Video Game Empire

Chapter 586: NEC's nemesis

If Mr. Ke Lilun can directly deal with the visit of director Park Chang-hyuk of KMT company in Korea, then the chairman of Japanese nec company, Tadashi Sekimoto, comes to visit Hong Kong, and he needs a higher-level person in the Oriental Group to come forward to receive it. `

The full name of nec is Nippon Electric Co., Ltd. The company's earliest history can be traced back to 1899. In the early days, nec started with the production of telephones. By the 1960s, it had developed into the largest manufacturer of communication equipment in Japan. At that time, Japan's telephone network had been popularized, and the saturation of the local market made nec's performance growth weak. In addition, the company's internal adherence to rules and personnel was superfluous, and the company began to fall into a business crisis.

At this time, Kobayashi Koji began to serve as the president of nec company. Under his leadership, nec company began to actively expand overseas markets. At the same time, Kobayashi Hongji also keenly captured the rise of the world's new technology revolution, and took the lead in advocating the new concept of c&c (puter&), committed to the combination of computer and communication technology, and transformed nec from a single professional manufacturer of communication equipment to a It has become a multinational information technology company with semiconductors, computers, and communication troikas going hand in hand.

Kobayashi Kobayashi, the legendary manager of nce company, just announced his retirement in March this year after serving as president and chairman for more than 20 years. The original president, Tadahiro Sekimoto, succeeded Kobayashi Hiroshi as the new president of nec. The chairman and president of Korean and Japanese companies are equivalent to the chairman and general manager, respectively.

After Tadahiro Sekimoto took over as the new head of nec, he naturally had to come up with his own business strategy. And he reviewed the development history of nec in the past ten years. It is found that there are many intersections with the Oriental Group. The former chairman Kobayashi Koji proposed the C&C strategy in 1977, the year when Apple Computer was born.

The late seventies. Apple computer sales in Japan are also very hot. This made nec start to pay attention to this emerging field. Apple is an American company after all, and the computers it develops are all English-language operating systems. Support for Japanese input is terrible.

In fact, after the ibm company's PC came out, there was the same problem, so the nec company in another time and space was the first to solve the input problem of Japanese pseudonyms, thus defeating ibm's pc with a compatible machine, In the early 1980s, it almost dominated the personal computer market in Japan.

But in this time and space, Li Xuan would never make such a low-level mistake. The Japanese market has always been one of the three most important markets for the Oriental Group. `So when the abc-1 and abc-2 computers were launched, the Japanese version of the operating system was developed specifically for the Japanese market. Over the years, Aikang, a subsidiary of the Oriental Group. Has been firmly occupying the Japanese personal computer market sales champion, and nec company has been only second.

In addition to the computer field, the semiconductor industry has also developed into one of the core businesses of nec. After nearly ten years of development, nec's semiconductor division has become one of the largest semiconductor companies in Japan. It's just that, like other semiconductor companies in Japan, the core business of nec's semiconductor department is placed on the R&D and manufacturing of memory.

With the rise of the personal computer industry, although the capacity of the memory market has grown very rapidly in recent years, the star product of the semiconductor industry in the 1980s was the processor chip. Don't look at Japanese companies knocking down American companies in the memory field. But the result of the price war can only be to hurt the enemy by one thousand and lose eight hundred.

What's more, the US companies actually acted as rogues in the end, and simply persuaded the US government to come forward and force Japan to sign the "US-Japan Semiconductor Agreement" to strictly control the export of Japanese memory chips to the United States. This makes the survival of the Japanese semiconductor industry. It's far less glamorous than it seems.

In contrast, the Oriental Group has almost achieved a market monopoly in the processor market, and the return on profits is far from what Japanese semiconductor companies can catch up with. This makes many Japanese semiconductor companies, including nec, envied. What makes Japanese companies even more frightened is the Oriental Semiconductor Company, a subsidiary of the Oriental Group. It is relying on its scale advantage to start counterattacking the memory market.

Dongfang Semiconductor's newly built wafer fab in Taiwan-Taiwan not only leads the mainstream Japanese wafer fab in technological upgrading. It is also better than Japanese companies in terms of cost expenditure. Over time, Orient Semiconductor is likely to grab a large number of orders that originally belonged to Japanese companies.

In addition to these intersections, such as the liquid crystal industry that Sekimoto is very optimistic about, Dongfang Group has once again taken the lead, so that nec can only play a chasing role again. And now, Dongfang Group has begun to extend its tentacles to the field of communication equipment, which is the old line of nec company.

In fact, as early as a few years ago, nec and Dongfang Group had a fight over the air once in the field of communication equipment. At that time, nec was preparing to set up a joint venture in eastern Guangdong province to produce digital program-controlled machines that China desperately needed. To know the backwardness of China's telecommunications industry at that time, it seems unbelievable to Japanese companies. An inter-provincial long-distance call can take a week to connect in bad luck. `

The artificial wiring used in Japan before World War II is still very popular in China's telecommunications industry. China's urgent need to replace a more modern communications network gave nec an opportunity to slaughter the Chinese. Therefore, nec has been very perfunctory about the Chinese side's desire to introduce technology and realize the localized production of digital program-controlled telephone switches. The biggest concession is to ship the relevant components to China for assembly, but firmly disagree with opening up core technologies.

Just when the eastern Guangdong province was about to bow its head and accept the harsh conditions of nec, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, which is responsible for the management of China's entire communication system, directly rejected the joint venture plan. Later, the nec company inquired about the news, and the Chinese side found a better partner - the Oriental Research Institute.

When the ds series digital telephone program-controlled switches began to appear in the procurement catalogues of telecommunications bureaus across China, nec was the first to respond and reduced the prices of its own similar products across the board. But even so. nec's digital switches still haven't been able to compete with the ds series.

This is not because nec's products are inferior to each other in quality, but because their switches need to be paid for in foreign currency. But the ds series digital switches only need to pay half the foreign exchange. The other half can be paid in RMB. This difference in the payment link alone makes telecom bureaus across China prefer to wait in line for ds series switches. Also reluctant to take nec's spot.

In order to compete for the market, nec finally came up with a remedy. That is to contact a Japanese bank to provide China with a yen loan for the purchase of nec's communications equipment. You must know that Chinese officials have tenure, they only need to make good political achievements within their time limit. As for the repayment of the loan when it expires, that is the problem that the next officials need to worry about.

This approach has indeed allowed nec to seize a part of the market share in the upgrading and transformation of China's telecommunications industry. However, due to the continuous strengthening of the yen in the foreign exchange market in recent years, China's original yen borrowings suffered huge losses in the exchange rate alone.

Under the malicious spread of rumors by people with a heart. nec's original matchmaking was considered a conspiracy. The nec company is considered to be working with the Japanese bank to dig a big hole for the Chinese side! As a result, the brand image of nec in the entire telecommunications system in China has plummeted, making the company's office in China impossible to argue!

Sekimoto Tadahiro only found out after sorting out that all these things have a direct relationship with the Oriental Group. It can be said that the Oriental Group is the biggest nemesis of the nec company in the past ten years.

In addition to emerging markets such as China, the traditional communication market with telephone as the core has basically been saturated. But with the advent of mobile phones, it suddenly opened up a whole new blue ocean for the entire telecommunications industry. It is precisely because of this that European communication giants such as Siemens and Ericsson. Will spare no effort to compete for the core patents of the gsm standard.

As Japan's largest communication equipment giant, nec is one of the most important behind-the-scenes drivers of Japan's second-generation digital cellular mobile communication technology - pdc. However, the pdc standard is still in the laboratory research and development stage, and the Oriental Group has once again taken the lead. The cdma standard was developed, so how could Tadahiro Sekimoto not be shocked!

The technical experts of nec company have conducted a comprehensive technical analysis on the newly announced cdma standard of Dongfang Group. According to the analysis report obtained by Tadahiro Sekimoto. The technical level of cdma is much higher than that of pdc developed by Japan itself. If the cdma standard has really matured to a stage where it can be put into commercial operation, then the pdc has almost lost the value of continued development.

Has cdma technology really arrived? The level that can be put into commercial operation? Sekimoto Tadahiro did not think that the Oriental Group would make a joke of his reputation! And after a careful study of the Eastern Group. Tadahiro Sekimoto finally found some opportunities for nec.

The strength of Dongfang Group in the field of communication equipment manufacturing is actually very weak, including the ds series of digital telephone program-controlled switches that gave nec a hit before, and they have also been directly authorized to China's joint venture company for production. Therefore, nec is likely to obtain the relevant patent authorization of cdma technology from Dongfang Group.

So Tadahiro Sekimoto personally flew the delegation from Tokyo to Hong Kong. In addition to discussing the technical authorization of cdma, he also wanted to observe the rise of this company more closely for less than ten years, but the whole world was looking at it. .

Under the successive impact of emerging companies in the mobile Internet era such as Qualcomm and Cisco, as well as Chinese companies such as ZTE and Huawei, the later nec company has already fallen out of the ranks of the world's top ten communication equipment manufacturers. But in 1988, nec was still the largest in Asia and the top five communication equipment giants in the world.

The Oriental Group attaches great importance to the visit of the nec delegation. Han Peng, the president of the group, personally greeted it at the airport. After that, Li Xuan also specially held a family banquet to find the distinguished guests from Japan. But Li Xuan's actions are limited to this. Since he has stepped down as the chairman of Dongfang Group, he simply let go of Han Peng, Bradshaw and other old foxes to deal with Sekimoto Zhonghong.

The arrival of nec made Li Xuan full of confidence in the patent licensing model in the field of mobile communications. He never thought to cherish the cdma technology, but it was certain that he would take a stab at it. Qualcomm's monopoly on cdma technology can support the company's market value of more than 100 billion US dollars in another time and space, which shows how huge the benefits are!

Just when Tadashi Sekimoto arrived in Hong Kong, Walker, the chairman of mci company, also flew to Hong Kong from the United States. Compared with the previous Little Japan, Li Xuan is undoubtedly much more polite to the CEO of this own holding company.

The invitation that Walker received was sent by Coolillon, the president of Huaxing Company, hoping that he could accept Huaxing Company's plan to promote cdma technology in the United States through his trip to Hong Kong. But in fact, after Walker arrived in Hong Kong, he was most interested in the development of the Internet industry in Hong Kong.

The last time Walker met with Li Xuan was when Dongfang Group took a stake in mci. At that time, Li Xuan's words touched him a lot, especially Li Xuan's optimism about the Internet industry, which made him completely determined to invest large-scale funds in the Internet infrastructure - fiber optic cables.

You must know that the reason why mci company was willing to ~www.readwn.com~ let Dongfang Group Co., Ltd. buy shares in the form of stock exchange is because they took a fancy to the Oriental Satellite Communication Co., Ltd. under the Dongfang Group. At that time, mci company was eager to have its own satellite navigation network, that is, to use satellites instead of optical cables for long-distance data transmission, so as to save a lot of costs for laying optical fibers.

However, because he was optimistic about the development of the Internet, Walker finally persuaded the management and the board of directors with the support of the controlling shareholder Oriental Group to start laying his own optical fiber data transmission system again. This is equivalent to making the satellite company acquired from the Oriental Group at a huge price useless.

So Walker decisively divested and sold the satellite business, in exchange for a large amount of cash to support mci's large-scale investment in infrastructure construction. This in and out, mci company did not lose much in this capital, but Walker himself became the laughing stock of the industry.

It's just that a person who can climb to the ceo of a listed company must have a strong heart. What's more, there is the full support of the controlling shareholder behind him. Li Xuan even made a promise that if mci's stock price falls due to this, the Oriental Group is willing to increase its holdings of shares to support the market.

However, this worst-case scenario did not happen. Although the stock price of mci fluctuated, it quickly stabilized. Because the profitability of mci company itself has not declined, but because of the large cash income from the sale of the satellite business, the financial statements are more beautiful!

Walker came to Hong Kong this time, not only to discuss with Huaxing Company to bring cdma technology to the United States to open a test site, but also to investigate the actual development of the Internet in Hong Kong! (To be continued.)

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like