Chapter 852 VCD
Li Daqi asked Song Yuanchao what follow-up arrangements he had for Shenghua Electric Appliances.
After Liu's factory in Pengcheng was acquired by Shenghua, in addition to the production of previous orders, it is also responsible for the production of Zhang Jian's company's products and its own brand of water dispensers, in addition to Shenghua Telecom's series of products plus Shenghua Computer's accessories production and computer assembly.
However, due to the large scale of Liu's factory and the continuous shrinking exports of some old products, such as the electric fans that Liu made his fortune, the factory has excess production capacity and its benefits are not ideal.
According to Song Yuanchao's request, Shenghua Electric is now under the charge of Li Daqi. The overcapacity is a headache for Li Daqi.
"There is no rush. For now, we will maintain the current production. In a few months, new products will be introduced. By then, I will worry about insufficient production capacity rather than overcapacity."
"New products?" Li Daqi was stunned for a moment, and asked Song Yuanchao: " Did ? What specific products? Is our current assembly line suitable for production?"
"Haha, it's not accurate to say it's an order. This is a revolutionary product. As for the assembly line, there should be changes. I'll confirm the details after the New Year when I go to Shenghua Electric in person to take a look." Song Yuanchao kept the secret. The VCD technology is still in the process of being improved, and this product will also involve patents in the future. Considering the lesson of the ultimate failure of this technology in his previous life, Song Yuanchao does not intend to disclose it now.
The reason why Song Yuanchao wanted to sell Shenghua Clothing was, on the one hand, because the development of Shenghua Clothing had reached a bottleneck, and the entire textile market would begin to decline, so there was no need to continue holding this business.
It is most appropriate to dispose of this business while textiles are still hot. After disposing of Shenghua Clothing, the company's focus will be on Shenghua Electric Appliances, in addition to telecommunications and computer products.
Song Yuanchao knew very well how big the VCD market was. This market was extremely huge both at home and abroad. Moreover, Shenghua had a unique opportunity with the technology and patents, and could completely avoid the historical results of VCD technology leakage and lack of patents that led to the collapse of the market.
Historically, VCD products were popular for a short period of time but then became obsolete in a short period of time. The reasons were very complex. On the one hand, there was no registered patent, and on the other hand, there was the suppression of VCD by multinational companies in Europe, America and Japan.
In addition to the long-standing videotapes, video equipment products now also have laser discs. Compared with these two products, although VCD is not as good as the expensive laser discs in video compression and playback, it has considerable advantages over traditional videotapes.
What's more, VCD has a huge price advantage, and the discs are more convenient to carry and store than videotapes. Because of this, it was sought after as soon as it was released and became all the rage.
Many people in later generations often felt sorry for Jiang Wanmeng, the actual creator of this product, when commenting on its short-lived popularity. They believed that although Jiang Wanmeng had vision and skills, he did not understand business and made a big mistake in not registering the patent.
Because of this big mistake, VCD was counterfeited in large quantities after the trial, which caused the market to go downhill after a short period of glory. When DVD, a product with better technology, appeared, VCD, a product with inherent defects, was inevitably eliminated.
But the facts cannot be commented on in this way. Jiang Wanmeng's lack of attention to patents is certainly one reason, but the crackdown on VCD technology by companies in Europe, the United States and Japan also fanned the flames.
After the emergence of VCD, the originally expensive laser discs became useless. Except in necessary professional occasions, ordinary people usually choose much cheaper VCD products, which makes laser disc technology useless.
The technical patents of laser discs are mainly controlled by several large companies in Europe, the United States and Japan. They make huge profits every year by relying on this technology. Now the VCD product has suddenly emerged and directly impacted the original market with an extremely low price, which is equivalent to directly smashing the golden rice bowl they are holding.
Driven by profit, they will inevitably suppress VCD, and the best way to suppress it is to destroy this market directly, and then launch better technology than VCD, such as DVD technology, to regain the market.
Because the VCD patent has not been registered, these companies have become even more unscrupulous.
Otherwise, how could the VCD market have changed so much in less than a year? Don't forget that even if many domestic VCD manufacturers rushed to produce VCDs to disrupt the market, they would not be able to produce VCD products without the decoders provided by foreign companies.
On the surface, it seems to be just ordinary commercial competition and patent registration loopholes, but what is really hidden is the stranglehold of some big manufacturers on this product. Even if Jiang Wanmeng had registered the VCD patent, those big manufacturers would still not let go of this product. After all, the core of VCD manufacturing, that is, the production of decoders, is in the hands of these big manufacturers. Moreover, VCD technology is not complicated from a technical perspective, and it will not take much time to fully analyze this technology.
Jiang Wanmeng developed VCD technology based on the MPEG decompression technology of California C-Cube, but that happened more than a year later. Now, Song Yuanchao has directly invested in the US company to buy the newly developed technology of C-Cube in advance and improved it, which is the same as Jiang Wanmeng's approach.
However, compared with Jiang Wanmeng, Song Yuanchao would naturally not give up his patents, not only the VCD patent, but also the MP3 patent.
Of course, the latter cannot produce real commercial applications at present due to the limitations of storage devices and computer technology, but in the future MP3 will have a market with greater potential than VCD.
In addition, since the technology is in the hands of American companies, once the VCD products are on the market, it will be much more difficult for major European, American and Japanese manufacturers to disrupt the market by the means they used against Jiang Wanmeng. Needless to say, the fact that the patent and the patent ownership company is an American company will make these major manufacturers cautious and at best reach a commercial result of transferring or exchanging the patent usage rights. It is unlikely that they will directly manipulate behind the scenes to blatantly suppress VCD.
Song Yuanchao has also considered this carefully. In the future, Shenghua Electric's VCD production will also be produced using the patent licensing model. If major European, American and Japanese manufacturers also want to enter this market, there will be no problem. As long as you can afford the patent licensing, Song Yuanchao doesn't mind making a fortune on the patent.
But Song Yuanchao's deeper thought was to obtain some patents related to the more practical DVD through the VCD patent, so as to prepare for the future transition from VCD to DVD production.
Although the VCD product is a groundbreaking product, it has inherent deficiencies after all. It is destined to be just a transitional product and its vitality will not be very strong. Song Yuanchao is just trying to prolong its vitality as much as possible and prepare for the emergence of better products in the future.
Seeing Song Yuanchao's unfathomable look, Li Daqi and Qin Zhengguo were extremely curious about what product made Song Yuanchao so confident. However, Song Yuanchao refused to tell them. Moreover, Song Yuanchao clearly told them that this project was now the core project of the American company and all the people involved in the project had signed a confidentiality agreement, including Song Yuanchao himself.
If they want to know, that's fine, just follow the same process.
After listening to Song Yuanchao's words, and when Song Yuanchao clearly told them that the answer would be revealed by March at the latest, Li Daqi and Qin Zhengguo suddenly lost all interest in signing the confidentiality agreement. It wouldn't be long anyway, so why bother themselves with such trouble?
The three of them chatted in the study for a long time, and by the time they finished, it was already evening.
When I returned to the living room, Luo Lin, Ying Caixia, Zheng Li, Li Xiaoyun and the others had already returned with their children and were talking to Lin Yan.
Song Yuan walked over to the three of them with a smile, and sat down to chat with them. There was still some time before dinner, and the aunt at home had already gone to prepare it.
As they were talking, Zheng Li's pager suddenly rang. She took the pager out of her bag, took a look at it, walked aside and answered the call, but she didn't expect that the person on the phone hung up in a hurry after just a few words, and her whole face looked extremely anxious.
"What's wrong?" Li Daqi asked quickly.
"Lihong just said that Xiaobei was in trouble and is now in the hospital for emergency treatment... " Zheng Li said in panic.
"What happened? Rescue? What's going on?"
"I don't know. Lihong didn't explain it clearly on the phone. She just said that Xiaobei took a lot of medicine and she didn't know anything else. Daqi, I have to go back right away." Zheng Li was so anxious that tears fell. She, Meng Lihong and Gu Bei were good friends who grew up together. Although Gu Bei had less contact with Zheng Li in recent years because she followed Boss Cao, Zheng Li still regarded her as her best friend in her heart.
Now that she suddenly heard that something like this had happened to Gu Bei, how could Zheng Li not be nervous?
Song Yuanchao and others nearby also became nervous when they heard about this. Human life is at stake, and this is no trivial matter.
Qin Zhengguo quickly said that he would drive Zheng Li to the airport to see if there was a quick flight back to Pengcheng. Song Yuanchao said that Qin Zhengguo's arrangement was reliable, and asked Li Daqi not to stay here, and to go back with Zheng Li immediately. It would be more appropriate for Li Daqi to go alone with a man. As for the air tickets, don't worry about them. He immediately called to find a connection and asked them to leave immediately. Song Yuanchao left a message on the pager when he had the news, and went to the counter to pick up the ticket when he arrived at the airport.
Li Daqi nodded without saying anything, and Qin Zhengguo drove them to the airport. Song Yuanchao also contacted people as quickly as possible, asked about the flight situation, got two tickets through the channel, and then sent a pager message to Li Daqi.
After rushing to the airport, Li Daqi and Zheng Li got out of the car. The two of them didn't have any luggage and ran straight inside.
Qin Zhengguo lowered the car window and shouted at them, asking Li Daqi to call them after they arrived. Li Daqi didn't even have time to turn around. He waved back to indicate that he understood, and continued to run quickly inside with Zheng Li.
