Return to 1958 and build a century-old giant

Chapter 628 Hong Kong Chip Industry
The key to building a century-old business is not to control a large number of profitable companies, but to have stable businesses;
Even from the perspective of entrepreneurs, today's automobile industry may be disrupted by new energy electric vehicles in the future, various high-tech industries may be disrupted by new technology companies, and even the energy industry may be gradually replaced by new energy models such as solar energy and nuclear energy. It's just that this process may be very slow.

Relatively speaking, food, clothing, housing, transportation, water, electricity and gas are similar to the vegetables, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea in ancient times. They are real necessities. Even if some of them are replaced by other similar necessities, that is competition among similar items and the stability is still extremely high.

Therefore, Yang Wendong invested in "food" and a small part of "clothing, housing and transportation" very early on, but did not involve "water, electricity and gas". He may need to wait for the right time. After all, he is still young. While preparing for "stability" in the future, he can still expand the scale of the company.

Of course, nothing is absolute. If controlled nuclear fusion appears in the next hundred years, food can be produced infinitely in factories through electricity and carbon dioxide, and even various hydrocarbons (petroleum derivatives) can be produced in this way, then human society will enter the fourth industrial revolution, which will inevitably destroy all previous infrastructure. There will be no way to deal with this kind of thing, because it exceeds the cognition of Yang Wendong, a time traveler, and even exceeds the cognition of everyone else.

Just do everything within the scope of your own understanding. At least no matter how technology changes, once nuclear fusion emerges, ports and basic power line facilities will still be needed.

The year quickly came to 1972;
On January 1, when Yang Wendong arrived at the office door, he saw Wang Zhiqun and two senior executives of Honor Electronics waiting at the door;
"Mr. Yang." Wang Zhiqun greeted him quickly.

Yang Wendong nodded to the three of them, and then said to Wang Zhiqun: "What's the matter with you coming to see me so early?"

Wang Zhiqun replied: "It's about Intel building a chip factory in Hong Kong."

"Then let's go in and talk." Yang Wendong said after pointing in the direction of the office.

At present, the global chip market is still very small. Not to mention compared with many electronic giants in the United States, even Honor Electronics will not be worth much, but this is only from a value perspective;
The core of the future electronics industry is chips, which will grow at an exponential rate and the global demand may surge;

Although it is unlikely that Hong Kong will continue to develop like this for decades, it is still possible in the first ten years, and there may be variables in the future. As long as the foundation is laid, there is a possibility of success. Another point is that specializing in non-core chips, even if the profit margin is not as high as that of computers and mobile phones, it will at least be a good industry, which is enough for Hong Kong's population of several million.

After several people entered the office, the assistant poured tea for everyone and left. Wang Zhiqun said, "Mr. Yang, Intel's technicians have evaluated various industrial and educational environments in Hong Kong. They said that Hong Kong is not suitable for producing 4004 chips."

"What do you need?" Yang Wendong asked calmly. "In 63, Fairchild Semiconductor came to Hong Kong to make transistors on a large scale. Some electronics companies from the United States and Japan also came here. They were also doing well, weren't they?"

In the 60s, Hong Kong's electronics industry had actually already developed. The same would have happened even without Honor Electronics and Yang Wendong. Many global electronics giants came to Hong Kong to invest. At that time, Yang Wendong simply took advantage of the opportunity to establish Honor, and then with the help of investment from overseas electronics companies, he developed his own brand and various products.

Wang Zhiqun replied: “Mr. Yang, Fairchild Semiconductor is different. Although Fairchild claims to have produced hundreds of millions of transistors in Hong Kong, it is actually mainly engaged in packaging and testing, not from start to finish production.

Intel's people had similar opinions. After evaluation, they thought it was a very good idea to send the US 4004 chips to Hong Kong for packaging and testing, rather than producing them from start to finish in Hong Kong."

"Does he want Hong Kong to become a link in chip production?" Yang Wendong said with a smile.

Chip production involves a lot of high-tech technologies, but some of them also require a lot of manpower. Packaging and testing is the most obvious one, which is a labor-intensive industry. Of course, it is still not as good as clothing, hats and the like. Therefore, even after decades, many chip factories will still place packaging and testing in places with low labor costs. This is also a necessary process for cost saving in modern industrial society.

Wang Zhiqun said: "Yes, Intel people think that this way, they can reduce costs and make full use of American talents and Hong Kong's low-cost advantages."

"Tell them that they want to do packaging and testing in Hong Kong. I welcome that. I can take care of both manpower and factory site." Yang Wendong said, "But I also need Hong Kong to build a full-process chip production process factory. From the initial wafer to the later circuit board, I need to produce everything in Hong Kong.

Unless there are things that cannot be produced in Hong Kong and can only be imported from Europe and the United States, then we can negotiate, but at least most of the processes must be done in Hong Kong. In the future, many of my products will require chips. "

The speed of arcade development in the future will exceed everyone's imagination. The motherboard of an arcade machine may need dozens of chips, and even more when the functions are enhanced in the future.
Similarly, the demand for a single home game console may be smaller, but the number is much larger, and the demand for chips is also higher;
More importantly, various household appliances will gradually become chip-based in the future. For example, the most basic color TV remote control requires a chip.

Wang Zhiqun said: "Mr. Yang, I have also told Intel the same thing. They told us that if we want to do this, we will need to invest millions of dollars to build a front-end and back-end industrial chain.

Moreover, these front-end and back-end industrial chains require some professional talents, many of which even Intel does not understand, because even in the United States, Intel's factories are just one link in the chip industry."

"It doesn't matter if I spend money, I'll let Intel cooperate. I want to build an industrial chain in Hong Kong." Yang Wendong said firmly: "In fact, if Hong Kong didn't have anything, I wouldn't have to do this, but as long as it has, it will be convenient in the future."

If you start an electronic business in the United States or Japan today, you will definitely not go through so much trouble to build such a long industrial chain. It is even possible that you will do the same as Apple in its past life and not build any factories yourself, but outsource everything to professionals. This is the industrial development model of modern society.

But that doesn’t work in Hong Kong. The entire industry chain needs to be imported. If that’s the case, don’t bother. It’s more convenient to just speculate in real estate and you may earn more.

The most appropriate example is Samsung in South Korea. When Samsung entered the electronics industry in its early days, there were very few companies in South Korea that could match its needs. As a last resort, it had to do everything on its own, desperately relying on the United States for technical and financial support, and then poaching engineers from Japan. It took decades to become the world's largest battery factory.
Or BYD in the mainland in the past was also like this. It had been planning to build electric cars as early as a few years ago, but there was no supporting industry, so it could only do it itself, and eventually became the world's largest new energy vehicle brand;
Everything was forced upon him. If there were powerful suppliers nearby, he would not bother to go through so much trouble. However, it was precisely because of the early efforts that the cost dropped sharply after the industrial chain was gradually established in the later stages, and he might even win in the end.

Wang Zhiqun agreed and said, "Okay, I will negotiate with Intel and other American equipment companies right away."

"Well, let's settle this matter as soon as possible. Don't worry about the funding." Yang Wendong said again.

The arcade market alone, which was about to explode, could make tens of millions of dollars in profits a year. Compared to this, the chips of this era were nothing.

PS: Please give me a monthly ticket
(End of this chapter)