Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

01. If overlord wrestling really has a time machine, it is believed that at least two men wanted to go back to 2005. One of them is former Intel CEO Paul Otellini, and the other is Zhao Yong, chairman of Changhong.

One of Otellini's most regrettable career decisions was made in 2005, related to Apple.

Jobs approached Intel to ask the chip giant to develop a mobile CPU for the original iPhone. Otellini proudly said "no" between Apple's offer and the potential risk.

As the only CEO with a non-engineering background in Intel's history, Otellini's professional ability is also quite outstanding-good at sales and clear accounting. During his eight years in office, Intel has been a top financial student.

However, the judgment of the gradual path of technology is not in the category of "accounting". Otherwise, when Jack Ma decides to be Ali Yun and wants to invest 1 billion a year, he will certainly be directly resented by the board of directors.

After being rejected, Jobs had to give up x86 and rely on the ARM architecture instead. On June 29, 2007, the original iPhone equipped with Samsung-designed ARM architecture chip (SoC) made a stunning debut and announced the arrival of a new mobile Internet era.

The arrogant chip giant personally soldered the door to this era. Since then, ARM has gradually replaced Intel x86 as the "infrastructure" of smartphones. ARM won more than 95 per cent of the value-added segment of smartphones.

The chip giant had a bad fall. To make matters worse, similar car overturns have occurred again and again, such as Intel betting on 10nm chips on desktop chips, but choosing between Nikon's immersive lithography technology and Asma EUV lithography machine, which is more suitable for advanced processes. Then, the 10nm chip was delivered three years late.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and founder of Moore's Law, should have the most say in what three years mean for the chip industry. Intel for those three years is like a giant trapped in a swamp, clinging to 14nm, but unable to get out of the predicament. TSMC and Samsung conquered cities and territories, and Intel could not come up with any effective countermeasures. It's not that I don't want to squeeze toothpaste, but there is really no toothpaste to squeeze at the moment.

For technology companies, betting on technological routes is like fighting for their lives, which is dangerous and cruel. If you are right, the company may rise from obscurity to the ranks of giants, such as Qualcomm's patent wall built by CDMA to become a "first-class company" that collects taxes; and if you make the wrong bet, it will hurt your bones and bones, and the fate of the company and even the entire industry may be rewritten.

In this respect, the former color TV overlord Changhong probably experienced it the most. Also in 2005, Zhao Yong, Changhong's new chairman, proposed to produce plasma screens, and he spared no effort to push the idea to the ground despite unanimous opposition from other directors.

At that time, the domestic market share of plasma and liquid crystal was 3:7, and plasma had declined. But Changhong is in urgent need of a chance to turn against the wind.

The dark cloud with a sudden huge loss of 3.7 billion yuan in 2004 is still floating overhead. Before that, Changhong was the eldest brother of the color TV market and the "Maotai" of the capital market. Ni Runfeng, the former chairman, even said: "it is wrong for you to sell Changhong at any time, and it is right to buy Changhong at any time." Until the high inventory and the failure in the American market punctured the Changhong myth.

Ni Runfeng left the field sadly, the new helmsman Zhao Yong naturally wanted to find a way to return to the hegemonic position. But also aimed at the upstream industrial chain, TCL bet on Huaxing to do LCD panels, Changhong spent 2 billion dollars to buy a South Korean plasma company.

It is not that Zhao Yong does not see the market gap between LCD and plasma is widening, he is betting on small and big. The bloody price war was once the biggest nightmare for the color TV industry. He judged that there are fewer companies producing plasma screens in the market, and there is basically a balance between supply and demand in the market, so there is no need to fight a price war. And Changhong has a chance to hold other color TV rivals by the neck through "one screen"-though it sounds wishful thinking.

In addition, the threshold for plasma investment and royalties is lower. Sichuan Hongou, a plasma production plant established by Changhong in 2007, has an initial investment of 720 million yuan, while an 85th generation liquid crystal production line of TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics costs 24.5 billion yuan.

In terms of technology, plasma TV has obvious advantages. Some Zhihu netizens concluded: dynamic contrast is strong and there is no trailing. "at that time, LCD technology was relatively backward, and football flying was the same as the line, and the trailing was serious." "

But it is not without reason that most manufacturers stand in line with LCD screens. LCD technology is more suitable for small screens, which means lower costs. In the initial stage of the promotion of new technology, the price often determines the psychological threshold for consumers to taste fresh. Moreover, technology does not stagnate all the time, and people are betting on the future.

After realizing this reality, members of the plasma "big group" began to quit: first Sony and Toshiba gave up the plasma business in 2005, then Hitachi, then Samsung and LG of South Korea also stopped investing in plasma, and finally Panasonic decided to quit in 2011.

When this group retreated to the only Changhong family, there was no chance for "group chat", let alone playing the market side by side. Changhong tasted the taste of being alone.

In February 2014, when Zhao Yong, the leader of a state-owned enterprise, appeared at the Hongyuan Theater in Mianyang, Sichuan Province as an Internet image of T-shirts and jeans as a platform for his own smart TV, he had mixed feelings: "Xiaomi has never made a TV. Launch a TV, everyone's faces are facing them, buttocks are facing us, it seems that the future belongs to them. "

It is hard to say whether the future belongs to Xiaomi, at least it has nothing to do with Changhong. A few months later, Changhong issued an announcement that it planned to sell its 61 per cent stake in Hongou at a price of 64.2 million yuan, hoping to make a cut with Hongou, which has been losing money year after year.

It took Zhao Yong nine years to finally accept the fact that he bet on the wrong plasma technology. During this period, Hisense and TCL rose, while Changhong never recovered, far away from the mainstream TV manufacturers.

02. Why is there a "wrong skill tree"? human beings are faced with choices all the time. In the long process of history, the "list of losers" of the wrong skill tree is bound to be constantly updated.

From the Neolithic Mayans who could calculate pi but did not evolve the ability to build wheels, to the Soviet Union's invention of the ternary computer, which is difficult to popularize, and plunged into the wrong path of miniaturization of electronic tubes in the era of integrated circuits, to Hanergy, Rou Yu and other controversial enterprises that ruined their business prospects due to the technological route of niche, the times have been watching the mistakes of explorers and fanatics with a cold eye, and a node many years later. Declare their irreparable failure.

In 2015, when photovoltaic star Hanergy reached its peak, founder Li Hejun overtook Jack Ma to become the richest man in the mainland. The headquarters of Hanergy has also moved into the Beijing Olympic Forest Park in Shangfeng and Shangshui. However, the curse of "the richest man in the photovoltaic industry is many, but the richest man can not stay" is about to be repeated in him.

When he entered the field of thin-film power generation in 2009, Li Hejun was ambitious to be the "apple" of the green energy sector. At that time, the mainstream photovoltaic cells in the world used crystalline silicon as the main material, although the price of raw materials was high, but the conversion rate was high; the cost of thin film cells was lower but the conversion rate was also low. There is a wide gap in market share between the two technology routes, with crystalline silicon accounting for more than 90%, while thin films continue to shrink.

Even Sharp, the father of liquid crystals, stumbled on thin-film batteries. As thin-film batteries have been unable to open the market for many years, and the main LCD screen has been besieged by Samsung and other strong rivals, Sharp finally went to the end of selling itself as the parent company of Foxconn. But Li Hejun is extremely confident about thin film technology, at least when he "preaches" to the outside world.

Caixin Weekly previously reported that Hanergy's business model is self-cycling. As the thin film cell industry chain is not perfect, Hanergy produces its own manufacturing equipment and production lines for thin film solar photovoltaic modules upstream; in the middle reaches, it takes the industrial park as the carrier to produce photovoltaic modules, with financing from the local government and banks; downstream is to buy components and sell related products.

Many people do not understand, calling Li Hejun is a big hoax, thinking that Hanergy is essentially a financial company under the cloak of new energy and emerging technology. Li Hejun has retorted many times, "if everyone understands Hanergy, how many opportunities do we have?" "

As there are few Hanergy products on the market, some organizations find the mystery of "self-circulation" after an undercover visit on the spot. On May 20, 2015, the short hunt began. In the first 20 minutes of trading, HTF shares avalanche, the market value fell 47%.

That night, Li Hejun even braved his head and went to Hebei to give a keynote speech on "Tomorrow is another day", but the decline of Hanergy has become inevitable.

After 2015, with the expansion of the market, the cost of crystalline silicon batteries has directly dropped by 90%, and the proudest "selling point" of thin-film batteries seems to have lost its appeal. In 2019, when the "carbon neutralization" stood on the tuyere, Hanergy reported the news that the capital chain was broken. Li Hejun and his wife were also sued by the lender's CDB, who questioned the respondent, "Guangdong Hanneng, you may not have seen it, this enterprise does not have much operation." After two or three billion yuan went in, what did you do? "

In 2021, Hanergy headquarters was "cleared" by the property because of arrears of rent. The BIPV project, which was used as a benchmark at a cost of 60 million yuan (Taineng Building exterior wall for power generation), was also demolished. This is really in response to Li Hejun's prediction at that time, "either we die or we are great."

As for Ruoyu Technology, which is still struggling in the quagmire, its "ultra-low temperature non-silicon process integration technology (ULT-NSSP)", which is claimed to be exclusively developed with lower cost and higher yield than polysilicon, has never been verified and recognized by the market. It only took Rou Yu more than two years to move from the star unicorn sought after by investors in the primary market to Liu Jianwei's appeal to the outside world to "save Rou Yu."

Putting aside the controversial Hanergy and Rou Yu, why do industry giants like Intel and Changhong make mistakes in the choice of key technological routes? "it is not mainly a technical problem, but a strategic issue of commercial value and industrial pattern judgment. A point raised by a senior technical evangelist in a conversation with noise reduction NoNoise.

Along this line of thinking, we find that the market has its own choice logic, and the timing and ecology are far more complex than the technology itself. A technical route evolves from theory to commercial landing, just like innovative drugs from laboratory to clinic, the key depends on the late efficacy.

Some technologies are indeed advanced, but they can't get up ecologically, and if others don't play with you, they can only become "non-mainstream" or create a confusing "self-cycle" like Hanergy. Some technology itself lags behind, but at present, there is a market demand, and it can also rise in the wind and water.

This point has been verified by different dimensions in the hot new energy automobile industry. Also as a new energy car, BMW i3 was unique in bringing out the lightweight selling point of carbon fiber body when its competitors were focused on the technological innovation of lithium batteries. The result is that i3 is high and low, and eventually goes out of production; ideally, although the add-on technology itself is controversial, this solution that meets the current needs of users has gained a following for the ideal.

It can be said that the industrial pattern, upstream and downstream ecology and even end-users will jointly verify the success of the technological route.

03. How should we evaluate the individuals who make key decisions? If the technology path is a sniper rifle aimed at the future, then the CEO should be a scope on the barrel.

CEO, a technology company, does not have to have a technical background, but it still needs a big sense of technological direction. For example, Jack Ma, although an English major, but he was firmly optimistic about the value of cloud computing ten years ago, from which we can more or less see Jack Ma's open mind and pattern.

In terms of technology strategy, Huawei Ren Zhengfei is also considered to be a founder with a big pattern. This pattern is sometimes reflected not only in deciding what to do, but also in nothing. For example, in 2000, when the window of opportunity appeared in PHS, Ren Zhengfei thought that this kind of PHS technology was backward and would be eliminated in a short time, so Huawei plunged into 3G research and development, watching ZTE and UT Starcom make a lot of money.

Huawei, which gave up non-strategic opportunities, spent several years of depression and loneliness. But the rest of the story is known to the whole country.

As for Intel, some industry insiders think it is a problem in the CEO handover shift, looking for unsuitable people. The same problem has occurred at Microsoft. Microsoft in the Ballmer era mistakenly lost the entire mobile Internet era. On CES in 2012, a reporter asked Ballmer what Microsoft would do next, and his sentence incisively and vividly explained what it means to be in a rut. "in short, there is nothing more important in Microsoft than Windows."

His successor, Nadella, used cloud computing to win Microsoft the ticket of the era. AMD, which surpassed Intel, reached its peak under the leadership of Su Zifeng, the first female CEO in history, by focusing on investing in high-performance computing. American CNBC host believes that Su Zifeng saved AMD from the "garbage dump".

Some counterattacks do not necessarily show the vision of leaders at the moment. BYD, for example, made a firm bet on lithium iron phosphate on new energy batteries and ternary lithium in Ningde era. For a long time, "King Ning" was invincible, while BYD's lithium iron phosphate could not raise its head.

But in the past two years, BYD made further breakthroughs in battery technology, and the plot ushered in a reversal. The blade battery that Wang Chuanfu is proud of has been squeezed into Tesla's supplier list because of its cost-effective performance. The pattern of the industry has been reshaped, and there has been a difficult competition in the Ningde era.

Intel, which is mired in the swamp, is also in urgent need of a figure to turn the tide. The one chosen this time is Pat Kissinger, a 30-year-old veteran of the humerus. Kissinger really hates Intel's current situation. "the fall in share prices is to blame," he declared publicly. Intel shares fell 9% on the day of the 2022 Q2 earnings release. You can see how frustrated investors are about their future.

At the beginning of this year, Chiang Shang-Yi, a former research and development bull of TSMC, once again talked about the growth and decline of research and development between TSMC and Intel in an interview. 'TSMC didn't do anything special or great, but didn't make a big mistake,'he said.

Not making mistakes is a rare wake-up call for Intel and many technology companies that are paying the price.

Reference:

1. "Changhong Dream broken Plasma", Southern Metropolis Daily, November 17, 2014

2. "Hanneng will not change", Caixin Weekly, November 2, 2018

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: noise reduction NoNoise (ID:forjingyijing), author: sun Jing

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