Reborn Tokyo Golden Age

Every July is the time for Baichuan Electric to introduce new products.

This year is no exception. The new upgrade of the portable CD player D-02 finally got rid of the problems of shock resistance and portability that were criticized by consumers before.

The shockproof performance has been greatly improved, the body has become thinner, and an additional battery box is no longer needed for power supply.

The most critical price remains unchanged at 49,800 yen, which can be described as a real additional configuration without a price increase.

Such a sincere new-generation product has naturally been well received by many consumers.

After nearly a year of development, the CD record market is no longer as stretched as it was last year.

Now the neon market has been flooded with a large number of CD records, and almost all record companies have more or less released a few of this new type of records.

Because of the abundance of content, more and more people have begun to try this new music player.

In the first half of the year, Panasonic, Hitachi, Toshiba, etc. also launched their own CD players one after another.

But like Sony, their initial CD players were desktops.

After seeing the popularity of Shirakawa Electric's portable CD player, related projects were immediately carried out internally.

But to actually go public, it is estimated that it will not be possible until the end of the year.

Therefore, most of the CD players currently on the market are desktop machines.

As for portable CD players, it is not that there are no other manufacturers except Shirakawa Electric that have such products.

Well, Sony also introduced its own portable CD player in the spring.

However, it is embarrassing because I saw the portable model at Shirakawa Electric's presentation in July last year.

Sony, in a hurry, launched its own portable project that month. At that time, the chewing gum battery of Baidian Electric had not yet produced results.

So now the portable model launched by Sony in the spring is the same as the original product of Shirakawa Electric, and it also has an external battery box.

Don't you think it's a coincidence?

It was indeed a coincidence that Shirakawa Electric turned its hands over and replaced it with an all-in-one model with a chewing gum battery, and looked at Sony with a smile and said nothing.

A portable with an extra burden, and a thin and light all-in-one portable, the public knows how to choose.

In terms of product innovation, Sony is one step behind again.

As for other manufacturers' CD players, portable ones are still blank.

Even in the field of desktop computers, Baichuan Electric did not fall behind, and directly began to compete with them head-on.

After several years of development, Baichuan Electric is no longer as cautious as before.

With sufficient technical accumulation, it is not afraid of the fierce encirclement and suppression of several well-known manufacturers.

In addition to the release of portable CD players, Shirakawa Electric's Walkman and other products have not stopped updating.

Its biggest highlight is that it solves the problem of battery life, and the application of chewing gum batteries also makes the public curious about this new type of battery.

It not only exists in the Walkman, CD player and other products of Shirakawa Electric, but also a new model launched by Sony also uses this battery.

According to the official statements released by the two companies, a chewing gum battery is enough to support the Walkman for two hours of continuous playback.

The portable CD player equipped with four chewing gum batteries can last for more than two and a half hours.

After someone did the relevant tests in person, this kind of battery with strong capacity began to gain people's favor.

The charge and discharge times can reach more than 500 times, and the price is only about 450 yen. It is actually very cost-effective to calculate carefully.

The Walkman can play for up to one hour with two dry batteries, and the battery needs to be replaced 500 times at least tens of thousands of yen.

But now with chewing gum batteries, not only the battery life has been increased, but the cost of use will also be greatly reduced.

This kind of battery, which can be bought in vending machines on the street, has been warmly welcomed by Shirakawa Electric and Sony users.

Unfortunately, it is currently only applied to the products of these two companies, and its popularity is far from enough.

Of course, because of the good market feedback, Sony has decided to use the chewing gum battery design on other models as well.

Several battery manufacturers, including Panasonic and Sanyo, are also negotiating with Shirakawa Electric about the authorized production of chewing gum batteries.

Baichuan Electric did not refuse their initiative.

Only when more brands join in, the popularity of chewing gum batteries will accelerate and be accepted by more and more people.

According to internal estimates, as many as three to five years, as little as one or two years, chewing gum batteries should be widely used in portable devices.

With the rapid development in the past few years, Shirakawa Energy should have made initial achievements in the battery field.

And with profits, there will be funds that can be invested in a series of new energy fields such as nickel-metal hydride batteries and lithium batteries.

Bai Chuanfeng's goal is not high, as long as Bai Chuan Energy no longer needs to pay for itself, and it can achieve internal circulation, it will be considered a success.

But judging from the current situation, it is very likely that Shirakawa Energy will be able to make a profit this year.

Tsk, as the research and development expenses of the past few years have been poured down, the subsidiaries under Baichuan Holdings have gradually ushered in the harvest period.

It is foreseeable that starting from this year, the annual profit of Baichuan Holdings will grow faster and faster.

…

In August, Bai Chuanfeng was checking the profit statements of various products of Bai Chuan Electric in the past six months in the office.

As a listed company, in fact, financial statements are disclosed every quarter.

Of course, different companies have different regulations, some disclose once every six months, and some disclose once a year.

It's just that most companies will choose to publish once a year, because this is the minimum number of times stipulated by law.

The same is true for Baichuan Electric, after all, who has nothing to do and sends out financial reports every day.

Of course, for the enterprise, monthly, quarterly, and semi-annual profit reports are also indispensable.

They are the basis for the club to make various business strategies, and it is also the most intuitive way for decision-makers to check the club's operating conditions.

According to the report in hand, the profit of the game machine division in the past six months is roughly more than 20 billion yen.

Most of them came from the newly launched FES and game cassettes in April, which directly contributed nearly 16 billion yen in profits to Shirakawa Electric.

And handhelds are basically the same as last year, only more than 4 billion yen in half a year.

According to the year-on-year growth analysis, this market share is actually declining.

Of course, it doesn't mean that Shirakawa Electric's market share has not increased, and Nintendo has more.

The fact is that the two are almost the same, and the handheld business has not grown significantly.

This has something to do with the weak period of the first generation of handhelds and the impact of home game consoles.

After all, the price of a one-time handheld is close to 5,000 yen. If you have this money, you can directly buy a blue and white machine or a red and white machine.

And after buying a home game console, you can play other games on this platform in the future.

The price of a box of game cassettes is also about 5,000 yen, which is basically the same as that of a handheld. But its gameplay, gameplay, and graphics are all overwhelmed by the latter.

Children may not be able to compare prices, but as long as they know that home game consoles are fun and inexpensive, that's enough.

Therefore, the decline of the handheld market is inevitable. If no changes are made, not only will its profits not increase next year, but it may even decline.

Bai Chuanfeng realized this a long time ago, which is why he urged HAL to develop the next-generation handheld.

Any product is the same, only through continuous innovation can it continue to maintain its market position.

Otherwise, it will be a matter of time to be eliminated. From this point of view, the market is fair to a certain extent, of course, the premise is that there is no external factor interference.

However, when it came to the development of the next generation of handheld devices, Bai Chuanfeng's face also became a little unsightly.

HAL's progress has been delayed again and again, and it has been several months behind the expected launch date.

If it weren't for being too busy recently, Bai Chuanfeng would have gone to the scene to see what's wrong.

Next week at the latest, anyway, he'll have a day to see what's going on.

Just thinking about the handheld, suddenly there was a knock on the door outside.

"Please come in." Bai Chuanfeng put down the report in his hand and rubbed the space between his eyebrows.

"Master President, do you know what happened just now?" Chi Mu couldn't wait to start the conversation as soon as he entered the door.

The expression on his face was a bit weird, and he couldn't tell whether it was happiness or gloating.

"Is it a good thing?"

Bai Chuanfeng knew that this guy was secretly having fun with that expression that he didn't think it was a big deal to watch the excitement.

"Hey" Akagi Miyu laughed first, "Nintendo has begun to recall their FC."

"Huh?" Bai Chuanfeng raised his head in disbelief, "Recall?"

"That's right! Not only are all of them recalled, but the current models are also discontinued in all channels."

This time, Bai Chuanfeng saw clearly that this guy was just gloating.

"What's going on?" Bai Chuanfeng also became interested.

The battle between red and blue isn't over yet, so why did Lao Ren withdraw his troops first.

It can't be cheating, so the price is too high.

The recall, not to mention the damage to the corporate image.

The cost of manpower and material resources in this operation process alone is astonishing.

Considering the loss of the product itself, it will cost more money in the end.

Generally, it is not because the product has major flaws or safety issues, and companies will not consider this step anyway.

And then Akagi's explanation also confirmed Bai Chuanfeng's conjecture that the reason why Nintendo recalled FC was that there was indeed a major quality problem.

With the official launch in April, Nintendo's FC has sold nearly one million copies in the past three months.

But also because of the increase in products sold, Nintendo has received more and more complaint calls here.

At first, Lao Ren thought it was a quality control problem. After all, it is inevitable that some of the products with millions of copies have quality problems.

But gradually the after-sales personnel found that almost all the complaint calls were feedbacking a problem.

That is, Nintendo's FC game consoles will have flickering screens and freezes during use, and in severe cases, they will even crash directly.

Sensing a trace of unusual after-sales personnel, he immediately reported to Uemura Masayuki, who was in charge of the development of the game console.

Uemura Masayuki, who got the news, also attached great importance to this issue. He knew very well that if this matter was not handled properly, it would bring immeasurable damage to Nintendo's reputation.

The hurried development team disassembled the problematic game console overnight. After several days of investigation and verification, it was finally found that there was some problem with the circuit on the motherboard.

To be precise, there is a problem with the graphics chip PPU that assists the CPU. Its function is to reduce the pressure on the CPU and provide computing power for physical modeling and collision simulation.

The PPU of Nintendo FC is also supplied by Ricoh. If you want to solve the problem, you must change the circuit or replace the PPU.

After counting the previous complaint calls, Masayuki Uemura found that there were as many as thousands of problematic game consoles.

With his scalp numb, he didn't dare to make his own claims, so he could only report the matter to Yamauchi Hiroshi in a hurry.

As the "tyrant" of Nintendo, it goes without saying that Hiroshi Yamauchi was furious.

But since the problem has arisen, it must be solved. The longer this kind of thing is delayed, the greater the loss.

Hiroshi Yamauchi immediately decided to recall all the FCs sold before and immediately stop the sales of new products.

This kind of thing can't be hidden at all, and it will destroy Nintendo's century-old signature if it is left alone.

So from the beginning of August, Nintendo issued an announcement and started the recall process.

This is also the reason why Akagi came to Bai Chuanfeng immediately after hearing the news.

Friends and businessmen are in trouble, Mr. President, do you think we should continue to watch the fun, or make trouble?

PS: The recall of Nintendo FC is true in history, not fabricated by the author.

In addition, I have been too busy recently to read the comments in time, please forgive me~!