Manager Shi also talked about a lot of professional things, from motherboard materials to circuit design. The biggest highlight of this product is its low price.
Products of the same quality are not as cheap as this one, and those that are better are much more expensive!
Radios have also been combined with cassette players. Nowadays, all companies are innovating, and under the existing conditions, all sorts of bizarre combinations are dazzling.
Lu Feng offered some suggestions, including increasing the number of antennas to two, making them longer, with a rounded and sturdy shape to give a solid feel, and avoiding overly flashy colors, such as red.
The main users of radios are older people. They require products that are practical and inexpensive. Flashy or fancy products won't appeal to them.
Liu Cheng had figured out Lu Feng's connections. The changes he made were superfluous to professionals, but they had another meaning in terms of marketing.
When he explained this design in an internal meeting, he called it the "Lu Design".
Next up was the tape recorder. A different manager went up, and the people next to him were already revising the blueprints according to Lu Feng's requirements.
"The next product is a tape recorder. This type of electronic product is already very mature. The differences in quality are only in the speakers and circuit materials. We analyzed and studied 27 tape recorders on the market and, after weighing the pros and cons, decided on the one we're discussing today."
"Most users of cassette players are students, so we made a bold design for the appearance, using a lot of bright colors to highlight youthfulness. The buttons are push-button type, and the springs are the best, so they feel very high-quality when pressed. The speaker is a product from Feiyue Audio."
"The circuit design has been redesigned to ensure current stability. Four batteries can last for fifteen hours. We have also made some optimizations to address issues such as tape jamming, rewinding, and tape snagging."
"The biggest highlight of this product is its automatic rewind function, which incorporates a drive wheel. I believe everyone has the same problem: after hearing this, you rewind with your fingers. Our product solves this pain point."
Those present laughed when they heard this; rewinding was indeed a lot of trouble.
Lu Feng picked up the tape recorder in front of him. It felt heavy in his hand. He pressed the buttons a few times and found that it was indeed very high-quality. There was a disassembled one next to him, which actually contained a layer of iron for counterweight.
It's clear that this product manager has done research on Lu Feng!
Lu Feng put a cassette tape inside, pressed the play button, and the song "A Fire in Winter" played very enthusiastically. The sound system wasn't very good; looking at the prices on the purchase list, a pair of speakers cost only six yuan, but it was still much better than the cassette players on the market.
"Why not make a language repeater? That way the children can still use it," Lu Feng wondered.
"A language repeater?"
Liu Cheng was a little puzzled and asked, "What is a language repeater?"
"It means you can listen to a certain section repeatedly. For example, this sentence, I can rewind and listen to it again, or it can automatically rewind and rewind," Lu Feng said.
The engineers present leaned back in their chairs, exchanged glances, and thought that this research and development direction was quite novel!
"This technology is feasible, but it suffers from severe tape jamming and the machine can't keep up," Liu Cheng pointed out the technical pain point.
Lu Feng thought about it carefully. The tape recorder was invented in 1999 and doesn't exist now. The technology is very weak for the future. It's not about rewinding a tape, but about digitizing a certain part of the content that needs to be repeated and storing it in a microchip for repeated playback.
"We can use digital storage technology to digitize the content that needs to be repeated on the tape and play it back and forth." Lu Feng looked at the tape player in front of him and asked, "Is this technology feasible now?"
"Digital storage?"
Liu Cheng pondered for a moment, then said, "It's feasible, but the price will be high, and we'll need to acquire patent rights from companies like Sony and Sharp, or even collaborate with them."
"Is the technological barrier very high?" Lu Feng knew that the market for language repeaters was huge. For students, who doesn't have a few language repeaters when learning English? They're like dictionaries.
"If the money is available..."
"Alright, alright!" Lu Feng looked at him and said, "Allocate some of next year's R&D funding to this project, and make the repeater a key project in the small electronic category next year."
"Okay!" Liu Cheng agreed.
"This tape drive is well made. What's the cost price?" Lu Feng asked the product manager.
“Our current cost is 24.5 yuan, which is basically the same as the price of other manufacturers. We had a brief chat with these suppliers, and they have purchase quantity requirements. The annual data is no less than 300,000 units. I think the annual sales of this product will not be lower than this number.”
Annual sales of 300,000 units are not a lot. Tape drives are still a core product for young people. Although there are many manufacturers and the quality of their products varies, Lu Feng believes that this product is still very competitive.
Even if there is a loss, it won't be much.
"The next product is a home theater system," another person in charge stepped forward.
"This product is designed to work with Wepuda TVs. You can simply plug the cable into the jack on the back of the TV to watch videotapes at home. In terms of tape data recovery, we have achieved a level comparable to our competitors. Our buyers are basically in agreement. Currently, the technology level in videotapes has reached a bottleneck."
"Everyone's skill level is about the same, and they can't make any big changes. Our picture quality is clearer, the rate of tape jamming is lower, and the probability of screen tearing is also lower. Even if it occurs, it won't freeze, but will skip and continue playing."
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