Video Game Empire

Li Xuan smiled and said, "We are not planning to open a factory in Hong Kong, but in mainland China! The Chinese government has established a special economic zone in the area connected to Hong Kong, allowing wholly foreign-owned enterprises to set up factories!

For the new joint venture, we will be responsible for management, production and sales. The company only needs to provide technology, and finally can share the dividends! We hope this new factory will have an annual capacity of more than 3 million kinescopes! "

Li Xuan threw a bomb directly, he did not believe that the company's top management would not be moved. (First) The U.S. economy in 1981 was in a mild but rapid recession. The game and computer industries where Dongfang Electronics Co., Ltd. is located are emerging industries, and the market itself is rapidly expanding, so the impact of the economic recession is not obvious.

But in a mature industry like TV, the market has long been saturated. The economic recession has directly led to a drop in demand. The sales of TV sets in the United States have been declining since the beginning of the year, which is definitely very bad news for the company.

Last year, the company's total sales volume of TV sets was 3.8 million, and the total output of picture tubes was around 5 million. These two figures are expected to decline this year.

Li Xuan proposed to build a joint venture to build a new factory with an annual output of 3 million kinescopes, the production capacity reaching 60% of the company's current total kinescope output. If the new factory's products don't take over the company's existing market, it's definitely a worthwhile investment!

"I found that the main market of the company's picture tubes is in North America, and in Asia it only occupies a large market share in Taiwan-Taiwan! And the new factories we opened together, except for a part of the direct supply to Dongfang Electronics' computer and arcade products. The rest It is mainly sold in the Asian market! In this way, it will not cause damage to the company's existing market, and it will be a profitable investment for your company!" Li Xuan said with a smile.

The company has lost almost all of its overseas market in competition with Japanese electronics companies. If it can achieve a counter-offensive in the Asian market. This is definitely a major positive news.

And Li Xuan plans to build a new factory, naturally, will not directly build a production capacity of 3 million picture tubes in one go. Instead, it will be divided into two phases. Each phase of the factory has a capacity of 1.5 million picture tubes. With the development speed of the arcade and computer industries in the next two years, when the first phase of the factory is put into operation, Dongfang Game Company and Aikang Company can digest at least 1 million kinescopes internally. It is not very difficult to distribute the remaining 500,000 picture tubes to the mainland and Southeast Asian markets.

Building a factory with an annual output of 3 million kinescopes is definitely a big business with an investment of tens of millions of dollars. Even if both parties have intentions, you need to sit down and talk slowly. Next, Dongfang Electronics will use more detailed data to convince the company that they are fully capable of digesting the production capacity of the new factory. This is not an investment that requires a lot of risk.

In fact, the company does not have any technical advantages compared to Japanese TV giants such as Sony and Hitachi, but Li Xuan did not choose to cooperate with Japanese companies. American companies pay more attention to practical interests when negotiating joint ventures. Rather than infiltration and control of partners. U.S. companies are happy to sell patents of all kinds, as long as the price is right. Japanese companies are different. Most of them have a large-scale comprehensive consortium behind them, hoping to assimilate you into a small blood vessel responsible for blood transfusion in their tight industrial network.

What's more, throughout the 1980s, Japan's electronics companies were at their most prosperous, and the company was constantly weakening. Companies are more willing to lower their profile than Japanese companies, which puts Li Xuan in a better position to negotiate. For example, regarding the production management rights of the new factory, Li Xuan believes that the company is very willing as long as the joint venture's finances are open, transparent and profitable. Be a shareholder who only participates in dividends and does not interfere with the daily management of the company.

"Eastern Company wants to acquire our company's liquid crystal display business?" Charlison frowned. This was the second unexpected topic raised by Li Xuan today.

"Yes, we found that the liquid crystal display business does not seem to be the company's core business. Your company has not invested much in this area in recent years!" Li Xuan nodded. He continued: "The game company owned by Dongfang Electronics has a game; handheld game console, and needs to purchase a large number of LCD screens every month! We hope to acquire the company's related business at a suitable price. So as to integrate into our In the industrial chain, reduce the production cost of products!"

Li Xuan's explanation is very reasonable. The total global sales of the game has exceeded 24 million units, if you count the sales of game cards. Orient has purchased at least 50 million small-size LCDs in the past year. Dongfang Company is already the single customer with the largest purchase volume of Japanese LCD display manufacturers such as Sharp, Casio and Epson.

But in fact, the earliest breakthrough in liquid crystal display technology came from the company's laboratory. In 1964, a 28-year-old young researcher, Dr. Heilmeier, achieved a breakthrough in the key technology of liquid crystal display. The company kept his research as a secret program in order to prevent competitors from getting ahead of him.

But at the time when the company's shadow mask type picture tube technology was unrivaled in the world, the company did not have much motivation to invest heavily in the research and development of liquid crystal displays. Feeling unappreciated, Heilmeier left the company in 1968. And it was precisely in that year that Sony launched the ultra-fine picture tube, and it began to go downhill from then on.

Since the 1970s, Japanese companies such as Sharp and Casio have invested large sums of money in the research and development of liquid crystal display technology, but the company has not been able to keep up with them. In 1973, Sharp first developed a small-sized liquid crystal display and applied it to the digital display of electronic calculator screens. The company just woke up at this time and started to follow up quickly, but it has long ceased to be the leader in LCD technology.

The LCD industry of later generations is a big industry with an annual output value of more than 40 billion US dollars, and such a huge market is completely divided up by Japanese and Korean companies. The company originally had the opportunity of ZTE's rise, but they failed to grasp it. They can only say that it is fate!

Now the company's LCD product manufacturing scale is not large, Li Xuan is more important is the company's research and development strength. Later generations of tft liquid crystal glass substrate production lines and wafer fabs have a good fight, which are super investments of billions of dollars at every turn.

But now the liquid crystal industry has just begun to emerge, and the first tft color display screen that is really used in notebook computers will not come out until ten years later. Although the company's current LCD technology has been reduced to second-rate in the industry, it still has a relatively good foundation.

More importantly, they hold some underlying basic patents of liquid crystal technology, which can be used for cross-licensing with patents held by other companies to quickly expand the foundation of liquid crystal technology research and development. Then, as long as Li Xuan is willing to pour money into it, he may not be able to catch up with Japanese companies.

"Sorry, I'm not in charge of the LCD business, I can only convey your intention to the company's board of directors!" Charlison said with a serious look. Although the company's LCD division is small, it is at least an M&A project worth tens of millions of dollars.

Li Xuan nodded in understanding. The liquid crystal display business can only be regarded as a marginal industry in the company, and it is a tasteless and discardable chicken rib for them. As long as Li Xuan's bid is appropriate, he shouldn't encounter much resistance.

Now the value of liquid crystal technology has not really been reflected, and the threshold for entering this industry is not high. Thirty years later, an 8.5th-generation tft LCD panel production line will cost US$4.5 billion. Without strong capital, it is impossible to participate in the game.

Even if you have sufficient funds, those industry pioneers have spent more than ten or even decades from the beginning of research and development to fruitful results, and their mastery of technology is far from the level of new entrants. You can buy technology with money, but whether it can achieve the same production efficiency and cost control as them is unknown.

In the previous life, there were two huge loss-making enterprises in China, the wafer industry is SMIC, and the liquid crystal industry is BOE. From the perspective of technical equipment ~www.readwn.com~ the pace of catching up with these two companies is actually very fast, but under the squeeze of foreign giants, they have no independent core competitiveness and are losing money year after year.

Li Xuan has enough patience to endure the long-term investment in the early stage. When the LCD industry matures, he will become a giant who truly controls the right to speak, and he will earn back the money he invested in the past with interest.

Li Xuan stopped in New York to wait for the board's reply. It just so happened that IBM's machine was listed in New York, so he went to the machine's press conference after doing nothing to turn around.

After detailed discussions, the company's executives agreed to cooperate with Dongfang Electronics to jointly build a new picture tube factory in Asia. The company is also willing to sell its LCD division to Dongfang Electronics. After Li Xuan got satisfactory results, he flew back to Hong Kong from New York to Tokyo. As for the specific negotiation matters, of course, there is no need for him, the big boss, to go out in person.

But just after Li Xuan got off the plane, he got bad news from Ke Lilun, the administrative assistant who picked up the plane. The ibm company has just submitted a complaint to the District Court of Upstate New York, accusing Aikon's series of computers infringing seven patents held by the ibm company. Asked the court to prohibit the sale of the series of computers in the US market, and claimed a huge compensation of 145 million US dollars. (To be continued..)

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