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

Human beings are playful, while learning is anti-human. If you want to be successful in business, don't be the enemy of human nature.

Since the 1990s, educational hardware has accompanied generations of children to grow up. It can be said that the development history of educational hardware is not only a history of Chinese education, but also the youth we have experienced together.

In this issue, we will review the 30-year changes of Chinese educational hardware.

01 learning machine? Video game! On February 16, 1984, at the ten-year exhibition of scientific and technological achievements held in Shanghai, leaders proposed that "computer popularization should start with dolls."

This sentence has changed the fate of China's computer industry in the next 30 years, but also changed the lives of many people.

If asked, what was the most popular subject at that time? There is only one answer, and that is "computer".

In 1971, the world's first personal computer Kenbak-1 was launched, although only 40 units were sold, but it ushered in an era of personal computers, but also set off a "revolution" about computers.

For China, which was in the initial stage of computer at that time, if we want to catch up, we urgently need a learning machine for computer education.

In 1986, the "Chinese Learning Machine" designed and produced by the Ministry of Electronic Industry, under the auspices of Tsinghua University, six of the Ministry of Electronics, the State-owned 734 Factory, Tianjin No.2 Radio Factory, Shaanxi computer Factory and Huaming computer Co., Ltd.

It seems that this Chinese learning machine can only be an imitation of Apple's APPLE II computer. In addition to its similar appearance, the Chinese learning machine is also compatible with APPLE II software.

Compared with the price of Apple II nearly 10,000 yuan that year, you can buy a Chinese learning machine for more than 500 yuan. But at that time, the average monthly salary was only a few dozen yuan in the 1980s, even if it was 500 yuan, it was almost sky-high, so it was difficult to enter the homes of ordinary people.

It is Duan Yongping and his little bully who really bring the learning machine into thousands of households.

In 1989, Duan Yongping, a 28-year-old top student from Zhejiang University, was chosen by Guangdong Yihua Group and came to its subordinate Rihua Electronics Factory as factory director.

At that time, Duan Yongping was a dilapidated and dilapidated company with a loss of 2 million yuan. It seems an impossible task to lead such a factory to fight a turnaround.

But Duan Yongping showed a keen sense of smell as a master of economics, targeting Japan across the sea. There, Nintendo's FC console, also known as the "red and white machine", is setting off a sales frenzy.

Duan Yongping sees the opportunity that game consoles can change the fate of electronics factories.

So in 1991, Rihua Electronics Factory changed its name to Xiaobawang Electronic Industry Company, and in the same year, it developed the first generation mainframe, Xiaobawang D25.

In June of the same year, Xiao Bawang spent 400000 yuan on CCTV advertising, shouting out the slogan "own a small bully, hit a household of ten thousand yuan". For a time, the little bully became famous and sold well.

So here comes the question. As a game console, it is conceivable that the bully can not be welcomed by parents. At that time, video games had begun to be regarded as scourges. Although the bully got off to a good start, the follow-up was weak.

So, how to make adults pay for this game console?

As a result, Duan Yongping came up with a new idea. Why not combine video game education with fun and adopt a two-pronged approach?

In 1993, the first generation of learning machine SB-218 came out. It not only perfectly inherits the entertainment game function of D25, but also has a keyboard and a learning cassette, and the packaging cover is generously typed with "learn to type for three days", showing your "learning essence" to parents.

In the accompanying study cards, there are also learning software such as typing games and keyboard exercises.

For this reason, many children can ask their parents for a bully learning machine to help them improve their academic performance and practice many practical skills such as English and typing.

Many parents who did not know the truth could not beat their children, so they gritted their teeth and paid 300 yuan to buy a learning machine.

At this time, the children will take the multi-in-one yellow cards they got out of nowhere and begin to play Mario, Contra and Adventure Island.

Although I don't have a bully myself, my brother next door has one, and I often go to his house. Then he would take out a game card with no shell and only a circuit board and play Contra with me.

Sometimes the game card contact is not good, but also to the card slot pin blow.

In a word, although I have never owned a bully myself, it does make my childhood a lot of fun.

In 1994, Xiao Bawang made unremitting efforts to launch the second-generation learning machine SB-486, and invited Jackie Chan, who had just finished filming "drunken Boxing 2", to shoot commercials, and the slogan "look forward to success" is also a household name.

By the way, this advertising cooperation also opened the spell of Jackie Chan's endorsement. Since then, nine of the ten endorsements of the eldest brother have been cool, which can also be regarded as a mystery in Chinese business history.

Back to the bully. Jackie Chan endorses that year, the output value of Xiao Bawang reached 400 million yuan, doubled to 1 billion a year later, brand intangible assets 500 million, the limelight is the same, it is difficult to meet rivals.

However, a big tree attracts the wind, and parents are not fools, and the entertainment function of the small bully learning machine is soon targeted.

In "whether the computer learning machine fever should be cooled down" in "Home Electronics" in March 1995, it was written: "some parents mistakenly believe the one-sided publicity in advertising and regard the purchase of computer learning machines as an important part of family education. They do not realize that the computer learning machine is nothing more than an improvement of the original game machine, and its main function is still a kind of entertainment tool. "

The bully is gradually at a disadvantage in the level of public opinion.

This is not over, a bigger blow followed, in 1995, the core member Duan Yongping left and took away a group of executives to "flee". At that time, Duan Yongping may not have thought that his name would be inextricably linked with the history of the development of Chinese educational hardware.

Since then, the bully plummeted, and in 1998, sales were less than 1/10 of the peak in 1995, and an era passed.

In my opinion, the reason why the bully is successful is that he has an insight into the nature of all children, even all human beings.

Human beings are playful, while learning is anti-human. Even if you combine teaching with pleasure, learning is learning, and you will never be happy. If you want to be successful in business, don't be the enemy of human nature.

Later, any successful learning hardware, to some extent, is also a successful entertainment tool.

Just as the bully went into decline, the legend of another kind of learning machine began, and in this story, Duan Yongping is still the key character.

02 the birth of human nature in 1979, Zhong Daolong, a 45-year-old Chinese communications expert, went to Europe to attend a conference. The organizer of the meeting hung a small English card on his chest to the effect that "I am lost, please send me back to the so-and-so hotel". After that, Zhong Daolong was so ashamed and annoyed that as an expert in the field, it became a problem to communicate abroad.

After returning to China, he practiced English hard and used a tape recorder to play tape to learn pronunciation, but because he always paused to rewind the tape and listen to it over and over again, the tape recorder was broken in a few days.

It is said that in order to learn English, Zhong Daolong broke dozens of tape recorders and two dictionaries, and finally mastered the language. In addition, he also created the "English reverse learning method".

This method does not blindly pursue short-term quick achievement, but pays attention to the basis of words and grammar, listening, speaking, writing and memorizing repeatedly. Zhong Daolong also published a book to introduce his own reverse learning method.

But his students raised an objection to him. You are a professor and an expert. If you have the money, you can listen to a dozen tape recorders. How can we poor students have so much money to buy a tape recorder?

At this time another idea arose in his mind. Why not invent a tape recorder that can be listened to and read over and over again without harming the tape or the mechanical structure?

With his own professional knowledge, Zhong Daolong studied painstakingly. Finally, on July 29, 1991, he applied to Jiangsu Patent Office for a patent called "computer language Learning Machine", and in 1994, he chose the patent to provide to the public for free.

Right: Zhong Daolong in the future, it has a more concise name, repeater.

However, after the repeater was developed, it did not cause much sensation, because after all, the learning machine market in the early 1990s was dominated by the bully.

However, everything changed in 1995. after Duan Yongping left as a bully, he went to Dongguan, more than 30 kilometers away from Zhongshan, to set up a new company, step by step.

After a brief dormancy, in 1998, step by step high-profile to enter the repeater market. Before it entered the market, the annual sales of repeaters were only more than 2 million. Under the stimulation of increasing step by step, it reached 5 million in 1999 and exceeded 10 million in 2002.

It can be said that who didn't remember the phrase "it is easier to learn a foreign language with a step-by-step repeater"?

It can be said that Zhong Daolong is elegant and does not charge patent fees, paving the way for the arrival of the era of repeaters.

But the more fundamental reason is that China, at the turn of the century, is in the midst of an upsurge in English learning.

In 1999, the State Education Commission announced that it would focus on the comprehensive level of oral English and listening in foreign language teaching.

With the reform and opening up into the 21st century, driven by many events such as Beijing's successful bid for the Olympic Games and China's accession to the WTO, people find that English learning is not only for the examination, but also for use in work and life.

It was the hottest era of English learning, New Oriental came out of a number of online celebrity lecturers, and Li Yang's Crazy English is sweeping primary and secondary schools across the country.

And the repeater has also entered a big melee.

Just before 2003, there were more than 200 manufacturers in China, producing more than 100 brands of repeaters. What's more, there is no lack of big brands such as Bugao, Wenqu Star, Noah Zhou and Xiao Bawang, who smash advertisements and channels and launch fierce competition.

I remember when I was in primary school, in order for me to learn English well, my mother signed me up for a Cambridge English class after class and bought me a repeater early to learn English from the tape.

But as a person, I can always find a way to touch the fish.

With my homework and headphones every night, my mother thought I was learning English, but in fact I was secretly listening to Lin Junjie.

And the repeater is very convenient to listen to music. If you want a single cycle, you can do it by pressing the repeat button. Although the sound quality is much worse than the direct playing of the tape, and the length of the repetition is often only half a song, it is still much more convenient than rewinding.

It's just that sometimes my mom finds out. No way, who told me to listen, it's easy to sing.

However, the repeater soon became the tears of the times.

The reason is also very simple. If the competition is too fierce and there are too many manufacturers, the profits will be reduced. Manufacturers have found that instead of competing in the Red Sea, they should focus on other educational products. Brands like Bubugao have long been transformed into tutoring machines and point-reading machines.

But in spite of this, the repeater still maintains amazing vitality. Although it is rarely mentioned, with its super practicality, repeaters have been a necessary tool for foreign language learners for a long time until the advent of the smartphone era.

At the same time as the repeater, what became the right-hand man of the students was the electronic dictionary.

The world's first electronic dictionary was born in 1985. On the other hand, China's electronic dictionary began in 1993.

At that time, in Taiwan Province, an electronic dictionary called Hadian had already appeared, while the mainland at that time was a piece of uncultivated commercial virgin land, so Taiwanese Zhou Zhiyuan focused on business opportunities and came to Beijing to set up Golden Vision Co., Ltd. With 200000 US dollars.

Before he came to Beijing, the mainland market already had electronic dictionaries of "two links" (Haoyitong and Kuaiyitong), which occupied a large market share.

But Zhou Zhiyuan is the one who really changed the electronic dictionary market.

In 1995, the company launched the first electronic dictionary. Its brand still sounds like a thunderstorm-Wen Quxing.

In 1997, Wen Quxing PC220 Electronic Dictionary was put on the market, which is also the first "multi-functional and popular" dictionary in China.

Under the monochrome LCD screen, there are tens of thousands of words.

Compared with people turning over dictionaries and looking for indexes manually, electronic dictionaries are like automatic cruise missiles, pointing where to hit, greatly reducing the search time for words, and many parents are flocking to this trendy thing.

But what Wen Quxing has really changed is the pricing system of the industry.

Wen Quxing's first product, priced at 330 yuan, is only 1/5 of that of its competitors, which is simply a price butcher.

Relying on low pricing, Wenqu Xing's product sales are growing at an almost multiple rate every year. By the year 2000, the cumulative national sales of Wenqu Xing had reached 20 million, with a market share of more than 70%, making it firmly in the top spot.

At this time, the market pattern of electronic dictionaries has initially taken shape. Wen qu Xing outshines others, but Liangtong is still competitive in the high-end market.

This pattern was maintained until 2000.

This year, Noah entered the electronic dictionary industry and launched NH2000, the first electronic dictionary with independent intellectual property rights in pronunciation technology in China.

With its technical originality, Noah took only one year to gain a foothold in the electronic dictionary industry, and three years later, he became a big player who could wrestle with Wen qu Xing.

And Duan Yongping is not idle. In 2001, Bubugao also launched the electronic dictionary, the selling point is: "We spent a lot of money on five authentic dictionaries, which is the largest in the electronic dictionary industry at present." "

In 2003, celebrities joined hands with Oxford to launch a series of products such as celebrity Oxford double solution, celebrity Oxford elite and so on.

In the same year, du Guoyi, a marketing guru who built a good back and later created 8848, E-book and small can of tea, also took part in the muddy waters of educational hardware, and the brand he created is a frequent customer of CCTV advertising.

The marketing master is very good at selling goods.

He invited the endorsement of Dashan, a foreign friend loved by the people, and mainly promoted Xinhua Bookstore as a sales channel, coupled with a flood of advertisements, and joined the first echelon of electronic dictionaries.

With more players and fierce competition, brands must constantly optimize their products.

On the one hand, brands spend a lot of money on the functions of dictionaries to introduce the copyright of Oxford, Webster and Longman, adding various functions of Chinese dictionaries.

In addition, electronic dictionaries are also beginning to be miniaturized, lightweight, and improve the operating system to provide a better user experience. Even a number of small manufacturers have emerged, pushing the price of electronic dictionaries to double digits.

In 2004, the electronic dictionary reached its heyday, with a total output of 10 million sets. At that time, some scholars estimated that the future market size of electronic dictionaries could reach 120 billion.

But after the peak, there is a free-fall industry reshuffle.

At the end of 2004, most manufacturers stopped developing new products. In 2005, the industry as a whole declined by more than half. A large number of small manufacturers withdrew from the market, leaving only top brands such as Wenqu Xing, Noah Zhou and Kuaiyitong.

Since then, the only brand that really has a bright spot in this market is the Japanese brand Casio.

In my opinion, this is very natural. After all, electronic dictionaries are functional electronic products, and they are relatively durable, and the demand for upgrading is relatively low. After several years of rapid growth, the market has entered a period of saturation and naturally stagnated.

At that time, I bought a Wenqu star, the purpose of buying it is nothing else, just to play its built-in game "Hero Tan Shuo".

In my opinion, this game for Wen Quxing is basically the breath of the wilderness to switch. Although the electronic dictionary can not provide any dazzling audio-visual effects, but the game still played a reputation, at that time, many boys in the class bought Wenqu stars, but also do not care about alcohol.

At that time, most electronic dictionaries had built-in games, such as "Hero altar Theory" RPG, as well as a lot of Mini Game such as playing bricks and Tetris.

As one of the few electronic devices that can be brought into school legally, the games in the electronic dictionary did give me a lot of happiness when I was a student, and even for many students, this may be the first handheld game console in their lives.

03 where will not click where experienced learning machines, repeaters and electronic dictionaries, parents have also learned.

They found that children's creativity in finding ways to have fun is amazing. As long as you dare to let them teach and have fun, they can turn all the hardware into entertainment products.

Since it is learning hardware, it is better to focus on "learning" a function.

In 2002, Shenzhen Chuangruida Co., Ltd. put forward the concept of "click reader" according to the electronic early teaching of leapforg company in the United States.

But what really brought this product to the ground and became a household name was the F4 "reader" launched by Shu Lang in 2004.

But only two years later, the devil came back step by step, and soon it launched a similar product, which was named a point-reading machine, and Noah also entered the war.

From then on, the three brainwashing advertisements of "Reading Lang" and "step by step High Reading Machine, where you can't click, so easy" and "Learning without limits, Noah Boat" have been broadcast alternately on all major satellite TV stations.

In my opinion, point-to-reader is pure learning hardware in the real sense. It can synchronize the contents of mainstream textbooks, simulate classroom learning scenes, read and translate texts for students, and explain key sentence patterns. Compared with the hardware that focused on self-learning in the past, the purpose of the invention of click-to-reader is actually to replace teachers.

But the dynasty of click-to-reader didn't last long, because the big era of tablets has come.

On January 27, 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled an epoch-making product, the IPAD. This trendy thing in the hands of Master Joe is smaller and lighter than a laptop, has no keyboard, but has a more convenient touch. And the function is very powerful, browsing the web, listening to music, entertainment, learning is also easy.

Electronic dictionaries and repeaters that once needed to be carried out to make a product are now an App on and off the tablet as long as the finger moves.

Educational tablets that are more focused on students have also been born under the needs of parents-fewer entertainment applications and enhanced learning functions.

Under the effect of the epidemic and double reduction, although out-of-school cram schools have disappeared, the market for parents' chicken babies is expanding day by day. At this time, a student tablet has become the choice of many people.

According to IDC, Q2 students shipped 630000 tablets in 2020, an increase of 29.9% over the same period last year and much higher than the average tablet, which grew by 17.7%. By 2021, the number of Q3 will reach 1.31 million, an increase of 6.9% over the same period last year.

The vast hardware market has also made Internet giants caught in growth difficulties ready to move. Tencent, Ali, Byte Jump and iFLYTEK have also left the market to release their own education hardware.

But are these educational hardware really useful?

You know, the three major artifacts of primary school students today are the Tmall genie, who can help children do arithmetic problems, the smart lamp that can scan homework to give answers, and the artifact of making friends for primary school students, and the phone watch of a young genius.

It can only be said that there are different opinions on whether the hardware is helpful for learning or for children to touch fish.

Throughout the more than 30 years of history of Chinese educational hardware, the reason why the "learning machine" with various functions can be sung by you is, in my opinion, because it plays the role of a pressure relief valve in the parent-child relationship.

Businesses always claim that the new learning function can improve children's interest in learning and learning efficiency. On the other hand, parents who want their children to succeed and their daughters to be successful are not stingy in spending money to buy one to show that "I have created the best learning conditions for you."

Where are the kids? Under the heavy schoolwork, I have developed an excellent ability to rejoice in bitterness. Bully can play games by plugging in game cards, RPG can be played in electronic dictionaries, and even on educational tablets, parents can steal one or two games to amuse themselves without paying attention.

Or many years later, when I have a child, I will buy him the latest learning machine on the market. And he is like me at that time, under the excuse of learning, secretly enjoy the fun of the game on the learning machine.

Reference:

It is not a game machine (only). How many meanings does "learning machine" have? Dr.Quest Zhihu

Electronic products online game news made by the bully from peak to decline

The Strange pick of the Industry: the forgotten "Wenqu Star" and the "Hero altar Theory" in the classroom

Educational hardware 20-year interface finance number

From Bubugao, Shu Lang and Youxue World to talk about the 30-year agitation of China's educational intelligence hardware to record stock channels-Hexun

Electronic dictionaries, which were once popular in China, have completely disappeared and have been sold off for financial breakfast.

When it comes to the learning machine of the first generation of bullies, they are all wrong about Tang Shenma Yuan.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: IC Lab (ID:InsightPlusClub)

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