Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 567 The Explosive Growth of the Virtual Industry Chain

The day after the Zhiyun Group's spring product launch, in a television studio across the Pacific Ocean.

The news anchor is reporting to viewers the most sensational news of the day, or rather, the past few days: Zhuyun Group has launched its new generation Yun VW L1 virtual machine, leading to great success for the entire virtual machine series.

Within an hour of officially opening pre-orders, they received 500,000 global orders!

And this is only one hour; in fact, this number is still growing rapidly!
"According to the latest information we received from the public relations department of Zhiyun Group an hour ago, in the past eighteen hours, Zhiyun Group's new generation of virtual equipment has accumulated orders for 800,000 units!"

"Among them, the Yun VW L1 virtual equipment accounted for 70% of the orders!"

"Below is footage of our interview with the spokesperson of Zhiyun Group!"

As the television station broadcast footage of the spokesperson for Zhiyun Group, a middle-aged man with a smile on his face said, "Since our new generation of virtual reality devices was released, they have gained recognition from a large number of consumers and enterprise customers worldwide. To date, the cumulative number of individual and enterprise orders has exceeded 800,000 units!"

"On behalf of the 700,000 employees of Zhiyun Group worldwide, I would like to express my gratitude to our global users for their recognition!"

"The new generation Yun VW adopts the most advanced technology from our Zhiyun Group. In the words of our Chairman Xu, it is a typical cutting-edge technology device!"

"It's unlikely that a second competing product will emerge within five or even ten years!"

"We have already opened pre-order channels in China, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union, and will launch sales globally in three days!"

"In the coming period, we will be opening up sales channels in more countries. Please stay tuned and we hope you will continue to support Yun VW!"

The scene shifts, and the beautiful blonde host reappears on screen: "The official launch and market release of Zhiyun Group's new generation of virtual equipment has had a huge impact on the industry. So what kind of impact will it have? We have invited Dr. John, a top expert in the virtual industry, to share his views!"

"John, you are one of the earliest entrepreneurs in our country to enter the field of virtual equipment, and your company has received two investments in just one year, including some top international investment funds!"

"As far as I know, your company's first virtual reality device has already entered the experimental testing phase. So, will the new generation of virtual reality devices released by Zhiyun have any impact on your company and your products? What impact will it have on the entire virtual reality device industry? What impact will it have on the entire virtual reality industry chain?"

John, smiling, replied, "Thank you for the invitation, Kate. To be honest, there's definitely been an impact, but I think it's a positive one!"

"The emergence of Yun VW L1 has shown us that virtualization devices can be made this affordable, further demonstrating that reasonably priced virtualization devices have enormous market potential!"

"Yun VW L1 received orders for 560,000 units in less than a day, which fully demonstrates the huge demand in the virtual equipment market. This is fantastic news for my company because our first-generation product is priced under $50,000, which is in the same price range!"

While Zhiyun's virtual devices can be sold in the United States, they are mainly for corporate orders. Individuals cannot directly purchase Zhiyun devices on the market; they can only do so through a 'permanent rental' model, which is also more expensive... This includes tariffs, distributor profits, and corporate profits.

The Yun VW L1 costs 260,000, but if an American consumer chooses to lease it permanently, it would cost around 350,000... which is roughly $50,000.

John continued, "I believe that $50,000 is a price that most people can afford, which is why my company mainly makes virtual equipment in this price range. Our product is currently being tested and will be available in six months at most. It also has a revolutionary control mode and experience that will not disappoint you!"

If someone in the industry heard this, and upon hearing the price and the so-called revolutionary control experience, they would be pretty sure that the so-called virtual device John was touting was actually just a VR monitor plus a computing host, plus a virtual device controlled by a keyboard, mouse, or joystick... This model is no secret; most virtual devices developed by major companies are based on this approach.

As for omnidirectional treadmills, plus robotic arm seating systems... forget about it for now, or even for a long time to come. It involves the field of artificial intelligence, which is too difficult.

Even this VR display setup, along with the computing power unit and peripheral control devices, still relies on the technical support of Zhiyun Group...

The most crucial APO graphics card must be purchased from Zhiyun Semiconductor. Without this APO graphics card, the virtual world simply cannot be run.

Because every single manufacturer currently entering the virtual industry chain uses the Zhiyun Virtual Simulation Engine, which is offered free of charge by Zhiyun Group, and a series of virtual world development kits, including the YC language specifically for virtual world development!

Zhuyun Group's various development software are notorious for only supporting its own chips... or rather, software developed specifically to support its own chips.

You can't expect the development software created by Zhiyun Group to support chips from other manufacturers, can you...?

For example, the well-known 'YUDA' is the unified development architecture for Zhiyun GPUs. If you want to use various GPU products under Zhiyun, you have to use this development architecture... Similarly, after using this development architecture, you can only use GPU products under Zhiyun.

Last year, in order to promote the development of the virtual content industry, Zhiyun Group released the Zhiyun Virtual Physics Simulation Engine, YC language and more than ten other development software. These are collectively referred to by Zhiyun Group as 'YVWDF', which stands for Zhiyun Virtual World Development Framework.

Without this complete YVWDF system, major companies wouldn't be able to create their so-called virtual worlds... They simply lack the technical capability; physical simulation alone would be enough to drive them crazy.

However, if you use the Zhiyun Virtual World development framework from Zhiyun Group, the virtual world you create, including the operating system, must use Zhiyun Group's APO graphics card... We're sorry, other manufacturers' GPU-type computing chips are not supported!
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After advertising his new product on a TV program, John then seriously analyzed and introduced the new generation of Zhiyun virtual equipment, especially its impact on the industry chain, as well as some aspects that ordinary viewers might not have noticed before, but that industry insiders are more concerned about.

"Many people may not have noticed, but among the new generation of virtual reality devices, although the Yun VW L1 has the most influence and has attracted the most attention, it is actually the Yun VW S series that brings more technological changes!"

"We see many technological innovations in this flagship virtual device, such as innovations in the screen field!"

"They used the brand-new sixth-generation Micro OLED screen from CSOT in their flagship devices and deluxe versions. Xu Shenxue introduced this screen at the launch event, and I would like to reiterate it here: this is currently the world's top-of-the-line Micro OLED screen, and it even significantly outperforms other competitors!"

"Based on the description at the press conference and the detailed information on their official website, we can see that this is a top-tier screen with a pixel density of over 7,400 PPI and a size increased to two inches. Compared to the previous generation of Micro OLED screens with 5,200 PPI, this represents an improvement of approximately 42%. This is a significant technological breakthrough for an ultra-high-end Micro OLED screen!"

"This means that the supply chain technology for virtual devices is making continuous breakthroughs, which is of great benefit to our entire virtual device industry!"

At this point, John gave a wry smile: "Although I'm reluctant to admit it, only with the strong promotion of the entire industry chain by Zhiyun Group can we purchase mature components at relatively suitable prices and then make products that are more suitable for ordinary consumers!"

"After all, there is no other company in the world that can drive the development of the entire virtual equipment industry chain as quickly as Zhiyun!"

"This is not just about Zhiyun's stronger financial resources and more advanced technology research and development capabilities, but more importantly, their extreme pursuit of technology!"

"After all, this is a company whose business is driven by technology research and development... They may even be the only company in the world whose business is driven by technology research and development."

"The field of sixth-generation Micro OLED screens is a typical example. I don't know how much money they have invested in research and development, but I can say with certainty that it will be an astronomical figure, maybe a billion dollars, maybe twenty billion dollars, or even more... But no matter how much, no other company besides Zhiyun Group will do this."

"Because for the time being, no one needs or can afford such an advanced Micro OLED screen!"

Strictly speaking, the Micro OLED screen is not a product directly developed by Zhiyun Group, but rather by Huaxing Technology... Although this company is controlled by Xu Shenxue, Xu Shenxue holds shares in the company through a joint venture involving Liuhe Investment, Zhiyun Group, Weiku Electronics, and some investment companies, ultimately acquiring more than 60% of the shares.

Zhuyun Group's stake in Huaxing Technology is only slightly over 30%, which hardly qualifies as a controlling stake...

However, many people overlooked the differences and directly regarded Huaxing Technology as a holding subsidiary of Zhiyun Group.

It is said that both Zhiyun Group and Huaxing Technology are Xu Shenxue's companies, but this does not mean that Huaxing Technology is a holding subsidiary of Zhiyun Group. There is a difference between the two.

The real subordinate relationship is between these companies and Liuhe Investment... Liuhe Investment is the controlling parent company of this series of companies! Few people know that even a powerful company like Zhiyun Group still has a parent company above it: Liuhe Investment.

Although there are several layers in between, it does not affect the fact that Liuhe Investment is the parent company of Zhiyun Group!

Xu Shenxue's most impressive title is not actually Chairman and CEO of Zhiyun Group, but Chairman and General Manager of Liuhe Investment Co., Ltd.

Some of Xu Shenxue's core executives and subordinates address him as "Chairman Xu." This title does not come from the chairman of Zhiyun Group, but from the chairman of Liuhe Investment Co., Ltd.!

However, these details are not well understood by the average person without a dedicated study of the Zhiyun Group, so many people consider Huaxing Technology to be a holding subsidiary of the Zhiyun Group.

Treating Huaxing Technology's R&D investment in the Micro OLED screen field as the same as Zhuyun Group's R&D investment is actually inaccurate.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that Huaxing Technology's core purpose in developing Micro OLED screens is still to supply virtual equipment to Zhiyun Group...

Especially the newly developed sixth-generation Micro OLED screen.

Among the core components of virtual devices, the Micro OLED screen is not as important as the APO graphics card and ZY series chips, but as a key component that directly displays the image, it is still quite important.

Zhiyun Group has been working with CSOT to continuously develop Micro OLED screen technology, which has led to the development of the fifth-generation Micro OLED screen and now the sixth-generation Micro OLED screen.

Currently, this sixth-generation Micro OLED screen is still in the small-scale trial production stage, and the output is extremely scarce, with a monthly output of less than 20,000 pieces, which can at most meet the needs of 10,000 virtual devices.

At the same time, the price is extremely high. Huaxing Technology quoted Zhiyun Group 12,000 yuan per piece. Two pieces are needed for one monitor, so the cost of just these two screens is 24,000 yuan.

This scarcity and high price mean that it cannot be widely promoted and used in a short period of time!
Therefore, it is currently only used on the deluxe and flagship versions... The prices of these two virtual devices are high enough to cover the high premium of the screen, but sales are not very good, so a small production capacity is sufficient.

The virtual devices in the Zhiyun Group are divided into four levels, and the price difference is huge. The difference is not just a simple APO graphics card, but actually the difference in overall hardware performance... Hardware is something you get for your money.

With a flagship version priced at over three million, it naturally uses all sorts of top-of-the-line components, including the APO5000 graphics card, ZY38 chip, sixth-generation screen, and other high-quality parts. Even the components on the robotic arm are of the same high quality. Although it is expensive, it is worth the price.

The flagship virtual machine costs over two million in hardware alone... Selling it to customers for three and a half million doesn't really make the Zhiyun Group any money; it's just to establish a flagship model and elevate the overall image of the virtual machine.

After all, with over 3.5 million virtual devices on the market, many people would think the Yun VW L1 at 260,000 is very cheap.

Building a high-end brand to create prestige, and focusing on volume sales and profits in the mid-to-low-end market – this is an old trick that Zhiyun Group has been using for many years… They do this with many of their products.

The only thing that went wrong was the S15 series phones... The S15 Max was originally intended to boost the brand and play the high-end market... Who knew it would sell so incredibly well, ultimately accounting for more than 50% of the total shipments of the S15 series?

This subsequently carved out a completely new market for ultra-high-priced items.

However, there is only one S series phone... a super single product with revenue of over two hundred billion US dollars, and there is only one in the world.

Therefore, the S series phones cannot be compared with ordinary industrial products!
Normally, the products sold by Zhiyun Group are mostly mid-to-low priced products with very low sales volume, while the high-end versions sell very little.

Previous robot products are a typical example. The price of intelligent robots ranges from tens of thousands to more than a million yuan. However, the X-series flagship robot, which is the brand's flagship, accounts for less than two percent of the total sales of robots. It's really terrible.

The B series only accounts for a mere 8% of sales!

All the other miscellaneous models combined amount to less than one point!

The real core drivers of sales volume are actually the entry-level bipedal C series and the entry-level wheeled M series... These two entry-level robot series, priced at over 100,000 yuan, account for nearly 90% of sales.

The current virtualization device market is also showing this trend. The Yun VW L1 virtualization device, priced at 260,000, has captured an absolute share of sales, reaching 70%, due to its low price.

This will have a huge impact on the entire virtual industry!
Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Three days later, the new generation of virtual equipment under the Zhiyun Group officially went online and began shipping. The first batch of customers who placed pre-orders earlier were able to pick up their goods on the spot after signing formal contracts and paying the final payment.

Of course, this only applies to the earliest batch of approximately 150,000 customers... because that's the only stock available at the moment.

More orders will require large-scale production to fulfill, and Zhiyun Group expects it to take about three months to complete these orders.

The reason for such a rapid turnaround is that most of the orders were for the Yun VW M2, priced at over 400,000 RMB, and the Yun VW L1, priced at over 200,000 RMB. These two virtualization devices use APO4500M/64GB graphics cards, which adopt mature BGA packaging and have extremely sufficient production capacity. In fact, it can be said that there is as much as needed!
Despite the relatively high power consumption of this graphics card... in order to forcibly stack performance, the power consumption is relatively high, resulting in a very poor cost-performance ratio for computing power.

If used for AI training, the training cost for the same computing power would be more than five times that of the APO5000 graphics card... The computing power-to-performance ratio is extremely poor, and no large enterprise would purchase this kind of graphics card for AI training: the electricity cost would be terrifying!

This is why the APO5000 graphics card is so expensive. It's not that you absolutely need this to train artificial intelligence; the APO4500M graphics card would also work... but the APO5000 graphics card is much more energy-efficient!
The APO4500M series graphics cards are generally used by small and medium-sized enterprises, research institutions, and even individual enthusiasts to train small models or to deploy GTAI2 for local use.

They only use a small number of APO4500M graphics cards. Although the computing power is not cost-effective and the electricity cost is higher, the consumption is not significant because the number of machines is small, so it is acceptable.

As for the graphics card, which is used for computing power in consumer devices, this amount of power consumption is nothing... Let alone high-net-worth customers who can afford virtual games, even ordinary people don't care about this little bit of electricity bill!

Users don't care about the electricity cost, and there's plenty of BGA packaging capacity, which has led to a very ample supply of APO4500M series graphics cards.

After resolving the production capacity issue of the most core and critical APO graphics card, and with Huaxing Technology having already solved the production capacity problem of the fifth-generation Micro OLED screen, the supply of other components, while not in large quantities, can generally keep up.

Under such circumstances, the production capacity of these two low-end virtual devices has exploded, to the point that Zhuyun Group is willing to accept orders openly!
However, in addition to these individual consumer orders, there is another very important category of corporate orders that are not often noticed or paid attention to by outsiders.

Starting from the day of the official launch, Zhuyun Group will deliver a total of more than 10,000 virtual devices to more than 100 enterprise customers who have pre-ordered Yun VW L1 virtual devices, namely virtual experience hall operators.

This is just the first batch; there will be more orders from enterprise customers, and the current cumulative orders have exceeded 500,000 units... which is not much less than the number of orders from individual users.

With the entry of the Yun VW M2 and Yun VW L1 virtualization devices into the market, which are relatively inexpensive and have extremely ample production capacity,
Third-party analysis agencies have already raised their forecasts for the shipment volume of virtual equipment from 2.5 million units to 3.5 million units.

Some analysts have even given an extremely high forecast of four million units in expected shipments!

Whether it's the expected 3.5 million units or 4 million, it means that the stock of virtual devices will experience explosive growth this year!

The entire virtual industry chain will also experience explosive growth in tandem!

Leaving aside other industries, internet companies around the world are all gearing up and waiting to make a big splash!

(End of this chapter)