Thanks to Ni Annan's insistence, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences did not copy Zhao Ye's Chinese character card, but the idea for developing the Chinese character card became clearer, which led to a significant increase in the project's development progress.
The Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences may soon enter the Chinese character card market, but this is all within Zhao Ye's expectations.
Zhao Ye has plenty of ways to compete with his opponents in the market.
If there's any advantage the other side has, it's probably their status as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
It doesn't matter, Zhao Ye doesn't necessarily want to monopolize the Chinese character card market, and he can't monopolize it anyway. It's enough for him to get a share of the pie.
The Chinese character card was just Zhao Ye's first pot of gold.
If he wants to truly rise to prominence, we'll have to look at his next development project, the Chinese word processor, also known as the Chinese typewriter.
Data from the past shows that in late 1988 and early 1989, the Science and Technology Daily ranked the national electronics industry by sales revenue. Sitong, a word processor manufacturer, ranked first with 1 billion yuan in sales, surpassing all other state-owned and centrally-owned electronics factories. Lenovo at that time only had 80 million yuan in sales. Sitong contributed 70% of the tax revenue from Zhongguancun's electronics street. Sitong was hailed as the number one IT company in Zhongguancun, a title it truly deserved.
Of course, the Sitong Group misjudged the development of the personal computer market, just like Wang Laboratories in the United States, thinking that word processors would continue to be popular, and the result was predictable.
Both companies made word processors. Wang Laboratories made An Wang the richest Chinese person, while Sitong became the number one IT company in Zhongguancun.
Fate is unpredictable, it's truly heartbreaking!
Zhao Ye sat in his office, resting his chin on his hand, pondering the development plan for a Chinese typewriter.
The earliest electronic printers were computer-driven ASCII character printers, which could only print fixed-size Western letters and numbers, and could not print graphics or Chinese characters. Later, printers appeared that condensed two rows of 12 pins into a 24 square millimeter printhead. The computer drove these 24 pins onto the ribbon, and it was possible to print any graphic. Naturally, these 24 dots could be arranged continuously in the top, bottom, left, and right to form all Chinese characters. At the same time, the font and size could also be changed. Therefore, this type of printer is called a 24-dot matrix printer.
It was precisely because of the 24-dot matrix printing technology that Chinese typewriters were able to be developed.
For the processor chip in his Chinese typewriter, Zhao Ye chose the Z80 microprocessor. The Z80 is not only inexpensive but also powerful. It has a wide range of applications, from small household appliances and Nintendo's Famicom (NES) game console to large industrial data acquisition systems, automatic control devices, electric motors, and transmissions. Various universities and colleges have also introduced courses on the Z80 microprocessor, and research and application of the Z80 microprocessor and Z80 single-board computer have a broad foundation in China.
Zhao Ye's plan is to develop a Chinese typewriter that can display four lines of text on an LCD screen, and that can print Chinese characters not only on A4 white paper, but also on A3 stencil paper, making it convenient for mimeographing.
Zhao Ye believes that the emergence of this Chinese typewriter will allow Chinese word processing to bid farewell to the era of lead type printing and hand-cut stencils, and leap into a revolutionary era of electronic information processing!
...
In the following days, Zhao Ye worked on product development plans while also conducting market research.
His original plan was to simply buy the hardware he needed if it was available on the market, which would speed up the development of the Chinese typewriter.
But Zhao Ye quickly abandoned this plan.
He discovered that most of the hardware needed to be imported from Japan, but the Japanese were selling their hardware at exorbitant prices. In the end, even when they produced a Chinese typewriter, he didn't earn much, while the Japanese made a fortune.
Therefore, Zhao Ye decided to develop the complete word processor himself, making both the software and hardware himself, and completely break free from the technical control of the Japanese.
"Once the Chinese character card gains a reputation, I'll directly recruit talent through the Computerworld newspaper. All the recruits will join the Chinese typewriter project!" Zhao Ye murmured.
He could indeed develop a Chinese typewriter by himself, but it would take a long time.
Individual strength can never match the strength of a team.
...
At 1:30 p.m., Zhao Ye returned to the company. As soon as he walked in, he heard Fu Xiaoyue say, "Boss, you're finally back! Mr. Zhou Zi'an, the editor-in-chief of Computerworld, just called looking for you, but you weren't there, so I couldn't contact you and could only wait for you to come back. Editor-in-chief Zhou said to call him back as soon as you get back!"
"OK!"
Zhao Ye walked to Fu Xiaoyue's desk, flipped through the phone book, found Zhou Zian's office phone number, and dialed it.
The call was answered quickly.
"Editor-in-Chief Zhou, hello. This is Zhao Ye from Imagination Technology Company. I'm sorry, I wasn't in the office when you called earlier. Is there anything urgent you need me for?"
“Mr. Zhao, based on our newspaper’s analysis of reader feedback, I think now is the right time to publish an advertisement for the ‘Imagination Chinese Card.’ If we wait too long, the buzz will die down,” Zhou Zi’an suggested.
“Okay, then tomorrow we’ll publish this sentence in the newspaper: ‘Imagine-Hanka, a groundbreaking breakthrough!!!’” Zhao Ye readily agreed and nodded in reply.
This statement is enough to remind people of the earlier quote, "What will the future be like if humanity loses its imagination?"
Imagine means "imagination". In this day and age, people who can afford computers are generally of high quality and the vast majority can understand English.
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