Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 267 S13 Trial Production

Weiku Industrial, a large-scale professional consumer electronics OEM factory under Xu Shenxue, is ranked among the top three professional OEM factories in the world in terms of scale and technical capabilities.

On April 29th, a large convoy arrived at the company's headquarters.

Xu Shenxue, accompanied by a number of Zhiyun Group's entourage, arrived at the Weiku Industrial headquarters, which was only seven or eight kilometers away from the Zhiyun Group's headquarters park.

This place is actually the former headquarters of Wecoo Electronics. It is the biggest asset left to Xu Shenxue by the late father Xu, and it is also the starting point for Xu Shenxue's second venture.

However, this place is now very different from what it was four or five years ago. The original simple five-story office building and a group of ordinary factory buildings have disappeared, replaced by a more than 30-story office building and a large auxiliary podium building.

This place has become the headquarters base and R&D center of Weiku Industrial.

The core function of this place at present is to carry out the research and development of various professional and customized equipment required for various production lines, including the research and development of today's most cutting-edge industrial robots. There is also a large production line testing center, which mainly tests the production lines needed for various new products.

The mass production of the Zhiyun S series mobile phones and other new products of Zhiyun Group first started here.

There are still huge technical challenges in moving a new electronic product from laboratory status to large-scale mass production.

How to carry out large-scale mass production while controlling costs is actually a very challenging task. One of the core tasks undertaken by Weiku Industrial among the many companies under Xu Shenxue is actually this part of the work, which is to turn laboratory products into industrial products.

Another core task of Weiku Industrial is to undertake the OEM assembly of various terminal products and realize large-scale mass production.

The mass production of the S13 mobile phone is no exception. It will be started here first. After the technical difficulties of mass production are solved one by one, the relevant technical data will be handed over to the large-scale integrated production bases under those large professional OEM factories, and then large-scale mass production will be carried out.

Xu Shenxue came here today to see the preliminary trial production of the S13 mobile phone.

Xu Shenxue did not go to the tall headquarters office building of Weiku Industrial, but went directly to the production line testing center next to it.

After arriving at the production line testing center, Xu Shenxue went directly to the No. 1 Production Line R&D and Testing Center, which has the largest area and scale. It even seems a bit crowded because of the large number of professional equipment deployed in it.

This is also the production line R&D and testing center for successive Zhiyun mobile phones, especially the S series mobile phones.

At this time, An Dayu, CEO of Weiku Industrial, followed Xu Shenxue and introduced this complicated test production line to him: "Mr. Xu, this is a customized assembly line we built specifically for the mass production of the S13 series of mobile phones. This production line can perfectly assemble a large number of parts collected from various manufacturers in the supply chain into a mobile phone!"

"In order to save costs, our production line actually uses a large amount of equipment from the previous S series production line. The S13 production line can use 12% of the equipment from the S production line intact, and the remaining % of the equipment can continue to be used after some modifications. Only % of the equipment needs to be specially customized and newly manufactured."

"At the same time, more than 11% of these devices are still the manufacturing equipment of the previous generation S9 mobile phone, and more than % of them are the equipment we used when we produced the S mobile phone many years ago!"

"Although our mobile phones have become more and more advanced over the years, the equipment we use to make them has not changed much... Of course, this is also the result of our deliberate control!"

"In order to reduce the mass production cost of new mobile phones and reduce the investment in new equipment for modifying the production line, we used as much old equipment as possible when developing new mobile phone production lines!"

"This will not only reduce the cost of replacing equipment, but also save the cost of training equipment operators. In some processes, our old workers hardly need special training. They only need to adjust the equipment according to the changes in the technical parameters of the new mobile phone process, and then they can fully integrate into the production system of the new equipment!"

"So far, the results we have achieved are quite good, which is one of the reasons why our mass production costs can be well controlled!"

Xu Shenxue said at this time: "This is a very good and practical route. You did a great job!"

"Controlling mass production costs, especially the hardware cost investment on the production line, is something I have emphasized many times before. This should be done as much as possible not only in the field of whole machine assembly, but also in the field of spare parts production!"

"The overall hardware cost control of the equipment is accumulated little by little!"

Gu Zhiming, the group's senior vice president who was in charge of the supply chain business group, said, "Don't worry, President Xu, we have very good cost control in all aspects of our supply chain!"

"It's not just about controlling the hardware costs of the production line, but also other aspects. In the process of controlling costs, we also leave ample profit space for our supply chain manufacturers!"

Xu Shenxue said: "It is very important to leave a certain profit margin for the supply chain manufacturers so that they have funds and motivation to cooperate with us in continuous technical research and development of spare parts. We are a complete machine manufacturer and it is impossible for us to do everything ourselves. We still need a large number of supply chain manufacturers to work together!"

The current supply chain in Zhiyun Group is actually quite different from that of ordinary manufacturers.

When ordinary manufacturers are looking for supply chains, they often try to lower prices, put forward various harsh conditions, etc. Through precise cost calculations, they finally set the purchase price at the supplier's cost line... They typically want to take every penny in their hands and leave no profit for the supplier.

However, considering the actual business situation, many supplier companies have no way to refuse. Even if they do not make money or even suffer a small loss, they will agree to these conditions, and then try to increase production to further reduce costs and make money through other means.

Because these orders with harsh conditions do not make money, and may even result in a small loss...but the production line can still be maintained, the company can still be maintained, and it can try to survive through other means, such as squeezing workers' wages, reducing labor costs, tax evasion, and other means.

However, if we do not take these orders, we will suffer greater losses and the company may even go bankrupt.

The above situation is actually very common in the traditional manufacturing industry in China, especially in industries with little technical content.

There have been some changes in the high-tech industry, but not much better. Even the supply chains of many large companies are no exception.

But Zhiyun is an exception!

Why is there even a special Zhiyun concept in the stock market? You should know that Zhiyun is not even listed in China, but many companies in the domestic or Hong Kong stock markets often experience fluctuations in stock prices due to the hot sales or suppression of Zhiyun products.

But in other industries, this situation is rarely seen.

This is because Zhiyun’s supply chain system adopts the principle of growing together with supply chain manufacturers.

We won't take away every penny of profit and try to catch fish while draining the pond!
Zhiyun Group will leave a portion of its profits to supply chain manufacturers to maintain the replacement of production lines and technological research and development of new products.

In addition, Zhiyun's orders are large enough, which has brought a lot of revenue and profits to supply chain companies, making some listed companies in Zhiyun's supply chain system perform very well in the stock market.

Especially when Zhiyun products sell well, their stock prices will also rise rapidly.

Of course, if Zhiyun encounters any crisis, they will inevitably be affected lastingly.

In the past six months, Zhiyun's stock price has continued to fall, from more than 600 billion US dollars to the current 530 billion US dollars, and its market value has evaporated by a full 100 billion US dollars.

A large number of smart cloud supply chain companies were also affected, with their stock prices falling to varying degrees.

It can be seen from this that the companies in Zhiyun’s supply chain are actually highly bound to Zhiyun, regardless of whether Zhiyun holds a controlling stake in the supply chain company.

How does Zhiyun grow together with supply chain companies and highly bind them?

Not to mention the wholly-owned acquisitions, which are already part of Zhiyun Group, such as Wanjin Technology in the fingerprint recognition field and Anlong Precision in the aluminum alloy body field.

On the one hand, some companies become controlling shareholders through strategic investment. Specific examples include Huaxing Technology, which makes screens, and some other companies.

The second is a strategic investment, holding a portion of shares but not a controlling stake in the company.

For example, BOE, which also makes screens, makes touch ICs, and has also supplied fingerprint recognition modules to the market, and other companies such as Qianding Technology.

In addition to these acquisitions and investment methods, the profit distribution and pricing system in Zhiyun's supply chain system are also crucial.

Basically, the process is like this: when a supply chain manufacturer develops a new spare part product, once Zhiyun decides to adopt it, it will place a large-scale order and at the same time give the supply chain manufacturer a relatively high purchase price, allowing the supplier to have sufficient profits.

Depending on the product R&D investment, purchase quantity, purchase cost, mass production cost and many other factors, the purchase price will be reduced after a period of time.

Moreover, the process of reducing the purchase price is continuous in a step-by-step manner, with the price being reduced by a certain percentage every once in a while.

This forces supply chain manufacturers to continue research and development after new products are developed to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

At the same time, old products will gradually become less profitable, forcing supply chain manufacturers to continue investing in R&D...It is best to invest all the money earned previously into the R&D of new products.

In other words, the high profits that Zhiyun gave to the supply chain manufacturers in the early stage were not for the shareholders of those supply chain manufacturers to distribute dividends, but for them to use for research and development... If you don't carry out research and development, then you may have no new products in two or three years, and the old products will also reach the end of their lifespan.

At this point, it is basically equivalent to being kicked out of the Zhiyun supply chain...Manufacturers who have lost their R&D capabilities and have been kicked out of the supply chain are basically doomed to bankruptcy.

As for how the boss of the supply chain manufacturer makes money... he can get a stable and efficient supply chain company, the shares are valuable, and he can make money by cashing in the shares.

As for something as low-level as dividends, few large companies would do it.

For example, since Zhiyun went public, it has never distributed dividends, but only carried out a share repurchase plan last year... At that time, it made too much money and had too high a cash flow, so it could not spend so much money in a short time, so it carried out a share repurchase plan.

It was also this share repurchase plan at that time that directly pushed Zhiyun’s stock price to the 600 billion US dollar mark!
At that time, taking advantage of the high stock price, Xu Shenxue and a large number of strategic investors sold a lot of shares to cash out.

Major shareholders took the opportunity to cash out, ordinary investors bought more shares, and the stock price became higher... everyone was very happy.

But later, the major shareholders cashed out too much, which pushed the stock price down again.

After the price came down, several offshore investment companies under Xu Shenxue continued to increase their holdings of Zhiyun's shares. Last fall, Zhiyun's market value once again reached US$600 billion.

But when the momentum was not right, Xu Shenxue started to reduce his holdings again... By March of this year, as the new generation of mobile phones were about to be launched, these offshore investment companies began to increase their holdings of Zhiyun shares.

After coming here several times, Xu Shenxue's Zhiyun shares were not much less, but he cashed out tens of billions of US dollars.

These are the leeks of ordinary investors in the US stock market!

This is basically how major shareholders of listed companies play the game... Of course, some people who don't play the game well can easily go to jail.

But Xu Shenxue doesn't have to worry about these. He has a lot of hidden companies under his name, and there are countless offshore companies with very strong concealment. His capital operations are quite complicated. Without using national-level strategic means, you can't find out at all...

Even if they find out, it’s actually useless. There are all kinds of white gloves and shell companies... law enforcement agencies of other countries cannot find evidence.

Even if there is evidence, it will be destroyed immediately.

The way super capital tycoons like Xu Shenxue play the game seems to be the same as that of ordinary financial investors, but in fact they are different.

Therefore, ordinary people will only see some executives of ordinary companies and some financial practitioners being put in jail for manipulating the securities market...but you will never see the big bosses behind some giant companies being put in jail.

In fact, what they do is pretty much the same.

Most of the funds of Liuhe Investment and Xiannvshan Holdings, except for the regular cash-out funds, come from this.

As the helmsman of Zhiyun Group, it is very difficult for Xu Shenxue to make Zhiyun's stock price fluctuate too much, but it is easy to make small fluctuations.

For example, to make it rise, it doesn’t require much effort. Just selectively announce the sales volume and revenue of products with good performance.

It is even easier to make it fall. Just release some negative news and Zhiyun’s stock price will fall immediately!

By using this genuine insider information, Xu Shenxue's investment institutions can easily conduct arbitrage based on valuation fluctuations.

Of course, these are all small stock price fluctuations under normal circumstances. There will not be any large-scale stock price fluctuations, not because the risk is high, but because the difficulty is too high.

Overall, for people like Xu Shenxue, the stock market is simply a place to reap profits.

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Due to the particularity of Zhiyun supply chain, many supply chain companies are trying their best to enter Zhiyun supply chain. At the same time, many companies that have entered Zhiyun supply chain are trying every means to increase revenue, develop more business, and get rid of Zhiyun dependence as much as possible.

Zhiyun is too large in scale and has too many orders, which is both a good thing and a bad thing for a large number of companies in the Zhiyun supply chain system.

The good thing is making money.

The bad thing is that the order revenue and profits from Zhiyun will account for most or even more than 80% to 90% of the revenue and profits of the supply chain companies.

The survival of the enterprise depends heavily on Zhiyun's orders.

In this situation, naturally, you can only do what Zhiyun says.

This is also the reason why Qianding Technology has spent a lot of effort in developing fingerprint recognition technology in the past few years, because Qianding Technology was too dependent on the Zhiyun/Weiku supply chain system in the early stages.

Orders for touch ICs and some other products from Zhiyun and Weiku once accounted for more than 70% of Qianding Technology's revenue share.

This makes the management of their company enjoy and worry at the same time.

That's why we put a lot of effort into developing fingerprint recognition technology, and after several years of accumulation, we have already mastered it. Although it has not yet been officially applied to mobile phones, if nothing unexpected happens, by next year some mid-to-high-end mobile phones from other brands will adopt their fingerprint recognition technology solutions.

Only by that time can Qianding Technology be said to have gotten rid of its dependence on the Zhiyun/Weiku supply chain system and become an independent smart device parts supplier.

However, the investment company under Zhiyun Group also owns a portion of Qianding Technology’s shares... So if Qianding Technology can become a fingerprint recognition technology supplier for a large number of mobile phone manufacturers in the future, Zhiyun Group will also be able to get a piece of the pie.

Zhiyun Group's many layouts are deeply rooted in the entire electronic consumer industry chain. It is not as simple as making terminal products. It also controls a large number of wholly-owned, investment-holding and some strategically invested supply chain companies.

The entire business model is even more extreme than that of Four Star, and it constantly tries to penetrate into every field of the electronic consumer industry chain. However, the main purpose of these supply chains is to provide the best spare parts for the group's terminal products, so that Zhiyun Group's terminal products have the best market competitiveness.

After these excellent spare parts are produced from the production lines of various supply chain companies, they are transported through various transportation channels such as air and land transportation, and finally concentrated in OEM factories such as Weiku Industrial, and finally assembled into terminal devices.

Just like the S13 in Xu Shenxue's hand today, which was produced from the test production line.

After Xu Shenxue got the phone, he personally opened the package and took out a brand new S13 mobile phone test machine. He also looked at several other spare parts in the package, such as the charging head, charging cable/data cable, wired headphones, instruction manual and card pin.

These parts have also changed. This year's Zhiyun S series mobile phones have cancelled the 3.5mm headphone jack and directly integrated the headphone jack and charging port.

Canceling the 3.5mm headphone jack can effectively reserve space inside the phone for charging. At the same time, canceling an interface is also more conducive to waterproofing.

Therefore, the earphones that are used now use a special interface which Zhiyun calls the 'USB-T type interface'.

At the same time, in order to be compatible with some old headphones in the hands of users and reduce the negative psychological impact on users, an additional 3.5mm interface to T-type interface connector is also included.

The removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack also serves an important strategic purpose, which is to promote the company's own Bluetooth headsets.

Zhiyun Group successfully developed its Bluetooth headset last year, and for this purpose it even developed a special Bluetooth protocol on its own. At the same time, radio frequency signal chips that support the Bluetooth 4.5 protocol have been added to various smart terminal devices newly produced this year.

The S13 phone is the most suitable phone to be paired with Bluetooth headsets. In addition, S13 users generally have higher purchasing power. Therefore, in the design, the best usage mode for users is to pair the S13 phone with Bluetooth headsets.

In this case, canceling the 3.5mm headphone jack becomes an important measure.

Apart from the earphones, there are no other changes in other parts. The charging head remains the same. For example, since Zhiyun Group launched the first generation C1 mobile phone, the charging head has not changed, and it has been a 5W charging head for thousands of years.

Of course, it’s not just Zhiyun that’s like this. Other mobile phone brands are not much different. They basically won’t randomly change accessories such as charging heads.

Data cables change every year. The main wire materials and interfaces remain unchanged, but the built-in small chips on the connectors will continue to be upgraded to maintain encryption performance.

Avoid being hacked, ensure data security and charging safety, and sell a data cable by the way...the latter is the key point.

After taking a quick look at the spare parts, Xu Shenxue picked up the phone, tore off the protective film and took a quick look at it.

This is a mobile phone with bright black color matching, which is quite good. Its unique baking paint process and mirror-like paint surface are very good.

It is not easy to achieve such a mirror paint process on an aluminum alloy body, and the cost is also higher. In the previous S11 and S12 mobile phones, it was only an exclusive color for Pro.

This year, this mirror-like bright black color also appears on the S13 standard version, and with further improvement in craftsmanship, the effect is even better.

Holding it in the hand, the weight of this S13 standard phone is about the same as the S12 standard version, but it feels noticeably smaller. Although the screen of the S13 phone is still 12 inches, the screen-to-body ratio is larger, so the screen edges are narrower and the height of the entire phone is lower. The overall size is slightly smaller than the S standard.

This one is slightly smaller, which gives it a better grip feel.

The appearance design in other aspects is not much different from the standard version of S12, and the button and camera layout are the same.

As for the dual camera, this will only be deployed on the S13 Pro version, not the standard version.

After pressing the power button, Xu Shenxue began to perform some simple operations and set up the computer. After completing the settings, he tried to use it simply.

How do I describe it? It feels so smooth!
This feeling of smoothness is much more obvious than the S12 mobile phone currently in use, and the time of some animations is also shortened.

Previously, due to the limitations of mobile phone hardware, even the S12 phone would have a certain delay when opening an APP or performing some operations. In order to reduce the lag caused by this delay to users, the system engineers of Zhiyun Group designed a very clever animation.

When users are performing operations, some animation effects will appear, such as the expansion and reduction of the APP... These animation effects have no other practical meaning, they are purely for the sake of looking good and covering up delays.

If there is no such dynamic picture to cover up, there will be an embarrassing situation where the user clicks on an APP and the phone does not respond for one or two seconds... However, this embarrassment can be avoided through animation effects. After the user clicks, the system will immediately respond with a dynamic picture. In fact, the system is frantically calling computing power to launch the APP or perform other operations.

After the system successfully launches the APP or other operations are successful, the dynamic picture ends for the user to see.

In this way, there is an effect that looks very 'silky and smooth'.

To some extent, this is one of the reasons why many people feel that Zhiyun phones are smoother... Zhiyun's system engineers have put a lot of effort into these details to cover up the delay.

But now when using the S13 mobile phone, the demonstration time of various dynamic pictures has been greatly reduced.

In order to avoid misunderstanding, Xu Shenxue also took out the S12 PRO mobile phone he uses daily for a simple comparison. After a simple comparison, it can be seen that when clicking on the same APP and performing the same operations, the animation time of the new S13 mobile phone is shorter, at least reduced by half.

Xie Jianyong, who was standing behind him, saw Xu Shenxue making this comparison and immediately stepped forward to explain, "Mr. Xu, we use a 12-bit chip and operating system in our new phone. At the same time, the performance of our running memory and flash memory has been improved by one generation compared to the previous S phone."

"All these combined have greatly improved the computing power resources of our S13 phones, as well as the speed of mobilizing computing power resources and processing programs. This will ultimately be reflected in the user experience, and our new phones will be smoother!"

"On average, it can shorten the animation presentation time by about 35%!"

Xu Shenxue nodded: "Very good, it is smoother to use, and smoothness is the life of our Zhiyun mobile phone and its core competitive advantage!"

As both are Android-based mobile phones, why is Zhiyun phone more expensive and has better sales than other Android phones? In addition to some unique technological advantages, the most important thing is fluency.

Zhiyun mobile phone, well, mainly refers to the flagship S series, which is smoother than other mobile phones.

This smoothness is based on the improvement of core hardware level and good optimization and adaptation of the system.

For example, the Yun OS system pays more attention to the support of current software, while the S403 chip brings about a stronger comprehensive single-core performance.

This is the unique advantage of having our own system and SOC chip, which can better match each other and be specially optimized around each other.

Otherwise, if the Yun OS system uses the ordinary multi-core SOC like Qualcomm's current one, it will not be able to achieve the current level of high fluency.

It’s not that Qualcomm’s SOC is bad, but it is not suitable for use in today’s Yun OS system.

In addition, the content ecosystem advantage of mobile phones is also one of the reasons.

The ecosystem of Android phones such as 4-star in overseas markets is not bad either, because they all use Google's Android ecosystem, and Google's control in this regard is also very strict... Basically, it is hyping up Fruit and Zhiyun Mall.

Therefore, in the overseas market, there is actually not much difference in ecology between Zhiyun and other Android phones such as Sixin. The only difference is that Zhiyun is more stringent in ecological management, mainly in the download of third-party software.

The domestic market has too great an advantage. Since Google's Android store cannot be used in China, the domestic open source Android ecosystem has huge management loopholes and all kinds of chaos.

However, this is not the case with Zhiyun's domestic ecosystem, which is basically able to maintain strict management consistent with the global standards.

Overall, Zhiyun's ecological advantages are relatively large compared to other Android phones.

Taking all these aspects into consideration, Zhiyun phones can demonstrate the advantage of smoother operation both in foreign and domestic markets.

The only company that can compete with Zhiyun in terms of process level is Fruit...they also play with their own systems and SOC.

They are all their own products, so they can do whatever they want with them. This is a huge natural advantage of Zhiyun and Fruit compared to other mobile phone manufacturers.

After experiencing the S13 standard version in detail, I picked up the S13 Pro standard version next to it to experience it. There are not many changes in other aspects, except that the screen is larger, the phone is larger and heavier, and there is an additional dual camera in terms of function.

After experiencing both phones in detail, Xu Shenxue turned around and said, "This batch of trial production versions of the S13 phones are working fine. What does the technical department say? Has it reached the technical standards? Can it be put into mass production?"

Xie Jianyong said: "Our testing department has conducted various detailed tests on this batch of early trial production versions. The results are very good and have met our design indicators. The estimated mass production cost has also met expectations. The current status is ready for large-scale mass production."

Xu Shenxue said: "In that case, let's start mass production. It will take time to increase production capacity. We should try to have enough stock before the press conference in June!"

"Every year, new mobile phones are rushed to market, leading to global shortages, which has affected our mobile phone sales!"

"After all, the best-selling time for a mobile phone is the first few months after it is launched. If more are sold in the early stage, the sales pressure will be relatively small later!"

An Dayu said at this time: "If we are sure to enter mass production, we will be able to start mass production and stocking in May, and increase production capacity."

"At WeCool Industrial, the modification and construction of the production line are being carried out simultaneously, and we will enter mass production very quickly. We estimate that we can produce a total of 20 million mobile phones in May and June."

Gu Zhiming beside him also said: "BYD and Luxshare are also preparing for mass production. Although the progress is a little slower and they will not be able to enter full-speed production until June or the year after, after two months, the combined production capacity of the two companies is expected to be 10 million units.

"The three major foundries can provide us with 30 million mobile phones in May and June, which should be enough to cope with the global rush to buy in the early stage of the launch."

However, at this time, Ji Chenghe laughed and said, "It's hard to say. Our new S series phones are very popular in the early stage of listing. In addition, we are launching them simultaneously around the world. The first batch of countries will have more than 13 countries listed, and the second batch of countries in a month will have more than countries listed. Within three months, we will have the new S phones in markets all over the world!"

"The demand in the early stage will be huge. When the S12 mobile phone was launched last year, there was a serious shortage in markets around the world in the first three months. It was not until four months later that the shortage was gradually alleviated!"

"Our S13 smartphones will still have to face this situation if nothing unexpected happens this year!"

"Unless we proactively postpone the launch of the phone, buy more time for mass production and stock more phones, but this is impossible!"

"This year's four-star Galaxy series was released in March, grabbing some market share in advance. More importantly, our flagship phone launch event has evolved over the years and has basically been set, which is the fourth Friday of June every year. Consumers around the world are also familiar with our launch event time."

"Many users who want to change their phones will make plans based on our launch schedule. Some users who bought our older phones also have a psychological prediction of the price changes of their older phones because they know that we will release new models in June every year!"

"Rashly changing the release and launch time of new mobile phones will cause a series of irreversible negative market impacts, resulting in a reduction of billions or even tens of billions of dollars in potential revenue, which is unacceptable."

"In the past two years, Apple's new mobile phone launch has been postponed twice due to delays in R&D and mass production. Instead of launching in June as before, it was released in September. This resulted in July and August becoming our exclusive period in the market for new mobile phones, which forced us to sell a large number of products while severely squeezing their mobile phone sales space, resulting in considerable losses."

"This year, we have received clear news that in order to compete with us again and not let us monopolize the blank market for more than two months, they have been working overtime since last year to quickly advance the research and development progress of the new mobile phone and the preparation time for mass production, and are preparing to release the mobile phone in early July this year!"

Ji Chenghe said: "So, it is highly likely that the S13 will still be out of stock worldwide after it goes on sale, but it is also impossible to postpone the release date!"

"And the only solution is for the supply chain to work hard to further increase early production capacity!"

Gu Zhiming was speechless after listening to Ji Chenghe's words: "How can it be so easy to increase production capacity in the early stage!"

"The preparation of the production line is planned according to the estimated annual sales volume given by your marketing department. Your marketing department predicts that this phone will have an annual sales volume of 180 million units, so our supply chain department will naturally plan the production capacity according to this sales volume of 180 million units. Under this production capacity planning, it is impossible to produce all the phones in the first few months and then stop the production line later!"

“This isn’t a one-time deal!”

"Moreover, the time from trial production to mass production of new mobile phones has been compressed very tightly. Major supply chain manufacturers and foundries have actually started preparations for the new mobile phones after New Year's Day, and have already started small-scale production of various spare parts since March!"

"Under such a tense situation, it is not easy to prepare 30 million units in the first two months!"

There have always been many conflicts between the supply chain department and the marketing department!
Every time there is a shortage of goods in the market, the marketing department blames the supply chain department for not doing its job well... Faced with huge market demand, they can't even produce goods to sell!

However, the supply chain department also has opinions. Every year when new products are launched, the marketing department often makes relatively conservative sales forecasts in order to shirk responsibility, and then the supply chain department arranges production capacity in advance based on this data.

When the product is actually launched on the market, the marketing department will feel that the supply chain department is not doing its job well and the supply is insufficient.

Gu Zhiming was very dissatisfied with this. Your marketing department only gave a market forecast of 180 million units. Can I plan for you based on a production capacity of 300 million or even 500 million units? That's just dreaming!
If you, Ji Chenghe, dare to say in black and white that the annual sales volume of the new mobile phone is expected to be 300 million units, and that you will be beheaded if you fail to sell it, and if Mr. Xu agrees, Gu Zhiming will arrange an annual production capacity of 300 million or even 500 million for you in a matter of minutes.

But it is obvious that Ji Chenghe could not do this. Even if Ji Chenghe did this, Xu Shenxue would not agree!

Market capacity has limits, and how much of that limit can be broken is unknown. It is impossible to take such a huge risk to bet on an unknown.

Furthermore, the Zhiyun water machine was not out of stock all year round, but only in the first one or two months.

It is impossible to rashly increase the production capacity of the entire supply chain just to solve the shortage problem in the previous one or two months. The risk is too great, the cost is too high, and the benefits do not outweigh the costs.

So this was the only option. When the new phone was launched, it was sold out for the first two months while being out of stock.

Similarly, every year when a new flagship is launched, Gu Zhiming and Ji Chenghe would have a quarrel.

Xu Shenxue pretended not to see it.

These are normal conflicts between different departments under his command, and Xu Shenxue generally does not intervene easily.

Zhiyun is such a large enterprise with numerous departments and subsidiaries, and the interests of different departments and subsidiaries are sometimes different or even conflicting.

Balancing and coordinating the conflicts of interest among the company's departments and subsidiaries is also a major task for Xu Shenxue in his daily operations of the company.

So far, thanks to the overall prosperity of Zhiyun Group, these contradictions can be covered up. In addition, Xu Shenxue is also quite diligent and the group's organizational structure is reasonable, so Xu Shenxue is still in control.

As for what the future will be like, we will have to wait and see.

However, Xu Shenxue is not a stubborn and pedantic person. He has always been actively seeking change. He often makes certain adjustments and changes to the company's structure and senior personnel based on the professional opinions of third-party consulting companies and the company's internal situation.

An enterprise cannot remain unchanged, otherwise it will suffer slow death!
Zhiyun Group will not be an exception!
(End of this chapter)