Su Yehao talked with Mr. Zhang all the way, and after sending them to the guest rooms and settling in, they continued to chat in the small bar of the hotel about subsequent development planning issues.
The reason why Zhang Rujing suggested to get orders first and then make serious investments later was not because he didn't understand the industry situation well enough, but because he understood it too well, so he was a little worried.
The current chip foundry market is not yet saturated, but counting several wafer foundries under construction, future production capacity appears to be relatively ample.
For example, in the recent disputes between Japan, South Korea, and the United States about DRAM memory chips, the situation of oversupply and declining profits has continued from 1996 to the present, and there is still no end in sight.
Often the more products you sell, the more serious your losses will be.
The situation is somewhat similar to the war of attrition between Internet companies. Everyone is competing for market share, competing to see who has the deeper pockets, burning money continuously, trying to outlast the other party to monopolize the market, and moving forward under the pressure of losses.
South Korea's DRAM memory chip companies were bought out by U.S. investors during the Asian financial crisis the year before last and the year before last. For example, in Samsung Electronics, more than half of the shares are in the hands of foreign companies.
With the support of American capital, it has now surpassed its Japanese counterparts, forcing several major Japanese manufacturers to join forces and form the "Elbida" company that Su Yehao had seen in the information.
Huajing in the Mainland uses Japanese technology, but its wafer factory fell behind as soon as it started production.
Huahong in the Shanghai Stock Exchange also put into production 64M DRAM memory chips in February this year. The current situation is that it is losing money on every sale, and there is no hope of turning around.
By the way.
Under the recommendation of Academician Ni Danan, the DRAM chips produced by Huahong were used in the Huang Diamond computer to be assembled, which also used Japanese technology.
Up to now, the lithography light source has been stuck at 193 nanometers and cannot make progress for as long as two decades.
Countless scientists and industries have been studying and discussing solutions beyond 193 nanometers, but none of them have been successful.
This has led to the fact that as long as many companies are willing to spend money, their starting points are basically the same. What they compete for is yield rate and scale, so as to earn some hard money. The number of foundries continues to increase, and the competition situation is severe.
Therefore, Zhang Rujing tends to choose not to see the rabbit but not the hawk, and plans to wait until the order is confirmed.
You must know that in the 1980s, TSMC first received a small number of foundry orders from Intel, and then slowly accumulated and soared.
In this July of 1999.
The competitive pressure in the foundry industry is much greater than when TSMC first started in the 1980s, which means it must be more cautious.
All we can say about this is that Zhang Rujing has been dealing with other investors for a long time and knows nothing about Su Yehao's wealth.
The business has clearly not even started yet, but Su Yehao has already made preparations to invest 10 billion US dollars in ten years and collapse after all losses... This alone is far beyond what others can match.
With the market size in the next twenty years, if the technology and scale are improved, it may not be easy to lose money. It will just be a matter of making more or less.
The cake is so big that even if he only occupies a part of it, it will be enough for him to recoup his current investment with interest.
…
Clearly explain his optimism for the future market and convey the development concept of "no need to save money, just do it" to Zhang Rujing.
Su Yehao was satisfied after hearing the other party's promise to contact Canon, Nikon, and ASML to see who would be willing to provide technology and jointly set up a lithography machine research laboratory.
The so-called joint venture refers to a third party providing technical support. Su Yehao spent R&D funds to build a lithography machine R&D center based on the idea proposed by Vietnamese scientist Lin Baojian.
Although it was inevitable to spend money, after talking with Zhang Rujing and others, I felt a little bit more confident.
Apart from anything else, current photolithography machines are easy to buy. Once a wafer foundry is built in the mainland, the gap will not be too wide in the short term.
Considering that the Internet winter is coming, seize this opportunity and put your chips on the development of foundry and photolithography machine research and development. At least the hope of overtaking in corners can be seen, and it is not particularly slim...
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Early the next morning.
Su Yehao was afraid that Yin Liuli would be bored, so he took her to follow the team to inspect Qualcomm.
Qualcomm originally planned to take the route of self-production and self-marketing, but later failed to collect patent fees. Faced with concerns from customers, and in order to avoid being sued for monopoly, Qualcomm decisively decided to package and transfer the mobile phone production business as a whole.
A representative from Goldman Sachs Group who had cooperated with them was responsible for bringing them together. When they learned that Su Yehao had arrived in person, the COO and CTO of Qualcomm worked together to receive them.
Qualcomm's mobile phone is called pdQ, has a reversible keyboard, is equipped with a 160*240 resolution LCD screen, is equipped with a 16MHz processor, and 2MB of memory, and also supports Palm OS applications.
In layman's terms, it is equipped with an operating system and also supports Internet surfing functions, which allows the handheld computer to make calls. It provides an Internet speed of up to 14.4Kbps, allowing users to browse emails anytime and anywhere.
When it was first launched last year, it shocked many peers. However, the price of up to 800 US dollars and the useless functions made this product destined to be difficult to make money.
As a result, everyone is rushing to buy the base station business that was spun off from Qualcomm, but the mobile phone production business is tepid. There are many people asking about the price, but no one has actually made a move yet.
Nokia, Motorola and other companies look down on it, while small companies that do look down on it are reluctant to pay.
In this sale, Qualcomm's junk assets were monetized. The executives who accompanied them to visit the R&D laboratory were extremely enthusiastic. They deliberately skipped the sales volume and inventory status and focused on describing the advanced performance of the products.
now.
An Indian senior engineer named Sanjay Jha helped demonstrate the web surfing function under development, using next-generation new technologies to browse emails and web pages faster.
Su Yehao waved his hands indifferently and said:
“Before 3G mobile networks became really popular, I don’t think so many people needed to go online. It was a promising technology, but with its current capabilities, it was difficult to attract enough customers. The sales volume has proven this, beyond any doubt.
What I am interested in this time is just a complete set of mobile phone production solutions and supporting services provided by your company. Give me a fair quotation. What is the minimum price you are willing to pay to sell it to me in a package?"
Gray, Qualcomm's chief operating officer, told him calmly: "For 200 million U.S. dollars, we have signed long-term cooperation agreements with Verizon Telecom and others. It will be easy to sell products to the United States in the future."
Su Yehao gave a calm answer and shrugged:
"I can agree, but only if you give me 30% of the chip foundry orders. This quotation is simply unreasonable. You must know that I use your solution to develop and produce mobile phones, which can open up the Asian market for your company.
Especially for the Chinese market, in the long run, I think 80 million US dollars is a reasonable figure..."