That is because they are not compared with Sony, whose imaging technology is more powerful than Apple's.

This provides a transcendent user experience.

Third, the PS3 is connected to a TV, and the screen is very large. The iPhone is so small, and it’s so frustrating to use.

Fourth, PS3 can provide more content than iPhone.

The current iPhone also provides iTunes streaming services, but this is still in the early days. The performance of the mobile phone is poor and the signal is not good. Let alone watching movies, the experience of listening to music is not good enough.

But the PS3 is different. This is a home game console that can be directly connected to your home WiFi. Not to mention playing large games, you can also watch high-definition Blu-ray videos online!

Fifth, PS3 is a home entertainment game console, and "home entertainment" can be regarded as an urgent need for every family.

Except for phone calls and portability, the PS3 is better than the iPhone in almost every aspect.

Of course, no matter how good or advanced the PS3 device is, it must have good enough software and content.

Ziweixing is exactly the software and content provider.

There are YikYak, Helo and UC beauty, as well as casual games like "My Farm". More importantly, Ziweixing has the Niconico two-dimensional website in Japan and has a close relationship with Netflix in Europe and the United States.

In an era before Internet TV became popular, being able to watch online film and television content through TV is definitely a huge temptation!

Because it can be OTT!

In developed countries such as Europe, the United States, South Korea and Japan, if users want to watch TV, they have to pay a sum of money to the TV operator and then spend another sum of money to subscribe to the TV station.

With PS3, users no longer need to find TV operators. Simply connect to your PS3 and spend money to subscribe to the website, and you can choose the movies and TV content you want to watch.

It will take many years for Apple Box and Apple TV to be launched, but Sony's PS3 has been realized long ago. From this perspective, Sony Electronics does have an industry leadership.

It's a pity that we are ahead of the industry but behind the times. This is the era of the Internet.