yournovel Chapter 488 Ecological Achievement and Industrial Self-Reliance
Chapter 488 Ecological Achievement and Industrial Self-Reliance
The Xinghuo Group's 2007 annual summary meeting was scheduled for the afternoon of December 28th. The venue was still the largest conference room at the Jinan headquarters. The number of chairs had been increased from twenty to fifty, and a row of folding chairs had been added at the back, but it still wasn't enough to seat everyone. People who arrived late had to stand against the wall.
Chen Zhongming stood in front of the screen, circling data charts with his laser pointer, speaking much faster than in previous years. "Spark OS has surpassed 100 million installations globally. This includes StarPhone, tablets, Starlight laptops, Alienware laptops, and the desktops pre-installed on Dell and HP." He turned to the next page, "The number of apps in the app store has exceeded 50,000, with cumulative downloads exceeding five billion. The number of registered developers exceeds 120,000, covering more than 60 countries worldwide."
A world map pops up on the screen, with a small blue dot representing each country with a Spark OS user. The blue dots are densely packed, with the densest concentration in East Asia, followed by Europe and the Middle East, while North America is sparser but still forms several lines.
"Nebula Technology has become the largest cloud computing service provider in the Asia-Pacific region. It has over 20,000 customers and revenue exceeding 4 billion. The PanShi platform creates over 30,000 virtual machines daily, and the total data volume of HaiNa object storage has exceeded 100 PB." Chen Zhongming put down his laser pointer, took off his glasses, and wiped the dust off the lenses. "Xinghuo Electronics Factory's annual revenue exceeded 20 billion, with a profit of 4 billion. StarPhone's global sales exceeded 3 million units."
Someone in the audience gave a soft whistle.
"The last item." Chen Zhongming turned to the last page, where a magnified photo of a chip appeared on the screen—a square chip with the Spark logo printed on its surface and the label "WCDMA Baseband Processor" next to it. "Project Noah's Ark: The self-developed WCDMA baseband chip has completed laboratory testing. The first call was made at the beginning of this year, and to date, it has completed compatibility testing with the networks of 120 operators worldwide. Mass production is expected in 2009, two years later than originally planned—but the quality fully meets the standards. This chip, from its architecture design to its physical layer implementation, was entirely done by ourselves."
Chen Zhongming placed the laser pointer on the table. "My report is finished."
Ling Yun stood up. He didn't walk to the screen; he just stood there, leaning against the window. Outside, Jinan's winter was gray and gloomy, and the tower cranes in the distance were still turning.
"We've been through a lot in the past year. We fought Qualcomm's Section 337 investigation. We appealed the sales ban imposed by the Mannheim court in Germany. Samsung blocked us with OLED screens, and Sunvino stepped in. TSMC poached seven of our engineers from their Singapore plant, and Liang Mengsong and his team brought the yield back to normal within three months." He paused, looking at every face in the conference room. "Many people ask me, why do we insist on making our own chips, systems, and baseband? Can't we just buy them? Of course we can. But with purchased products, our lifeline is in someone else's hands. If they call and say they won't sell, you have to stop production."
The meeting room was very quiet. You could even hear the air conditioning vents.
"From Xingkong Internet Cafe in Jinan in 1996 to today, twelve years have passed. Now I can tell you—Xinghuo is currently the only company in China, and one of the few in the world, that can simultaneously control six core technologies: chip design, chip manufacturing, operating systems, databases, cloud computing, and mobile communications. This wasn't achieved in a day or two, nor could it be accomplished simply by throwing money at it. It was all of you—all the technical documents, all the test reports, all the screws tightened on the production line, all the nights spent in the laboratory, written stroke by stroke."
He bowed slightly.
"This is our most valuable asset and our greatest source of confidence for the next decade."
When the meeting ended, Ni Guangnan sat motionless in the corner. He carefully collected the documents spread out on the table, one by one, and put them back into his old canvas bag. The zipper was still stiff; it took him four tries to zip it up. Ling Yun was waiting for him at the door.
"Mr. Ni, why didn't you say a word just now?"
"You've said everything you needed to say." Ni Guangnan slung his canvas bag over his shoulder and stood up. Today he was wearing that faded blue cotton jacket, the loose threads on the cuffs even more frayed than they had been a few years ago. "Lingyun, I'm about to retire. Meeting you and being able to participate in these things in my life is the greatest fortune of my life."
Ling Yun looked at him. "You can't retire yet. The 90nm lithography machine has just been installed on the production line, and the 65nm one is still on the drawing board. Give me ten years, and within ten years, I'll give you a Ni Guangnan who can make the world's most advanced chips."
Ni Guangnan did not respond. He stood beside the conference table, gripping the temple of his reading glasses tightly in his hand.
"Do you remember ten years ago, in that conference room at the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education, when you were demonstrating the optical mouse to Zhang Weimin? Back then, you said that chips were the future." Ni Guangnan put on his reading glasses, the frames slightly askew. "Now, that future is right before our eyes."
A technician pushed a cart full of server racks through the corridor, the wheels making a clattering sound as they rolled over the seams in the floor.
Ling Yun escorted Ni Guangnan to the elevator. After the elevator doors closed, he stood in the corridor for a while. Wang Jianguo caught up with him and handed him his phone. "Deutsche Telekom just emailed me saying they want to sign a three-year exclusive renewal, and they're willing to increase the price by 15%. I discussed it with Chen Zhongming, and we think we can't sign an exclusive contract—but the terms are really good."
"No exclusive deals. We need to expand into the European market; we can't be tied to just one operator." Ling Yun took his phone and glanced at the email. "Reply to them: the agreement can be renewed with favorable terms, but we must open up distribution channels."
Wang Jianguo jotted down two notes in his notebook. "There's something else. A developer on the app store posted on the forum that his app was pre-installed on several US carriers' contract phones, and last month he received his revenue share, which amounted to nearly two million RMB. He said something in the post—he thanked me for saying at the developer conference back then, 'Developers always get the lion's share.'"
Ling Yun smiled, handed the phone back to Wang Jianguo, and pushed open the door to his office. On the desk were the year-end summaries from various departments; the top one was from the supply chain, with a yellow sticky note on the cover: "Screen production capacity will be short in the first quarter of next year; we need to secure it in advance." He sat down, picked up a pen, and turned to a new page in his notebook. Dusk had already fallen outside the window.