A month later, Imagination Technologies moved into its new office building.
At this point, sales of Chinese character cards were no longer as strong as before; the peak period had passed, and sales were gradually stabilizing.
The popularity of the Chinese character card gradually declined over time.
However, Imagination Technologies has already made a fortune.
To date, sales have exceeded 18 million RMB, and annual sales are estimated to be between 40 million and 50 million RMB, which means selling more than 10,000 Chinese character cards, which is actually not a lot.
Zhao Ye gave Wang Anshi a task: to open a flagship store for Imagination Technology Company in the capital, then summarize the experience and promote it nationwide.
Without middlemen taking a cut, the company can earn more.
Of course, in cities where there is no flagship store, we will still cooperate with other merchants.
Zhao Ye delegated all marketing matters to Wang Anshi, effectively becoming a hands-off manager. Wang Anshi's reputation as the "God of Management" at Sitong Company was well-deserved. He truly possessed extraordinary abilities in the traditional field of marketing.
When Zhao Ye started his business, e-commerce was booming, and online was more important than offline, so Zhao Ye didn't know much about the traditional market.
...
The new office building has three floors, so Zhao Ye arranged for the Chinese character card department to be on the first floor, the Chinese electronic typewriter department to be on the second floor, and the pager department to be on the third floor.
The office space is quite large, and each floor feels very spacious.
It was indeed a bit wasteful, but Zhao Ye was too lazy to move again.
Once the Chinese electronic typewriter and pager are successfully developed, we'll need to hire more people.
At this moment, in a research room on the second floor.
A group of people were gathered around a table, discussing something. The table was scattered with many pieces of paper.
"The typewriter uses a Sharp 640×400 LCD screen with backlighting, capable of displaying one A4 page, which is equivalent to a VGA display mode, achieving WYSIWYG, so there is no need for an external CRT screen! It is not only beautiful and stylish, but also cheaper!"
"RB uses soft interrupts for printers to save costs, but soft interrupts are too slow and the user experience is poor. The boss suggested that we use hardware interrupts. Although this will increase the cost of the interrupt chip by a few dollars, the user experience will be much better!"
"The motherboard designed by the boss himself is worth mentioning. Not only is it compatible with IBM-PC, but it can also be connected to an external modern modem for file transfer via telephone line. In addition, the dual floppy disk drives are also PC compatible, and the built-in specially designed dual-port RAM memory allows for printing speeds higher than parallel interface transfers. Furthermore, the word processing software WPS is also compatible with WordStar! It's truly amazing!"
Everyone praised it.
As a standalone printer, the Chinese electronic typewriter requires its own word processing software.
In his previous life, Qiu Bojun developed WPS by imitating the word processing software of Sitong Company.
In this life, Zhao Ye directly developed a relatively mature word processing software from the 1990s and named it WPS.
Of course, he was responsible for software architecture design, just like designing the framework of a house in reality, while the specific details were left to others to build. These people were also commonly known as "coders" in his previous life.
Qiu Bojun is currently a typical "coder," responsible for writing several functional programs for WPS.
In addition, Zhao Ye wrote an input method when developing the Chinese character card, which can be used when developing the Chinese electronic typewriter.
Therefore, the development of the Chinese typewriter progressed much faster than everyone expected.
In fact, Zhao Ye didn't do much when it came to specific research and development. He mainly provided high-level guidance, pointing out the direction for everyone's research and development. He also stepped in to solve technical difficulties that were hard to overcome.
In just one month, the overall development progress has already exceeded half.
Third floor.
The development of a pager is actually simpler than that of a Chinese electronic typewriter. It mainly consists of a superheterodyne receiver, a decoder, a control unit, and a display unit.
In fact, once you understand the principles, many skilled electronics engineers can develop a pager.
By the early 1990s, pagers were being copied by domestic factories, snatching a large share of Motorola's market.
Of course, counterfeit pagers have serious quality problems.
Imagination Technologies developed the pager with a responsible and serious attitude towards consumers, aiming to create a technologically advanced and mature product.
That's a little difficult.
Forget about pagers with Chinese character display for now, the hardware doesn't support it. It's not that you can't make one if you insist, but the size of the pager will increase dramatically. Others are small and exquisite, while yours is bulky and expensive. Who would buy it?
Therefore, at present, only digital pagers can be developed.
Motorola will not launch its digital pager until the end of this year, and Imagination Technologies could very well preemptively launch its own product to the market.
...
Zhao Ye's office is also located on the 3rd floor; as the boss, he should have a commanding position.
Wang Anshi then started chatting with Zhao Ye in the office.
Wang Anshi suggested, "Boss, we can't continue to outsource the OEM business to Kyoto Radio Factory No. 18. It's like giving away a portion of our profits for nothing. In the early days of the company, when we lacked funds, it was acceptable to outsource to Kyoto Radio Factory No. 18, but now we have tens of millions in cash flow, which allows us to invest in building our own factory. Direct sales from the factory mean lower costs, and our products will be more competitive!"
After a pause, Wang Anshi said with slight concern, "I heard that the Chinese character card development team led by Ni Annan at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has recently made a major breakthrough and should be launching their card soon. At that time, we will face fierce competition, after all, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has a special status, while we are a private enterprise..."
Zhao Ye nodded upon hearing this: "What you said makes sense. I had the same idea before, but the key is that we can't buy the chips ourselves."
Wang Anshi's expression was serious, and he frowned slightly: "I've thought about this problem too. The best solution would be for us to open a branch in Hong Kong, purchase the chips ourselves, and then ship them to the mainland!"
"This method is indeed good, but there's still a problem. If our branch office doesn't have foreign exchange, we still can't purchase anything." Zhao Ye nodded first, then shook his head, and then wondered if Chinese character cards, Chinese typewriters, and pagers could open up the market in Hong Kong?
Of course, Chinese typewriters can also print English. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia must also need a good quality and affordable typewriter.
Ring ring ring ring...
Just then, the office phone rang.
Zhao Ye picked up the phone and asked what was wrong.
"Boss, there's a big businessman from Hong Kong who wants to collaborate with our Imagination Technology Company!"
A Hong Kong businessman is seeking cooperation with us?
Zhao Ye was somewhat surprised.
"Okay, I understand. Please bring him to my office."
P.S.: Three chapters updated today, please support me!
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