Top of the big era

When Zhou Buqi returned to the company, Guan Nanqing was waiting at the door of the office. When he saw the big boss coming back, he reported quickly and said quickly: "Mr. Zhou Shaoning has arrived and is waiting in the reception room now."

"I know." Zhou Buqi reached out and grabbed a handful of her buttocks. There was only a layer of hip-covering skirt, which felt very fleshy and elastic. He praised, "It's so tender, like a peach." "

Guan Nanqing's face turned slightly red and she quickly glanced outside.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he found no one outside.

As for the people in the house, it doesn't matter if they see it.

"It's too hot today. I'm sweating all over after walking around for a while." Zhou Buqi then told Guan Nanqing, "Go and make arrangements. I'll be done here soon, let's take a shower."

"Oh, who will arrange it?"

"The more, the merrier."

"Okay, I'll ask them."

"You have to come. Stop arranging arrangements for others. You ran away."

"Um."

Guan Nanqing bit her lip, her face turned red, and she nodded gently.

Detoured to the reception room.

Zhou Shaoning was sitting there drinking herbal tea, holding a document in his hand. When he saw the owner coming back, he stood up and said with a smile: "Are you busy with the automobile industry again?"

Zhou Buqi said: "It's really not the case this time. I just came from Xiaomi."

"Xiaomi?" Zhou Shaoning shook his head, "Is it about the price of flash memory? Mr. Lei came to see me, but I can't help with this kind of thing. Asda does not produce flash memory chips, so they have to purchase them from Hynix. ”

Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "MediaTek is developing a 4G processor chip, do you know?"

"Well, I know. One of their vice presidents came over to see me last month. It is expected to be launched by this time next year. By then, I hope Asda can launch one or two mobile phones equipped with MediaTek chips." Zhou Shaoning quickly said Guess what, "Xiaomi doesn't want to cooperate with Qualcomm anymore? Does it put its hope in MediaTek? Well... He told me last time that he was very dissatisfied with Qualcomm's strategy."

Zhou Buqi frowned slightly, "What's going on with Qualcomm's chip strategy? Why did I hear it's forced bundling? Isn't this a vicious monopoly?"

"Huh?" Zhou Shaoning raised his eyebrows, "Is this what he mainly wanted to talk about when he came to you?"

Zhou Buqi said: "Absolutely."

Zhou Shaoning was reluctant, "Isn't it because he wants you to stand out? He doesn't do such offending things himself, so he lets you do it?"

Zhou Buqi didn't take it seriously, "It's just Qualcomm. Xiaomi can't afford to offend it. I don't take it seriously at all."

Zhou Shaoning said: "Qualcomm's chip strategy is indeed excessive. It forcibly bundles expired patents and invalid patents, requiring mobile phone manufacturers to pay a lot of additional patent fees...an extra US$5 per mobile phone."

"And free reverse licensing of patents?"

"right."

"Isn't Asda developing its own 4G chips? After reverse licensing, wouldn't it mean that all self-developed patents will be open to Qualcomm for free?"

Zhou Buqi’s requirements for Asda are definitely different from Xiaomi’s.

If Asda wants to participate in international competition, it must have its own core technology, so that it can form its own unique product advantages in certain fields. Xiaomi's strategy is different. It is mainly to develop towards Xiaomi's product ecology, and the technical requirements are not high.

Patents have patented ways of playing, and open source has open source ways of playing.

It is impossible for a patent troll like Qualcomm to take the open source route. Licensing reversely to Qualcomm, isn't this equivalent to opening up one's own intellectual property to Qualcomm?

How can this make sense? !

Zhou Shaoning nodded, "Yes, in theory that's the case. But don't worry too much, you just need to make good cuts."

Zhou Buqi asked: "What kind of cutting?"

Zhou Shaoning said: "Qualcomm's requirement is that if mobile phone manufacturers purchase their chips, they need to reverse license their patents. We only need to separate the chip company and the mobile phone company. They are two companies. Mobile phone manufacturers The reverse licensing of patents to Qualcomm has nothing to do with some of our core technology areas.”

There are always people who better than you.

There are always ways to cope.

Zhou Buqi said: "Even so, paying royalties for expired patents and patents that are not used on mobile phones for no reason. This forced bundling sales strategy is not in line with the market norm at all. A mobile phone The mobile phone adds an additional cost of US$5. Asida ships 30 million mobile phones a year, which is also an additional cost of US$150 million.”

Zhou Shaoning said: "There is nothing we can do about it. The current smartphone market mainly revolves around Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips. Their chips are in short supply. If you don't agree to such conditions, others will naturally agree." , they don’t have to worry about selling. This is not only the choice of chip ecology, but also the software ecology. When developing apps, there are actually two ways. One way is to adapt to iOS. . Another way is to optimize the Android system towards Qualcomm’s Snapdragon series chips.”

"Where's Ziweixing?"

"The same goes for MSI, which is also aiming to optimize Qualcomm's chips. This is the general trend of the industry."

"If the optimization is not optimized, will the impact be serious?"

Zhou Buqi doesn't know much about this kind of technical stuff.

Zhou Shaoning said: "If it is used under normal circumstances, the gap is still not big. But in some special cases, apps that have been optimized with software and hardware can have a better experience. Today's mobile app optimization mainly focuses on four aspects - stuck Stuttering processing, power consumption processing, installation package slimming and app startup. Among them, the most important thing is the optimization of CPU. "

Normally, this kind of general-purpose system and chip does not require software to specifically optimize it. The meaning of "universal" is that if it meets the big standards, it can be used universally. But different chips have different small standards. If they can be consistent with the small standards, better results will be achieved.

In some special occasions, optimized software can perform better.

Just like playing games on the computer.

If you play ordinary small games, there is actually not much difference between using an NVIDIA graphics card or an AMD graphics card. However, if you want to play some AAA masterpieces, and also turn on 4K image quality and high brush... When the processor and graphics card are running at full capacity, there is a difference.

At this time, the N card will perform better and the game will run extremely smoothly; the A card will always experience frame drops and freezes.

This does not mean that Nvidia's graphics cards are of better quality and have a higher technical level than AMD's graphics cards.

This is related to software-level optimization.

NVIDIA is the mainstream of the industry.

When major game manufacturers develop games, they mainly focus on NVIDIA graphics cards for optimization, which will cause the game to have a more obvious experience difference under extreme circumstances. A specially optimized graphics card will perform better.

The same is true for mobile phone CPUs.

App manufacturers have limited energy and limited human and financial resources. It is impossible to optimize for all CPUs on the market. They will only choose mainstream chips for optimization... The current mainstream chips are Qualcomm's Snapdragon series.

If a certain mobile phone is not equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, then I'm sorry... this mobile phone will experience frequent freezes in some situations.

Now is the time for the smartphone industry to divide its spheres of influence.

No one wants their mobile phones to have inherent disadvantages as soon as they appear on the market.

They all hope to provide the best user experience to win the recognition of consumers.

At this time, naturally all mobile phone manufacturers are rushing to buy Qualcomm chips. Qualcomm can lead the world and make some very excessive demands on mobile phone manufacturers. If any mobile phone manufacturer is unwilling to accept such a request, it will be no different than waiting for death, and it will have no choice but to agree to Qualcomm's conditions. Just like Japan's old mobile phone manufacturers, they are unwilling to use Qualcomm's chips. Let alone compete internationally, they can hardly survive at home.

Zhou Buqi asked: "What are the special conditions?"

Zhou Shaoning said: "For example, there are many programs running in the background of the mobile phone, causing the memory usage to be too high; or when the battery is almost out, or when the fever is severe, or in extremely cold conditions, running large programs, watching high-definition videos, etc. It may be stuck due to poor optimization.”

"That's not a special situation, it's a common situation!"

Zhou Buqi was startled.

Zhou Shaoning said: "Yes, so now Qualcomm's chips have become a major trend in the industry. Especially for high-end models, Qualcomm is almost the only choice. Even Samsung has turned to Qualcomm. It's not that Samsung's chips are inferior, but that it's big Most apps on the market are optimized based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips. Hardware can affect the development of software, and software optimization solutions will also affect the choice of hardware. "

Zhou Buqi has realized the importance of Qualcomm chips in the industry, "However, this is not the reason for Qualcomm to engage in vicious bundling! This is monopoly!"

"Monopoly..." Zhou Shaoning frowned slightly, "Whether it is a monopoly or not, it's really hard to define. After all, Apple still exists in the mobile phone market, and there are many other chip manufacturers. Qualcomm does not have the prerequisites for a forced monopoly. I consult In terms of legal affairs, you can say that it is forced bundling, but it is not necessarily forced monopoly.”

"What?"

Zhou Buqi didn't believe it.

Zhou Shaoning said: "Qualcomm's strategy is not just for our country's mobile phone manufacturers, they are targeting the world. Neither the United States nor the European Union has questioned Qualcomm's strategy. There are mainly gray areas. Mobile phone manufacturers are not the only ones Qualcomm is a chip company to choose from, and judging from its performance, it does not involve forced buying or selling.”

Zhou Buqi said angrily: "Can that be the same? Damn it! Where are there any mobile phone manufacturers in Europe and the United States now? The only ones still making mobile phones are China, Japan and South Korea. Japanese mobile phone manufacturers are playing house in their own country. It can be ignored. For the United States and the European Union, Qualcomm’s strategy will only weaken the strength of Chinese and Korean mobile phone manufacturers and will only give Apple market opportunities to become bigger and stronger. They are probably still stealing it. Happy!”