Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 648 Guo Jingshan Buys a Computer and Zhiyun's New Support
As the new year begins, netizens can still enjoy all sorts of juicy gossip about Zhuyun Group.

The clamor surrounding the company's market capitalization surpassing ten trillion dollars hadn't even died down when a wave of online bloggers and even journalists from many mainstream media outlets started hyping it up, claiming that Zhiyun Group had officially broken ties with Microsoft and launched its self-developed operating system, YunPC OS!

However, in reality, Zhiyun Group has never ended its strategic partnership with Microsoft.

Currently, almost all of Zhiyun Group's PC products come pre-installed with Microsoft's Windows operating system. At the same time, the two parties have a very deep cooperation in the field of office software. Zhiyun Group's PC products and smart terminals sold in some countries will come pre-installed with Microsoft's OF office suite.

Even now, when Zhiyun Group releases new generations of PC products, such as the Yun Book series, all-in-one series, and mini PC series, they still run on the Windows operating system.

In addition to this version, a version with L-series chips and YunPC OS operating system was also launched for consumers to choose from.

Meanwhile, Zhiyun Group and Microsoft continue their close cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence. Microsoft has just placed an order for a 'quantum integrated computing power system' worth tens of billions of dollars. According to this contract, Zhiyun Group will also send engineers to assist Microsoft in building a new generation of quantum integrated computing power system centers, and assist Microsoft in deploying a deeply customized and optimized version of GTAI.

Of course, it is true that the cooperation between the two parties has been affected to some extent, but this does not mean that the cooperation has completely broken down.

In fact, Zhiyun Group has more or less cooperative relationships with almost all large high-tech companies on Earth, and there are very few complete break-ups.

Even with fruit, Zhiyun Group has a very close cooperative relationship with this company, with both sides having close ties in sharing supply chains and cooperating in the field of artificial intelligence.

The same applies to Google. For many years, the Android system has been jointly developed, maintained, and updated by Zhiyun Group and the Google team. If the cooperation between the two parties breaks down, then the open-source version of Android will have to stop being updated. This is because if either of them abandons the other, they will not be able to continue to maintain and update it independently.

They've both planted too many landmines in each other's lives!

These large global technology companies are involved in so many different business areas that it is difficult to completely separate them; they cooperate while competing.

As I said before, the world isn't simply black or white, but rather gray...

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However, it is undeniable that the release of Zhuyun PC products by Zhuyun Group, featuring L-series chips and the YunPC OS operating system, has indeed brought some changes to the market.

In early January, in a residential area of ​​Guangcheng, Guo Jingshan was browsing the official website of Zhiyun Mall on his S19 mobile phone.

The phone screen displays detailed information about the latest version of Yun Book 13, and the pictures alone are very appealing!
The space gray version, in particular, is very pleasing to the eye!
This color scheme is also a classic color scheme for Yun Book from Zhiyun Group. It has been popular with consumers since it was launched many years ago.

If you look closely at the pictures, you can also see that the screen bezel of this Yun Book13 is very narrow, much narrower than the bezel of the first Yun Book13 that Guo Jingshan bought five years ago.

And narrow bezels look more pleasing to the eye.

He continued flipping through the introduction, which said that the screen was a 2K screen, and then there was a lot of performance information about color display, nits brightness, etc., but Guo Jingshan didn't look at it much... Even though he wasn't an electronics enthusiast, he knew that Zhiyun laptops always used top-of-the-line materials, and the performance of this screen would be no exception.

Looking at the battery, this year's Yun Book13 uses a larger capacity solid-state battery. The details say that when playing videos, the maximum battery life can reach 34 hours!
This battery life is much better than his current 14 Yun Book 13. When he bought that laptop, its advertised battery life for playing videos was only fourteen hours... Of course, this battery life was already considered very impressive back then.

However, the current Zhiyun laptops have improved battery life because they use solid-state batteries.

However, this is not exclusive to Zhiyun laptops. In fact, flagship thin and light laptops these days almost all use solid-state batteries, and their battery life is generally more than 20 hours.

The main competitor of Zhiyun Notebook, the M1 Notebook launched last year, also uses a solid-state battery. Due to the low power consumption characteristics of its M1 chip and the high capacity of solid-state batteries, and the fact that their MAC OS operating system is designed for low power consumption, this notebook can achieve a maximum battery life of 32 hours... making it the notebook with the best battery life at the time.

This is also one of the reasons why Zhiyun Group launched the L-series chip + YunPC OS combination this year... Apple's M1 laptop had such amazing battery life that it outperformed Zhiyun laptops, which used an x86 chip and Windows operating system at the time.

This year, Zhuyun Group's PC business unit went all out, directly developing the low-power version of the L-series chip, the L9 chip, adding YunPC OS, and increasing the capacity of the solid-state battery, ultimately achieving a 34-hour battery life.

The goal is simply to outperform Apple's M1 laptop in battery life and claim the title of the world's best-lasting laptop!
Guo Jingshan couldn't resist buying it after seeing the maximum battery life of 34 hours... He travels a lot for work and uses his laptop almost every day, so a lightweight laptop with ultra-long battery life is a necessity.

As for performance, he doesn't really care, because he only does light office work and doesn't have high requirements for the laptop's performance. Besides, Zhiyun laptops are high-end flagship laptops, and their performance has always been pretty good... except for not being able to play games!

Of course, since you're going to buy this laptop, you'll naturally need to pay attention to the performance of this L9 chip.

The official website states that the L9 chip is one of the latest L-series chips. There is also an L9X chip, which is used in the 14-inch performance version and the 15-inch laptop.

The 13-inch and 14-inch long-battery-life versions use the L9 chip.

The L9 chip uses a 4-nanometer process, which is the same generation of process as the latest S-series chips and advanced chips such as the APO6000 graphics card. It is also the most advanced logic chip process on Earth at present.

The entire chip integrates more than 17 billion transistors, including not only a high-performance CPU and GPU, but also an extremely high-performance AI core that can efficiently complete a series of computing tasks locally... Although this local AI computing function is of little use to Guo Jingshan himself... it's still pretty impressive just from the description.

Then look at the YunPC OS operating system... This is what Guo Jingshan is most worried about.

Although everyone knows that Zhiyun Group is very powerful, even in the field of operating systems, its Yun OS operating system and a series of smart terminal operating systems such as YunPAD OS derived from Yun OS have proven Zhiyun Group's strength in the field of operating systems.

In addition to the well-known Yun OS operating system, there is also the YunLPC OS operating system, which is not well known to the general public. This system is based on Linux and is very complete. Many people who flash their own Linux operating systems will also download and install it themselves.

The reason why few people use it and know about it is simply because the Linux ecosystem is not something that ordinary people use... Most people who come into contact with it are industry professionals, especially those in the computer-related fields. Ordinary people have relatively little contact with the Linux operating system.

In addition, Zhiyun Group has further developed a server version of the YunLPC OS based on this operating system. Most of the servers of Zhiyun Group and its sister companies, as well as related institutions and enterprises, use this operating system... However, even fewer people know about this server version of the operating system.

Finally, Zhiyun Group has also developed a robot operating system for the field of intelligent robots and an operating system for virtual devices... Both of these operating systems are proprietary operating systems.

As for robots, there's no need to consider ecosystem issues. Because robots are special products, they cannot accept external ecosystem content. Zhiyun Group will continue to develop and provide various advanced paid functions and large models for robots, without needing to connect to external large models.

Virtual devices are the ones that need ecosystem content, but the entire virtual ecosystem was driven by Zhiyun Group itself. If major software vendors want to enter the virtual world, they must use Zhiyun Group's virtual content ecosystem... In the virtual field, it is others who adapt to Zhiyun, not Zhiyun that adapts to content vendors.

The operating systems for robots and virtual devices are generally not something people pay special attention to, and Zhiyun Group has never advertised any operating system, so many people don't even know that these two products have an operating system, hence their lack of reputation!
Finally, we come to the area of ​​quantum computers. Zhuyun Group has also developed a quantum computer operating system and a supporting content development kit specifically for its own quantum computers, thus establishing a complete ecosystem of quantum computer operating system and content.

However, this part is overshadowed by the huge reputation of the 'Quantum Integrated Computing System', to the point that most ordinary people don't know that the YCL-52 quantum computer of Zhiyun Group actually has an operating system!
Looking at its many products, Zhiyun Group has actually developed quite a few operating systems, all of which are highly technologically advanced.

Nowadays, based on the Yun OS series of smart terminal operating systems, it's not a big problem to create a PC operating system that is compatible with the Yun OS content ecosystem after in-depth improvements.

However, Guo Jingshan, an ordinary consumer, still had some concerns.

After all, this is a new thing, what if it doesn't work well?

Especially since the content ecosystem is incomplete, what if some of the common software and daily office software you need are not available?

Therefore, although he was very interested in the introduction, he did not place an order immediately due to his concerns about the YunPC OS operating system. Instead, he went to various websites and social platforms to search for reviews of the Yun Book13 L series laptops.

He pays particular attention to the content ecosystem of YunPC OS... Before actually placing an order, he needs to make sure that all the software he usually uses is available on the platform, or at the very least, that there are alternatives.

After reviewing a lot of related information, he came across a test video by a data blogger on A-site.

This blogger provides a more detailed introduction, and the content is more authentic and objective, unlike many review bloggers who start with mindless praise, exaggerating the L9 chip and YunPC OS!
Those who don't know might think they're getting advertising fees from Zhiyun Group... But in reality, Zhiyun Group never pays advertising fees to individual self-media!
Because Zhiyun Group itself is a source of traffic... Whenever Zhiyun Group releases a new product, a large number of self-media bloggers and mainstream media rush to report on it and grab traffic.

For advertising models targeting some self-media bloggers, the usual approach is to select some top self-media bloggers, send them a product for testing, and then return the product after testing. Of course, under normal circumstances, if it is a low-value smart terminal product, such as a mobile phone, Zhiyun Group will not take it back.

They said it was a loan for testing, but it was essentially a gift... It would only be taken back under special circumstances.

The advertising and marketing expenses of Zhiyun Group are mainly paid to various social media platforms, as well as offline television stations, print media, or even offline billboards, such as subway billboards, and product placement in movies and TV dramas.

While Zhiyun Group's advertising and marketing expenditures may seem to amount to billions of dollars annually, they are negligible compared to its annual revenue of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Many domestic self-media bloggers are blindly praising this year's L series Yun Book... but after actually reading it, there isn't much detailed and useful information.

Guo Jingshan finds all of that annoying... I know how amazing Zhiyun laptops are without you having to brag... I want to see something truly useful, not mindless hype. For example, how's the content ecosystem?
In this video, the blogger briefly introduced the hardware and aesthetics, and then focused the test on the specific use of the YunPC OS operating system, especially its content ecosystem.

The blogger demonstrated some of the interfaces of the YunPC OS operating system in the video. People who own Zhiyun tablets will find these interfaces very familiar and can seamlessly integrate and use them.

At the same time, users of Zhiyun phones can easily perform various operations on this YunPC OS operating system...
Because this YunPC OS operating system is ported from Yun OS and YunPAD OS, and in order to lower the barrier to entry and prevent users from feeling unfamiliar with it and having a new learning curve, it is designed to be as close as possible to the Yun OS operating system in terms of operating system and usage mode.

Therefore, even first-time users of the L-series Yun Book can perform almost all basic operations without any additional learning... This greatly lowers the barrier to entry for this operating system.

Next, the blogger began to introduce various software programs. The blogger first went through the various software programs that came with the system, including the Yun OF office suite, image editor, music player, and other basic suites. All of these basic software programs are free. Zhiyun Group developed these supporting software programs to provide users with basic software functions. If users have other needs, they can download or even purchase other software programs on their own.

The software that comes pre-installed on these laptops is also the same system software that comes pre-installed on mobile phones and tablets. More importantly, it was also the free pre-installed software in the previous Zhiyun laptop WIN system!

Therefore, Guo Jingshan looked very familiar to him and didn't seem unfamiliar at all... especially the word processing software in the Yun OF office suite, which he had been using for many years and was used to!

To say that Yun OF is great is definitely not an exaggeration... but it's free, and it's small and simple, handling basic office needs without any problems. It can also convert Microsoft OF office software formats. Although you can't edit it directly, you can convert the format, so it's still usable.

The blogger continues to explain some office software. Many common office software programs on the market, especially Microsoft Office, can be downloaded from the system software store. Even some more professional office software, such as video editing and music editing software, are available for download and use!
It's clear that Zhuyun Group had been communicating with major software vendors well in advance before releasing the YunPC OS operating system, asking them to adapt their software in advance... And with Zhuyun Group's large scale and strength, these software vendors were able to take it seriously and adapt their software.

The main reason is that Zhuyun Group's PC products have a large sales volume, and most importantly, they occupy a large share of the high-end office market, with a large market size and greater influence.

If software vendors are not compatible, they are likely to fall behind in the competition!

After all, if you don't adapt, your competitors will... and then you'll lose a lot of the high-end office market, and then what's the point?

After reading the blogger's explanation and seeing many of the office software programs he usually uses, Guo Jingshan felt relieved.

As for what happens next, that's just out of curiosity... Whether he sees it or not doesn't really affect his decision to place an order.

The blogger then introduces some commonly used software, which are basically all covered.

Even if there isn't a dedicated YunPC OS version, there will be Yun OS or YunPAD OS versions... Users can directly download these two versions of the app to use!

This is also why Zhiyun Group's new operating system was developed from Yun OS and YunPAD OS... in order to port and be compatible with this huge content ecosystem.

It allows users to use apps on Zhiyun phones and Zhiyun tablets even if they can't find a dedicated YunPC OS version of the app.

This will address the issue of a lack of exclusive ecosystem content in the early stages!

After reading the review, Guo Jingshan didn't hesitate any longer and went straight to several shopping websites to compare prices and prepare to place an order.

After looking around, he placed an order on Yihai Technology's Duohai Shopping Platform and purchased a Yun Book13 L9 version!

You can get coupons and subsidies when you place an order on Duohai Shopping, which can save you more than 200 yuan compared to buying directly from the official website.

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When Guo Jingshan placed an order for a Zhiyun laptop with an L9 chip, a large number of users across the country and even the world placed orders to try it out!

On the one hand, the L9 version of Yun BooK13 has excellent battery life and a high-end look. On the other hand, the brand advantages built up by Zhuyun Group over the years have played a huge role.

Zhiyun Group has built a strong brand image by creating high-end products and even cutting-edge technology products over the years. Many users will choose to buy a Zhiyun laptop with an L-series chip even without looking at detailed performance parameters.

Zhuyun is such a big high-tech company, it wouldn't make junk to fool people!

Once a basic level of trust is established, sales become much easier.

A week after the winter product launch, Ji Chenghe reported to Xu Shenxue on the sales of the L-series PC products, saying that the current sales had reached or even exceeded the expectations of their marketing department.

The debut of the L-series PC products was a fairly successful one... Whether it can continue to be successful and even expand sales depends on user feedback!

If users have a good experience after purchasing the product, they will naturally give positive feedback and recommend the L-series laptops to friends or even strangers online.

If the user experience is poor... then you'll instantly become a hater of the L-series laptops and start criticizing them everywhere!

People spend thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan to buy a laptop, and if the user experience is not good, they will naturally complain!
Therefore, whether the L-series PC products can maintain their position in the future depends on the software field, especially whether the content ecosystem can be stabilized.

Xu Shenxue put the report down after reading it. He wasn't particularly concerned about the sales of the L-series PCs; whether they sold well or poorly didn't really matter.

PC products have long been one of the main businesses in the Zhuyun Group's many business segments, but they are not considered important among them.

The main issue is that the revenue and profit contribution are not high... compared to the smart terminal business and computing chip business, which easily reach hundreds of billions of dollars, as well as the robotics business and virtual business, which are aiming to break through hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.

The total revenue of the PC business is only around 30 billion US dollars... If you say it's a small amount, that's definitely not true. Many companies don't even have 30 billion US dollars in total annual revenue. But if you say it's a large amount... it really isn't much for Zhiyun Group.

Most importantly, the PC market is a saturated market with many competitors, each with its own competitive advantages, making it difficult to achieve significant breakthroughs. This means that the PC business, no matter how long it continues, will eventually reach its limit... with little potential left.

As for conventional products with little potential, Zhiyun Group naturally doesn't pay much attention to them. The focus is on stabilizing sales, increasing revenue and profits... They stay on the sidelines and don't make any major changes.

The Zhiyun Group is currently focusing on robots, virtual equipment, and computing chips, each of which represents a market size of hundreds of billions of dollars, and could potentially be even larger in the future!

The new generation of intelligent robots launched at the winter press conference saw a significant year-on-year increase in sales compared to the new products launched last year, which made Xu Shenxue very happy.

The intelligent robot business continues to maintain a high growth rate, and this is a very good model.

Xu Shenxue believes that if things continue to develop in this way, and as robot technology matures further while costs gradually decrease, then it is very likely that annual sales of intelligent robots will exceed ten million units in a few years!

Meanwhile, due to rising sales and gradually decreasing costs, the gross profit margin of intelligent robot products is also growing rapidly.

The gross profit margin for the entire intelligent robot hardware product market is expected to exceed 40% this year…

Once annual sales reach 10 million units and the gross profit margin can reach over 40%, it means that Zhiyun Group has created another super product comparable to the S series mobile phones!
The intelligent robot business will become a new source of revenue and profit for Zhuyun Group!
Only with the continuous flow of revenue and profit from its robotics business can Zhuyun Group continue to support its massive investments in various fields!
The huge investment, especially in artificial intelligence infrastructure, is incredibly expensive.

The sixth-generation superconducting quantum computer, which has already begun mass production, the neuromorphic computer, and the planned APO7000 graphics card... and behind them are the manufacturing plants for the sixth-generation quantum chips, the production plants for MMK34 superconducting materials, the semiconductor plants for advanced equivalent three-nanometer processes and future two-nanometer processes, the fourth-generation high-bandwidth memory plant, the advanced flash memory plant, etc.!

These factories, which are at the forefront of modern technology, are all money-devouring beasts, each one spending more money than the last!
In addition to these fixed capital expenditures, Zhuyun Group also invests heavily in research and development in various aspects, and many of its projects end up being the kind that result in huge financial losses.

The massive Zhiyun Group has high revenue and high profits, but it also spends a lot of money.

Once the intelligent robot business fully takes off and begins to generate substantial profits for the group, it will also alleviate the enormous financial burden on Zhiyun Group.

Xu Shenxue is quite looking forward to it!
Money makes things easier; he has a whole bunch of cutting-edge technology projects waiting to be funded!
Xu Shenxue's core ideas are still very significant... Since the outside world is touting that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has already begun, he is determined to truly push it forward.

Controlled nuclear fusion, interstellar development within the solar system, higher levels of artificial intelligence, a truly virtual world, extended human lifespan, and the long-term maintenance and rejuvenation of bodily functions will completely propel humanity towards the stars and towards a higher level of life.

All of these are what he pursues!
If he didn't have a research system, he wouldn't be dreaming these dreams; he would just honestly make money and enjoy life!

But... he has a research system!

The scientific research system gave him the ambition to dream!

Xu Shenxue never told anyone about these thoughts, as it would be easy for people to laugh at him... Even if you are the richest man in the world, you can't have such extravagant dreams!
But those who truly understand the situation will know that Xu Shenxue wasn't just bragging; he was genuinely planning to do it!
(End of this chapter)