By 2025, the technological gap between developed and developing countries will be widening.
The gap is even greater than during the turbulent period decades ago.
The main reason is that the first-mover advantage in the semiconductor field is too obvious. Not all countries have the resources and mobilization capabilities of China, and can invest hundreds of billions of national resources in industries with unclear returns.
It can be said that only China can do this.
Other countries, even those with the economic strength, suffer from a lack of policy consistency due to the successive rise and fall of political parties.
Governments ruled by different political parties are unlikely to invest in projects like catching up with semiconductors, thus wasting their current resources to cultivate industries and the economy for the next administration.
In addition, China caught up with the global supply chain shift at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century.
Such opportunities are extremely rare.
Southeast Asian, South American, and Eastern European countries originally had the opportunity to catch up with this round of global supply chain restructuring.
However, the rapid pace of technological development and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and industrial automation may bring this round of global supply chain adjustments to an abrupt halt.
This round is at most an adjustment, unlike the supply chain redistribution that occurred after China joined the WTO, which was a restructuring—a restructuring of the global supply chain.
Zheng thought of something and asked, "How's Tencent's olfactory sensor project going?"
I think it was called Black Shark, right? They even gave me some samples, I remember.
"Black Shark is the name of a company, a hardware company under Tencent."
Previously, we specialized in making gaming phones and some gaming-related hardware devices.
After Tencent invested in Kechuang Future, it essentially already had the hardware, and brain-computer interface VR is a business with almost a monopoly, plus Black Shark phones were barely surviving at the time.
Therefore, Tencent later transformed Black Shark, which then focused on developing brain-computer interface VR-related hardware, which can be considered an alternative peripheral.
Their product isn't called Black Shark.
Their first flagship product was an olfactory device called Sniff.
Before they went public, they sent a sample to each of the executives of Kechuang Bio and Kechuang Future.
The user experience is quite good. Since its launch, Niffler has been particularly popular among female users.
As a female user, I have to admit that the scope of use is a bit narrow.
In other words, users who use brain-computer interfaces for VR have relatively strong spending power.
Users with limited purchasing power are unlikely to spend over a thousand yuan to buy a dedicated olfactory device.
This is similar to how Apple's official phone case sells for 398 yuan and people still buy it, while Huawei's official phone case sells for 258 yuan and users think it's too expensive.
If Xiaomi dares to price its official phone case above 200 yuan, it will be bombarded with criticism from Xiaomi fans.
This is related to the brand's initial positioning and the creation of consensus.
Apple has been so successful in creating a technological and high-end image that even a polishing cloth can sell for over a hundred dollars, and people actually buy it.
Rice is deeply associated with cost-effectiveness, making it impossible for it to shake off this label. This label has been firmly attached to rice, from rice-themed mobile phones to rice-themed cars.
The futureverse brand under Kechuang Future has been quite successful, and its technological and high-end brand image has been deeply rooted in people's minds.
Consumers are willing to pay a premium for the product.
After the release of Futureverse 2, users in China and around the world were willing to pay several hundred to a thousand yuan more than the original price to get the product as quickly as possible.
Influenced by the successful brand image of Futureverse, Black Shark has managed to get Niffler to benefit as well.
Li Miaomiao continued, "Tencent is too good at business operations."
Their product sense is truly the best in the industry.
Many years ago, there were rumors that Tencent's products, Ali's operations, and Baidu's technology were all involved.
Basically, Tencent focuses on product development, Alibaba focuses on operations, and Baidu focuses on technology.
After truly understanding Tencent's interpretation and application of the product, Li Miaomiao inwardly agreed with the first part of this statement.
Tencent not only has a strong ability to learn from others, but its own product innovation capabilities are also among the best in China.
Li Miaomiao continued, "Just a few months before Sniff went public, Tencent acquired Black Shark."
Previously, Tencent only owned 46.44% of Black Shark's shares, which they acquired from Xiaomi in 2022.
However, it is only a relative controlling stake. Not long ago, Tencent negotiated with other minority shareholders and purchased the remaining shares at a premium.
Black Shark is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent and has been fully integrated into Tencent's Internet Business Group, which is the business group managed by Ren Yu.
When they were acquiring Black Shark, they even asked us if we wanted to join them in the acquisition. Tencent expressed its willingness to give us some of Black Shark's shares.
I just think we already have enough branch offices, and we don't have enough internally trained middle and senior managers. What we need is to consolidate our foundation rather than expand.
Currently, many senior executives at Kechuang Bio and Kechuang Future rely on other internet companies. I hope to gradually cultivate my own management trainees recruited from universities.
Li Miaomiao's business philosophy is to build a competitive and cohesive team, and she wants to change the current situation where all senior executives are recruited from outside.
"Going back to the previous topic, after Tencent launched its olfactory device, they subsequently launched two VR system environments: Wonderland Garden and Cloud Waterfall."
The Fairy Garden and Cloud Waterfall can both be smelled with the help of olfactory peripherals.
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