Business: The rise of tech giants

“Mr. Ni?”Li Xinghai exclaimed.

In the 1990s, anyone who worked in the computer field would have heard of this name: Ni Anbei.

To put it simply, the key product of the company’s start-up, the Linkon Hanka, is Mr. Ni presided over the research and development.

Later, because Hanka relied heavily on the Americ Z80 chip, Ni Anbei established a motherboard and expansion card R&D department in Hukong in 1988. In 1990, he realized the self-developed new chip to replace the z80.

In 1990 Lenon is already an industrial giant with tens of millions in revenue, but it is still a primary school student in the chip field. Faced with huge investments, Liu Sanzhi retreated and stopped the research and development of chip semiconductors. At this time, Liu Sanzhi and Ni Anbei had already made major achievements. Differences.

In 1991, Ni Anbei initiated a laser printer project, and the developed printer chip could be installed on Hopi printers, which had the largest share in the country at that time. It was actually better than Hopi’s original chip, so much so that he was forced to develop new Hopi printers. Printers no longer reserve interfaces for external chips.

Lenon developed a complete printer, which once surpassed Houpi to become the largest printer in the country.

Since the core components are in its own hands, the profit margin of this printer is also very high.

In 1992, Ni Anbei established the program-controlled switch division. Two years later, the program-controlled switch obtained the telecommunications government network access certificate. In the same year, Huanshen’s program-controlled switch also obtained the network access certificate, but that Huanshen product was inferior in performance and stability. In all aspects, it is inferior to Lennon’s products. As a result, the revenue of Lennon’s program-controlled switch division is higher than that of Huanwei’s entire company. In

1993, Ni Anbei established the project and led the development of financial platform software, and also achieved good results. Commercial income.

By the end of 1993, under the leadership of chief engineer Ni Anbei, the main R&D achievements of Liannon Wo were Hanka, program-controlled switches, financial platform software, printers, and complete microcomputers. Among them, there were a total of five self-developed chips. Model: two Hanka chips, two motherboard chips, and one printer chip.

Although these chips are much simpler than CPUs, for Daxia at that time, as long as they were chips, they were definitely cutting-edge high-tech.

Lennon These five chips of mine all entered the first-tier camp of similar products in the world at that time, and were successfully used in large-scale commercial applications. At that time, I can say that Lenon was a well-deserved benchmark for Daxia high-tech enterprises.

Looking at the world, although from a business perspective, In terms of scale, it can only be regarded as a small business, but in terms of core technology, it is still qualified to be called a technology company.

Liu Sanzhi became the actual helmsman of Lenon in 1986. By 1993, in the past seven years, the company had become Ni Anbei, the chief engineer and actually playing the role of CTO, is a perfect match.

Liu Sanzhi is responsible for operations, business, capital operations, etc., while Ni Anbei is more focused on technology research and development. The two have a clear division of labor and have never interfered with each other. Unfortunately, in In 1994, Liu and Ni started a life-and-death fight. At the end of 1993, Ni Anbei prepared to establish a chip design department: Lianhai Microelectronics Design Center, with the goal of marching into CPUs.

Although Liannon’s revenue that year Reaching more than one billion yuan, there was still insufficient financial resources for CPU research and development.

By mid-1994, Liu Sanzhi began to oppose Lianhai Microelectronics Design Center.

To be fair, Liu Sanzhi’s objection is reasonable.

In the global PC market at that time, the monopoly pattern of the Wintel alliance had been basically settled. The difficulty of making CPUs was not the same as that of the five chips that Ni Anbei had made before.

Based on the strength of Lennon and various domestic conditions, it was very likely that Lennon would be brought down by the CPU at that time.

In June 1995, after the intervention of the leaders of Tianjin Academy of Sciences, Ni Anbei was dismissed from his position as chief engineer of Liannon Group, but his salary was retained. At the same time, he was promised to provide him with 5 million scientific research start-up funds if he took the initiative to change his workplace.

Ni Anbei refused without hesitation. He thought it was a sum of money that he couldn’t explain why and he couldn’t take it.

In fact, from the perspective of the future, Li Xinghai also feels that what Mr. Ni did back then was a bit radical.

At that time, I successfully made five relatively simple chips for Lennon. The safe and feasible approach was to proceed step by step from simple to complex. For example, the feasibility of sound card chips and network card chips was very high.

If you feel that these chips have low technical content and low difficulty, there are also graphics card chips.

When Onda was established in 1993, independent graphics card products were just budding, and they also lacked technical accumulation. Compared with the start-up Onda, it had a much better chance of winning than the established giant Intal.

If you go beyond the PC, there will be more chip products to choose from. For example, the already successful printer chips can be naturally extended to the chips for copiers and fax machines.

In short, gradually accumulate from easy to difficult. When the revenue scale truly reaches the level of a world-class giant, with sufficient technology accumulation and talent team growth, it will not be too late to challenge Intal, the ultimate boss.

Even Ni Anbei, who later expressed his appreciation many times, made many such relatively simple chips before making mobile phone CPUs.

Combined with the background of the times, we may be able to understand Ni Anbei’s anxiety a little bit.

In 1994, looking around the world, only Neon was still stubbornly resisting the wintel alliance.

At that time, the Neon PC market share was MFC’s PC98 series, which had the highest market share. In addition, Shenfu and Fotutang’s PC products also had a certain market share. These PC manufacturers had self-developed CPUs and operating systems.

Later in 1995, with the launch of win95, the wintel alliance finally won the last hilltop of the neon market and unified the world.

Ni Anbei probably judged that this was the last chance to resist Wintel in 1994 and wanted to give it a try?

Considering Ni Anbei’s age, he was 55 years old in 1994. He still positions himself as a national scientific researcher. Does he want to personally produce the heavyweight scientific research achievement of general computer CPU before retirement?

It should be said that Liu Sanzhi’s rejection of the CPU project was the right decision.

But he then disbanded the well-run board team, program-controlled switch team, and printer team, and then completely stopped investing in core technology research and development.

It can be said that since then, Lennon has never invested in core technology research and development, and has just started the computer assembly business with peace of mind. As a result, today’s Lennon has no core technology at all, and it is not qualified to be called a technology company.

Ma Jack once said that Liu Sanzhi is”no less than any great entrepreneur in the world and the godfather of any business community.”

If we do not position Liannon as a technology company, Liu Sanzhi may be worthy of being the godfather of entrepreneurs in Daxia. After all, technology companies are only a small part of the company, so Liu Chuanzhi is indeed a very successful entrepreneur.

The problem is that I came from the Tianke Academy of Science and Technology. I was originally positioned as a technology company and enjoyed many preferential policies and scientific research resource dividends that only technology companies can enjoy. From this perspective, Liu Sanzhi completely failed the expectations of the country and the people.

Li Xinghai thought about the bearish appearance of Lennon in the future, and then thought about the Lenon in 1993, which had both core technology and marketing capabilities, enjoyed countless favors from the government and the people, and had all the conditions to grow into a world-class technology giant in the future. I’m really impressed.

He knew that in 1999 next year, Ni Anbei would be completely kicked out of Lenon and his shares would be completely withdrawn.

Recalling that Mr. Ni worked hard to support Yuanzhou Technology after he left Lennon. At this time, he still harbored the lofty dream of developing independent chips for Daxia.

It’s a pity that Ark Technology’s product positioning was wrong at the beginning, using MIPS frame���Use self-developed CPU and self-developed operating system at the bottom of Linux to replace Wintel computers.

It can be seen at a glance that this thing has no money and no future. Unfortunately, Ni Anbei was already a little crazy at this time. He put all his wealth, reputation and resources into support for Ark. The result is feasible.

Quickly flashing through Ni Anbei’s past and future deeds in his mind, Li Xinghai watched the hunched old man slowly turn around and smiled at him:”Young man, do you know me?”

………………

(Looking back at that period of history now, I can’t help but sigh. There are some issues with the timing of this book. If it were placed in the late 1980s, and the protagonist stirred up the high-tech industry in that turbulent era, it would be such a tragic story.)