Top of the big era

Over at Jingtao, Zhou Buqi and Chen Dong talked nonsense, talking about whatever came to mind. On the other side, Son's assistant Yoshino Hitoshi finally arrived, a young old man in his fifties who was very energetic. After some communication, I found out that this person is a long-distance runner and runs 5 kilometers every day. He is very strong.

This made Zhou Buqi determined to exercise well in the future and use the treadmill more often.

I heard from Masayoshi Son that this Yoshino Hitoshi is quite capable. He is not a technician and is focused on the mobile phone market. When SoftBank braved the world to introduce the iPhone to the Japanese market, there was Hitoshi Yoshino's market analysis behind it.

The result was a huge success. This wave of operations completely overturned the old market of the Japanese mobile phone industry and plunged many technology giants into mourning.

For Zhou Buqi, this is of course a good thing.

Japan's mobile phone industry is at a very high level, and has a very sufficient reserve of technology patents and design patents. In the next few years, Japanese technology giants such as Hitachi, Panasonic, and Sharp will continue to split their businesses and sell them to external parties. The main reason is that there are serious problems in their operations.

The reason why it can be sold at a high price is mainly because it has a strong technical reserve and patent portfolio.

For example, there is a domestic air-conditioning manufacturer called Oaks, which is always sued by Gree for plagiarism and has been repeatedly found guilty of intellectual property infringement and required compensation.

Later, Oaks couldn't bear it anymore and found a way to buy the 20-year-old compressor patent they had eliminated from Toshiba at a high price. Then he filed a lawsuit with Gree, saying that they had infringed on their intellectual property rights. The court ruled that they had to pay 167 million yuan in compensation.

Although the Japanese mobile phone industry is not doing well, the patent accumulation is still there.

This is what young Asda lacks the most.

When it comes to the country's mobile phone industry, Hitoshi Yoshino gave his own judgment. He said that there are two important factors that make Japanese mobile phone manufacturers hesitate on the road to smartphones.

Zhou Buqi wasn't familiar with him and knew that he might not go into too much detail, "What two factors?"

Hitoshi Yoshino: "The most important point is that the plagiarism of smartphones is too serious. Whether it is iPhone, Asda, HTC, Samsung, or LG, they are all highly similar."

Zhou Buqi wanted to scold him.

Depend on!

They've all been beaten to the point of losing their armor, and they're still pretending to be a big-tailed wolf!

Sure enough, the next moment, Hitoshi Yoshino further gave Japan's mobile phone industry gold, "Japanese mobile phone manufacturers like to delve into exclusive technologies. Many unique designs, functions, and experiences are unique to the manufacturers, and they are not willing to imitate others. But smart phones In the mobile era, this kind of personality seems to be missing, and all mobile phones have become the same.”

Zhou Buqi pointedly pointed out, "This is because the underlying systems of smartphones are interoperable and the style design is global."

"Yes, that's right."

Yoshino Jin nodded, and then started showing off again.

It is said that in the past ten years, Japan has relied on 3G network to implement mobile Internet on feature phones, leading the world. The difference is that the current name is mobile Internet, while the previous name was wireless Internet.

However, different countries have different operator communication standards.

The Japanese side is in i-mode, which is only used in this country. The United States, Europe, South Korea, and Australia also have different communication systems, which are not unified.

Things are different now. More powerful mobile operating systems have emerged. Smartphones equipped with Android, iOS, Symbian and other mobile operating systems can connect the world together with the foundation of underlying interoperability. It is equivalent to overcoming the restrictions of operators and realizing Internet connection between users.

Interoperability means product versatility.

Smartphones are becoming more and more alike, and every mobile phone manufacturer's phones seem to be copied. You copy from me, and I copy from you.

This is actually the lowest cost method in the education market.

Educating the market requires costs. If others have educated you, if you imitate it yourself, you can easily promote it without educating the market. In this regard, smartphone manufacturers are unanimous.

Apple should educate, Samsung should educate, Motorola should educate, BlackBerry, LG, Xiaomi, and Nokia should all use their own influence to educate...

Why have smartphones become popular so quickly?

A very important reason is that smartphone manufacturers around the world have "secretly cooperated" to educate the market in the same direction.

Fast speed, wide coverage and great influence.

The requirement is that when designing smartphones, they should be similar and not too innovative, so that they can better cater to a market that is already mature.

If the mobile phone is too personalized, it will be aimed at an uneducated market and will inevitably become a niche market.

Zhou Buqi himself is a master of deception, and he will not be deceived by Yoshino Ren.

Innovation is a good thing, and the benefits of plagiarism cannot be ignored.

This is nothing to be ashamed of.

Zhou Buqi told Zhou Shaoning a long time ago that when making a mobile phone, if you are unsure about something and have difficulty making a choice, then look at the iPhone.

How to choose iPhone, just do it.

Don’t copy it just because the iPhone is good. You should copy it even if the iPhone is rubbish. Because the iPhone has relied on its own brand and influence to educate the market about new features and new designs, it will be easier to gain market understanding by following the trend.

Different from the iPhone choice, even if it is a better solution, once this is an uneducated market, it must be a niche and sales will be hindered.

At a later stage, Apple also discovered that the market it had worked so hard to educate had been taken advantage of by its peers, and it stopped pursuing it. Let Android phones do it and let them cultivate the market. When the market matures, they will imitate and follow up.

Finding that Boss Zhou seemed to know the industry very well, Yoshino Hitoshi was somewhat embarrassed. The second reason he gave was very reluctant: "In the era of 3G feature phones, Japanese domestic manufacturers followed the instructions of operators when developing mobile phones. From hardware specifications, design and development This is true for software and services. Operators also single-handedly control the sales channels of mobile phones. What mobile phones are sold and how they are sold all depend on the operators. But in the era of smart phones, mobile phone manufacturers no longer target operators, but operating system, there will be pains of transformation.”

In contrast, as an ordinary user of mobile phones, Chen Dong's perspective is more accurate. He said: "I think it's still the user's habit. In terms of experience, touch-screen phones cannot input, copy and paste as conveniently as keyboard phones. For those who pay attention to For efficient users, it seems not as convenient as a keyboard. Japanese mobile phone manufacturers seem to still be making this directional choice."

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and said, "Smartphones are the future!"

Yoshino Jin agreed, "Yes, the two years that iPhone and Aster have been sold in Japan are enough to illustrate the problem. 08ne's market share is 4.9%, and Aster's market share is 2.2%; in the past year, iPhone's market share has It reached 8.6%, and Aster’s share exceeded 6%. Moreover, in the past year, Samsung and LG also entered the Japanese market, and their market shares reached 3%.”

This is true.

In its previous life, it took the iPhone four years to conquer the Japanese mobile phone market.

In 2009, the market share was 4.9%, ranking seventh; in 2010, the market share was 8.6%, ranking sixth; in 2011, the market share was 17%, ranking second; in 2012, the market share was 25.5%, ranking first!

Since then, iPhone sales have increased and its market share has increased, gradually taking over half of the country.

Zhou Buqi said: "This is a general trend, and the impact it will cause is not small, right?"

"Well, it's big." Yoshino Jin sighed, "Many companies are transforming. In November last year, Sony released Japan's first Android phone. However, most of them are still traditional feature phones. NEC, Fujitsu and Kyocera.”

"that's all?"

Zhou Buqi was not very satisfied.

Yoshino Jin tentatively asked: "Mr. Zhou, which aspect are you specifically referring to?"

Zhou Buqi asked: "Are there any mobile phone manufacturers...or, in other words, are there any big companies that really can't continue their mobile phone business?"

"this……"

Yoshino Jin was a little embarrassed.

Zhou Buqi thought he didn't know, so he smiled and said, "It doesn't matter, you can go back and check."

Hitoshi Yoshino said: "I know some market conditions. Toshiba's mobile phone business can survive and will be sold."

"real?"

Zhou Buqi's eyes lit up.

Very good!

I'm not sure how good Toshiba's mobile phones are, but with the "Toshiba" brand, they will definitely not be too bad. At least in terms of technology reserves and patent accumulation, it must be ahead of the young company Aisda.

When competing in the international market, we cannot play around with intellectual property rights as we do domestically. Especially in the United States and the first-class developed market markets such as Britain, Germany, and France, we must be particularly careful in this regard.

Yoshino Ren guessed what Boss Zhou meant. He might want to acquire the mobile phone business of a well-known Japanese technology giant to improve Asda's industrial chain, channels, design, technology and patent protection.

However, this is not easy.

Hitoshi Yoshino: "At that time, the mobile phone businesses of NEC, Hitachi, and Casio were not very good. In order to solve this problem, someone took the lead and merged the mobile phone businesses of these three companies to become today's NEC. This is the current domestic sales volume in Japan. The best mobile phone brand.”

"Who takes the lead? Communications Department?"

"No, it's the equity side."

"oh!"

Zhou Buqi suddenly woke up.

Chaebol!

NEC and Hitachi are two independent companies, but they have consistent interests for the higher-level consortium. Hitachi's mobile phone business is not doing well and wants to sell it... If it is sold to an external consortium, wouldn't it be an enemy? Integrating Hitachi's mobile phone business into NEC is an internal transaction within the consortium and a strong internal alliance.

This is very similar to the temporary coordinating committee established by Zhou Buqi, which can maximize the advantages of its own ecological structure.

Hitoshi Yoshino: "Fujitsu mobile phones and Toshiba mobile phones are competitive to a certain extent, but looking further up, the two parties are actually the same system. If Toshiba mobile phones cannot continue to be made, it may be difficult to sell them to Fujitsu's direct competitors. Next, Fujitsu will be very Possible acquisition of Toshiba's mobile phone division. Hard to stop."