Chapter 424 Getting Busy
They're going head-to-head with Sony, but they can't win for now.
It's not a technological gap, but a gap in the number of products.
If you count on your fingers, you can count the number of Xing Baohua's product series on one hand, while Sony has more than a dozen series.
Each series has many different models.
Take tape recorders for example. Xing Baohua only has the Walkman series, not large, modular sets.
Combining a portable music player and a stereo system is a major purchase, but it costs significantly more than a typical home audio system. Using a portable music player as the playback source is simply inappropriate.
The speaker itself can't power the audio equipment, so it needs to be paired with a high-power amplifier.
Suitable for DIY enthusiasts, but not for home-use audio-visual systems.
If we're going to launch it, we need to select a team, assemble a group, and seriously work on the series. We also need to do modeling, select materials and other components, and then consider the market positioning based on cost, differentiating between phones costing a thousand yuan and phones costing hundreds of thousands.
Sony has indeed put a lot of effort into audio-visual systems, which is why they sell so well in the global market.
Because of its late start, China's rice industry cannot compete with established giants like Sony in terms of time and operational product projects.
Sony's main source of revenue is currently its audio-visual products. Meanwhile, rice's main source of revenue is wireless communication.
While computers can be profitable, they are not enough to compete with the real giants.
Sony has things that Sony doesn't. And Sony doesn't have things that Sony doesn't, so catching up is quite difficult.
If we calculate it now, there's still over a decade of market potential to make money. If we produce several series each year, we can gradually catch up.
To wage a price war, one needs to produce low-end products. In order not to affect the true brand value of rice, Xing Baohua thought it was better to use suffixes to differentiate prices in the name.
Unlike Nokia or Motorola, which use letters to represent the high and low ends of their products.
The Rice Note series represents the low-end, low-spec segment, offering affordable prices while enjoying the same treatment as other brands of rice.
The numbers on rice indicate the normal price.
Moving up to the next level is mid-to-high-end quality, represented by Plus.
If the price is a bit higher, then go for the Pro version.
The luxury level is represented by "Pro Mix". Does this embody the spirit of "there's no best, just the most expensive"?
They use inexpensive models to compete with Sony's products, and then use high-end models to make a profit.
After setting this policy, a team was formed to begin targeted product development. The foreign trade department was tasked with searching for all audio-visual equipment currently available on the market, including those from Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo, and Philips.
As the saying goes, even last-minute sharpening can be effective.
I'll start by copying this design and combining it with the unique audio features of rice to temporarily assemble a budget-friendly home audio system.
If we can't defeat them, we'll at least incapacitate them.
So Xing Baohua also launched budget feature phones and budget home entertainment systems, aiming to compete directly with Sony products within a few months.
Xing Baohua's rice mill is no small workshop; it has a research and development team and various programmers and hardware engineers hired at high prices!
It wasn't easy to recruit these people, so we need to make full use of them.
In addition, Xing Baohua had Motorola's Six Sigma cost control system and IBM's management system. It was already a very well-established large enterprise.
Xing Baohua's most powerful weapon was his low-cost control system.
Even if it comes to price wars, no one in the world can compete with him.
We still need to work hard to overcome the difficulties encountered with monitors and televisions; this situation is caused by a lack of foundation.
Three days later, Zhang Fengrui from the car factory called from FAW in Northeast China, telling Xing Baohua that the chassis and production line issues had been resolved, and the other party would ask for a total of 3.7 million yuan.
This price includes two production lines, one final assembly line, door-to-door delivery, and technical guidance with a guaranteed learning curve.
Xing Baohua was delighted to hear this. It was so cheap, even though they were all products from the 1960s, the price was ridiculously low.
Finally, Zhang Fengrui said, "FAW hopes to send people to visit and learn about the advanced technology of Luzhong Automobile Factory, and hopes to establish more cooperation in the field of engines."
Xing Baohua figured it out: this person was interested in his engine technology. Buying it was out of the question, but learning from it and drawing on his experience was still an option.
Xing Baohua thought about it and then agreed.
Some things can't be learned just by looking. Even if you have a real object placed in front of you, disassembled into pieces, you might not be able to learn it.
This involves a lot of knowledge, not only metallurgical technology, but also processing technology.
This must be acknowledged: being behind is being behind. If we want to catch up in terms of technology, we must constantly experiment and accumulate technology.
All of this is achieved through a combination of spirit and financial investment.
We invested in this area back then, but we were indeed not as good as others. There was also the issue of cooperation between multiple departments.
There's no dedicated department for research and development in alloys and metals. To be honest, that stuff is much more expensive.
Just like drill bits and cutting tools on machine tools, which is better, German-made or Japanese-made?
Even a seasoned barber would be thrilled to own a Japanese-made razor. Indeed, a razor can be passed down through three generations; the person may be gone for two generations, but the razor will still be there.
FAW agreed to their terms, and the money was subsequently transferred to the account provided by Zhang Fengrui.
All relevant cooperation periods were handled by this person.
After finishing this task, Xing Baohua also entered the laboratory to specialize in his knock-off mobile phones.
This thing isn't technically difficult.
To reduce costs, Xing Baohua came up with the idea of using many electronic components as substitutes.
The overall quality has changed somewhat, but it should be fine for one or two years.
Especially in terms of storage units, Xing Baohua will not use expensive Samsung units.
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