Chapter 933 Service Alliance (4k)

On November 4, 2008, the Bingxin Wafer Manufacturing Service Alliance hosted an industry conference in Pingjiang, Jiangsu Province.

The reason for choosing Pingjiang was not because of any administrative or market implications, but because the service alliance's work team had just arrived here, so they did not move and directly recruited people on the spot to carry out a phased preparation.

The industry market was too bad under the financial crisis.

Bingxin had already signed a joint name with SMIC, hoping that the higher authorities would pay attention to the fragile industrial chain that had been cultivated with great difficulty, and had also initially completed the bank's credit work, but...

Everything had a process.

Many factories could not support that time. When they called here, they even dismantled their equipment. Therefore, Liu Yangyang had to make a decision on the spot and held a slightly hasty meeting.

After she reported the domestic industry situation to Mr. Fang, she had a record and permission on the one hand, and received strong support on the other.

On the 4th, in addition to the upstream and downstream manufacturers who were invited by phone, there were also many people who came after hearing the news.

The meeting time was moved from morning to afternoon and finally to evening.

At eight o'clock in the evening, the conference room was a bit messy.

The economic situation was not good, and most of the people present were hit hard. It was difficult to calm down and discuss the situation slowly. Some people complained, some were helpless, and the expressions in the middle were empty, which almost interpreted the current situation in the industry.

At 8:15, Liu Yangyang and the vice president of Changdian were still communicating, but the conference room suddenly became quiet.

She looked up at the door and saw Jiang Shangzhou, who is now the chairman of SMIC, slowly walked into the conference room accompanied by several people.

Liu Yangyang knew that Dr. Jiang was not in good health, so she hurried forward to greet him.

"Mr. Fang made such a scene without notifying me? Do you think that SMIC can't contribute?" Jiang Shangzhou took the initiative to extend his right hand and said to Secretary-General Liu of the Service Alliance with a smile.

Liu Yangyang's thoughts turned slightly. The meeting did not notify SMIC. This was precisely the decision made by Mr. Fang, because SMIC's situation was not very good. There was very definite news that SMIC's factory in Chengdu was going to be sold.

Although there is no rumor of layoffs in SMIC, the suspension of overtime pay and a month's rest at the end of the year are confirmed.

"Mr. Jiang, we are in a hurry to prepare for this meeting, and we also want to find out the bottom line before discussing with SMIC." Liu Yangyang led Dr. Jiang to the front row. This is a reason, but Dr. Jiang's physical condition is also a reason.

Bingxin has joined SMIC to provide suggestions, but the real situation on the front line also needs data support. The service alliance that has been running for more than a year just covers this aspect. This is also an important work of Liu Yangyang for more than two months.

Jiang Shangzhou smiled and said, "Is that so? I thought Mr. Fang was disgusted with the old man for not being able to work anymore."

Liu Yangyang said seriously, "Mr. Fang is really concerned about Mr. Jiang's health."

"Where is he? He hasn't come back?" Jiang Shangzhou slightly restrained his smile. His physical condition has recovered well, otherwise he would not have taken over as the chairman of SMIC.

Liu Yangyang hesitated, lowered his voice, and used Mr. Fang's original words: "Mr. Fang said that he was making money outside."

Jiang Shangzhou wanted to laugh, and could almost imagine Mr. Fang's tone. He nodded and said, "This is indeed very important. We are just helping Mr. Fang."

He looked around a few more times and asked, "Didn't the ICBC people come?"

"The bank's people will arrive tomorrow, from ICBC and Bank of China." Liu Yangyang replied.

Jiang Shangzhou heard the discussion gradually rising in the conference room and was unwilling to continue to occupy Secretary Liu's time. He had previously spoken to Mr. Fang about the joint name of SMIC and Bingxin, and knew about the other party's series of efforts. One of the loans about ICBC was both pre-emptive and post-approval, and some were exchanged.

When it comes to loans of the nature of industry assistance in the current situation, ICBC will not rashly lend without administrative drive. However, as the listed shares are approaching the time for lifting the ban, continuing to hold shares under the financial storm has a certain symbolic significance.

It is said that UBS is likely to cash out its shares in Bank of China at the end of the year, because it urgently needs to recover its losses in the financial storm.

It is not surprising that similar logic appears in foreign capital such as Bank of America and Temasek, which has some hidden concerns in the market.

Jiang Shangzhou clearly heard Mr. Fang mention this on the phone. He has promised not to reduce his holdings and sell off, in exchange for an advance credit line of 2 billion from ICBC.

Can 2 billion solve the problem?

Definitely not.

But it can probably solve some urgent problems.

In addition, Jiang Shangzhou is not sure how Mr. Fang will operate when it comes to international funds.

The whispers in the conference room because of the presence of the chairman of SMIC turned into concerns about the industry again.

When Liu Yangyang temporarily finished communicating with Changdian, a listed company, she picked up the microphone and officially talked about today's meeting aimed at integrating resources and reducing losses.

Since its establishment, the service alliance has been investigating the domestic semiconductor situation, selecting and supporting enterprises that are useful or useful to Bingxin in the future. This is difficult, but it is indeed ongoing, and the work in the past two months is another situation...

It's like expanding the original network to try to hold more domestic upstream and downstream industries.

However, are all the companies sitting in the conference room at this moment in critical condition due to the external economic crisis?

This is indeed a major factor and an accelerating factor, but some companies themselves do not pay attention to technology, neglect management, and are greedy for success and reckless progress, which are also important reasons.

The reason why Jiang Shangzhou appeared here today was because he was worried that Mr. Fang's service alliance would do something bad with good intentions. He was worried that it would be difficult to satisfy everyone in a critical situation. Everyone was short of money and help, and no matter how you divided it, it would easily cause trouble.

Soon, as Liu Yangyang narrated, different voices appeared in the conference room.

Some companies were not members of the service alliance themselves, and they still had to accept discounted acquisitions, second-hand equipment prices, factory relocation and other conditions, which made them complain-just want to help us pay, and we will pay you back after we recover.

When such voices appeared, the atmosphere in the conference room became strange.

Jiang Shangzhou was worried that Liu Yangyang would not be able to convince everyone. After all, Mr. Fang was not here in person today, so he was ready to stand up and support the service alliance.

"I know that many people have doubts and concerns, both about the industry situation and about our service alliance." Liu Yangyang was very calm. "What will happen to the industry situation? Not to mention me, even the experts in our Bingxin dare not assert when it will be the bottom and when it will rebound. I won't say such words here to comfort everyone."

"But for the service alliance, I ask everyone to read the full name with me."

Liu Yangyang said word by word: "Bingxin Wafer Manufacturing Service Alliance."

"This alliance allows companies to serve our Bingxin wafer manufacturing, not Bingxin to serve you!"

"The current situation is special, special matters are handled specially, and emergency matters are handled with discretion. If you are willing, you can stay and accept the standards. If you are not willing, we will reimburse your travel expenses."

Liu Yangyang is not afraid of offending people, and she doesn't want to waste time at all.

She reiterated the nature of the service alliance and the measures under special circumstances.

The meeting room was quiet.

Jiang Shangzhou sat back steadily again. It's good. This service alliance is also good.

…

On November 6, after two days of stopping snow in Washington, it became suitable for passenger flights.

Fang Zhuo flew to Silicon Valley on a private plane.

This trip to Washington lasted longer than expected. In addition to meeting with many local companies in Washington, he could only listen to the work of other cities online.

Since arriving in the United States, except for a few companies such as Texas Instruments that unexpectedly emerged in the financial crisis, Fang Zhuo has met almost all the key companies on the list that he had paid attention to before.

This "key point" is not indicators such as enterprise scale and profitability, but whether it is beneficial or may be beneficial to the development of Yike and Bingxin.

As the head of Texas Instruments said, Yike is a lucky one who has grown against the trend in today's era with the development of smartphones, and to consolidate this "luck" requires more and better technical reserves.

Some technologies may really be just explorations and will never be commercialized, but...

Anyway, it's not expensive, just buy it and play with it in the company.

Fang Zhuo thought so and did so.

He brought the two young founders of Vision with him on this trip to Silicon Valley.

On the afternoon when they arrived at the Yike Silicon Valley R&D Center, the two of them browsed the future workplace together.

With the expected growth of employees, Yike R&D Center rented another nearby building. In the future, it may consider building its own park, but the main factor is to facilitate the absorption of talents.

"Mr. Fang, Mr. Fang, come and try our fingerprint unlocking."

Deputy Director of Technology Elder followed Mr. Fang throughout the whole process. The first thing he did when he came back was to let his boss try out the new gadgets in the R&D center. They wanted to install a fingerprint reader in every office.

Unlike Yu Hong's previous description, the group used fingerprints to unlock the door of the conference room smoothly.

However, when Fang Zhuo tried to register his fingerprint, the thing didn't work again.

During the slightly awkward fifteen minutes of waiting for rescue, Fang Zhuo asked Haydn about the application of their image sensors.

"Isn't the direction of your sensor capable of face recognition? You can also get a face recognition unlocking door in the conference room on your floor in the future, just in time to compare with this floor to see who has more people locked."

Fang Zhuo's spit-like suggestion made Haydn's eyes light up.

The depression of being acquired for $800,000 also faded a lot. He had a hunch that the atmosphere in Yike's R&D center might be pleasant.

Under the financial crisis, this might be the best situation.

Fang Zhuo didn't know the mood of Hayden, a research talent, but he knew that Yike and Bingxin needed to digest the new employees, new departments, and new technologies that joined one after another, and they had to be organically integrated to form a reasonable driving force for progress.

How to digest?

This problem was handed over to Xu Kedeng and others, and there was still an old way - rapid development.

As of November, Yike's new generation of Mars mobile phones, which was released in June and sold in July, maintained an average monthly sales of 1.4 million units, which seemed to have successfully continued and exceeded the sales momentum of the previous generation, and it was almost certain that the internal guaranteed target of 10 million units would be achieved.

This was without calculating the sales in the Chinese market.

The local factors in China are special. Now no matter who asks, including the media and some leaders, the company's tone is: OK, not much.

Whether it is Nokia that was criticized, LG that was sued, HTC that was sued, Sony Ericsson that maintained its classic style, Samsung that practiced deep learning, or Apple that made up for its shortcomings, the mobile phone products they launched have not had much impact on the sales of Yike Mars.

Or, there may be an impact. Without them, Mars sales could be higher, but now it has stabilized the first-class level of smartphones.

However, Fang Zhuo, who returned to Silicon Valley, also found that the innovation of mobile phone products is also a very stressful thing. Last year, consumers were satisfied. This year, consumers are satisfied. What about next year? What about the year after?

Whenever Mars initially gets a good reputation, the next generation of products is put on the agenda.

Fang Zhuo thinks that either it is to absorb talents to relieve this kind of internal pressure of the company, or to create more pressure for friendly companies.

On the second day in Silicon Valley, an acquisition intention was conveyed back at the end of last month.

Siri, founded in 2007, declined the acquisition of Yike. This company that provides text chat services is cooperating with Nuance, the world's largest voice recognition manufacturer, to try to realize voice recognition functions.

Siri believes that this cooperation will help enhance the company's value and is not in a hurry to be acquired now.

Fang Zhuo can understand that not all companies are short of money, so he is not very disappointed. He keeps in touch. Is there any mystery here, like the chip company last time, that Apple can acquire, but Yike cannot?

On this day, the employees of Texas Instruments who had previously made a two-way choice gradually confirmed their intentions.

Currently, more than 100 employees are willing to join Yike, which is about 70% of the earlier list, while the proportion of Bingxin is average, with only 25% of engineers willing to join, and they are still aiming for the promised German factory.

However, considering the degree of fit between Texas Instruments engineers and wafer foundries, Bingxin has gained nearly 90 people in terms of numbers.

Faced with this situation, Fang Zhuo had to urge Qiu Ciyun again to let him go to Germany with him at the end of the year, and he would be in charge of the wafer foundry with a high probability of project establishment.

In early November, Fang Zhuo relaxed for two days in Silicon Valley, but there were constant movements in the market that made him excited, including Motorola, Credit Suisse, Dell, Nortel, HSBC, BMW, Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, AMD...

Some of them were completely unrelated to him, but looking at the news of hundreds and thousands of layoffs, he always felt that it would be a waste if he didn't bring some back, and some were extremely suitable talents to recruit.

AMD, for example, plans to lay off 500 employees worldwide, while Micron Technology, which has 22,600 employees worldwide, plans to lay off 15% of its employees in the next two years, which brings similar appeal to TI.

Most importantly, TI has also started large-scale layoffs, which is the focus of Bingxin's new recruitment activities.