area51novel #495 - Coping with the challenges of everyday life
#495 - Coping with the challenges of everyday life
When the new display technology of the Japanese began mass production in the television industry, it eventually gained quite a few advantages.
The Japanese didn't waste this opportunity. They formed an internal division of labor and, after starting mass shipments, stirred up the original television market of the Bright Sword world. The television market, which was originally a three-way split between East Continent, North America, and Europe, turned into a battle of many heroes, with East Continent, North America, Europe, and the Japanese engaging in a four-way battle.
The technology of the first three major markets was of the same origin. The dozen or so companies producing televisions could all be traced back to the original technology of East Continent. Originally, everyone fought back and forth because both domestic and international competitors held back a little, fiercely fighting in their respective regions, but only dabbling in the opponent's market, without the intention of fighting to the death.
Because among these television manufacturers, the largest and strongest manufacturer was still the hidden chess piece of East Continent's Qianlong Project.
Therefore, even though East Continent's television industry was technologically advanced, even a notch higher, it didn't take drastic measures to clean up the market and allow East Continent's televisions to dominate. Instead, there was a tacit understanding to develop in their respective regions.
This strategy also misled the great powers into believing that the manufacturers in their respective regions were at the world's leading level in the television industry, with everyone constantly catching up and iterating new products.
However, after the Japanese television picture tube technology caught up somewhat, the television industry lost its former momentum. The Japanese were not so polite as to just stay in their own country and develop. Instead, they pounced on every market like a pack of wolves, attempting to take the brand high ground of television technology with the advantage of their screens, and vigorously promoting their brand.
For East Continent, this strategy naturally had no effect. East Continent's television industry originally took the mass-market route. Under Ren Zhong's promotion, it is now starting to realize the popularization of the East Continent domestic market. Therefore, East Continent's television prices are actually at a low point internationally. Some distributors in third countries even come to East Continent to purchase affordable televisions for domestic sales.
These televisions sold domestically in East Continent themselves have certain sales subsidies. They took away a portion of these preferential products through certain channels. For East Continent domestically, it will lose some television users, but this kind of re-exported product suddenly increases the price advantage of East Continent's exports, which is a disguised form of low-priced dumping of East Continent's products.
This price is even lower than the Japanese low-end products, so the Japanese attempt to enter the East Continent low-end market is simply impossible.
As for the high-end market, the sense of national pride in East Continent is now becoming increasingly strong, and the love for domestic products has almost reached its historical peak. Not to mention that there are domestic alternatives, even if there are no alternatives, East Continent has a natural resistance to Japanese products.
So even though the Japanese televisions are now superior in terms of display effect, they have not opened up the two markets in East Continent.
However, in the European and North American markets, the Japanese strategy is still effective.
Vision and Goldenstar, the two major television giants, have both had some market share snatched away by them.
For a time, the slogan 'The wolf is coming!' was shouted in both regions.
"We will no longer invest too many resources in the low-end market to compete," the sales vice president of Vision Company was also very worried about the current situation, but he didn't panic.
"We must make full use of our advantages in personal computers, and make the integration of personal computer hosts and television monitors more convenient. Even in our computer research, we must consider output displays that perfectly match our televisions. Enhance the competitiveness of our televisions in terms of versatility, and even make our computer hosts incompatible with other brands of televisions."
"This won't work. We can not develop compatibility for other brands of televisions, but we can't set conditions on the computer to be incompatible with other brands. This will be sued for using market position to monopolize."
Someone stood up and flatly denied the sales vice president's tricks.
"I heard that East Continent's monitor manufacturers are researching a new display technology. I suggest that we cooperate deeply with East Continent's monitor manufacturers to jointly develop a new monitor to offset or even form a new advantage in monitors."
This person finally came up with a reliable idea.
"That's right, we must dare to invest in technology. We don't have time to develop our own picture tube technology, so we can combine it with East Continent's technology research to achieve a strong alliance. Now, facing the threat from the Japanese, we can take bigger steps and jointly build factories and research with East Continent's picture tube manufacturers."
Ma Zhiyuan saw that the topic had moved to the right track.
He could finally legitimately propose to start full cooperation with East Continent.
He now holds absolute corporate control voting rights. According to the voting rules, he could have the final say, but considering that he wants to continue to thrive in the North American market for a long time.
Ma Zhiyuan has almost never proactively proposed a project to cooperate with East Continent.
All of them are forced by these people below to cooperate with East Continent, and then push the boat along the river after they proactively propose these projects.
In this way, Ma Zhiyuan's persona will not be subverted.
Vision's development is now smooth sailing. Even if the Japanese are currently disgusting, as long as it cooperates with East Continent's technology, it will soon be able to technologically overwhelm the Japanese again.
Ma Zhiyuan knows that East Continent is conducting research on new display technology. It won't be long before the birth of new CRT display technology based on flat right-angle technology will soon destroy Niso's hard-won picture tube technology advantages.
At the same time, in terms of image technology, East Continent has already realized the preparation for the transition from VCD pixels to DVD pixels.
The new DVD decoding integrated circuit chip is already in design, and the technical specifications of DVD have already been realized.
When the new display technology is researched, it can carry the details of DVD display technology, and future television program sources will be quickly updated to the new generation of technology, greatly updating the television technology by a generation.
This time, almost all patent technology copyrights will fall to East Continent. In this way, the Japanese will either pay patent fees to follow up, or they will buy East Continent's DVD modules at high prices.
Or they will be out, losing the high-end products of the international television market, because when selling in the international market, they will have to comply with the jurisdiction of international patents and cannot pirate DVDs for sale and use internationally.
At most, they can sell it in their own country.
In this way, once the new generation of television technology standards is established, almost all of the core technology will be in the hands of Dongda. International giants like Vision and Goldenstar will respond to this standard and join it, forming a new global television standard.
This will allow them to legitimately transfer profits from the two companies back to their home countries in the name of patents, effectively providing financial support to Dongda domestically.
This strategy has been in development for so many years, and now the season for harvesting is about to arrive.
Paying patent fees will not affect the two giants' monopolistic sales in their respective markets, where they both achieve a monopolistic effect with market shares exceeding 50%.
For capital, such companies are the ones worth pursuing.
Vision and GoldenStar are both thriving in their respective domestic stock markets precisely because of their dominant sales positions in their regional markets.
Now, with the rapidly expanding personal computer market, the prospects for these two companies remain bright, and they each hold leading positions in the stock market.
By cooperating with Dongda on technology, mastering upstream supply chain resources for personal computers and televisions, and then establishing product brands to dominate local markets, this development model is indeed the necessary path for companies like them.
Even if the executives in these two companies are local elites, they cannot escape this path of trade, industry, and technology. Even without the guidance of the founders, they have almost no other choice. The only option is to cooperate with Dongda's upstream supply chain companies to offset the technological advantages of their competitors.
This is basically the same situation as most Dongda mobile phone and computer companies in the main world.
Although they have also invested in some specialized technology research, without Ren Zhong's guidance, who can clearly predict the major development trends of the future?
In the field of high-tech development, one wrong step often leads to many more.
The newest novels are first published on Liu Jiu Shu Ba!
Ren Zhong didn't expect that, with the market pressure from Little Japan, Dongda would achieve its first large-scale technological cooperation between covert agents and local entities in the television industry.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in resources were injected through normal channels into Dongda's research on picture tube technology and new image standards.
With the huge financial investment, Dongda's research team and the technical team from the West merged for the first time.
Even though Dongda firmly controls the core patents in terms of research leadership.
However, Dongda also released some sincerity in terms of application. Three large television companies will invest resources to overcome technical barriers in flat right-angle display technology and then share the application and expansion of this technology.
Dongda's own resources, on the other hand, began to be invested on a large scale in the research of liquid crystal display technology.
When flat right-angle displays are at their peak, manufacturers following CRT technology might never have dreamed that by the time they all learned and mastered flat right-angle display technology, Dongda's liquid crystal display technology would be about to be launched on the market.
Such epoch-making technological iteration will make pursuers despair!
Now, it's not just televisions. In terms of steel, Little Japan has, after more than ten years of development, integrated its domestic steel industry into several large groups. Relying on domestic reconstruction and the support of the rogue Eagle Dad, its steel production capacity has now reached 30 million tons.
The technology of top-blown oxygen converters, which was first developed in Dongda, has been adopted in almost all newly built blast furnaces in the Liangjian world after more than ten years of development.
Because the technological advantages of top-blown oxygen converters are too obvious, their construction and production costs are both low: construction costs are only 50%-70% of those of open-hearth furnaces with the same capacity, and production costs are only 20%-40% of those of open-hearth furnaces.
Little Japan built 23 top-blown oxygen converters in one go, including 11 large blast furnaces with a capacity of over 1000 cubic meters, with the largest volume being 1657 cubic meters. Little Japan's total investment reached 1.74 billion US dollars, truly putting in a lot of capital!
This capacity is used both for domestic reconstruction and for desperately restoring its shipbuilding industry. At the same time, it is also starting to export in large quantities, after all, Little Japan doesn't have much to offer right now.
Under the suppression of the behemoth Dongda, Little Japan's electronic products are basically completely crushed by Dongda, living in the shadow of Dongda's electronics industry. They have not been able to form a scale, even though Little Japan's financial groups have integrated their domestic electronics industry into several monopolistic companies, trying their best to nurture flagship manufacturers in the electronics industry.
However, Dongda's electronics industry is like it's cheating, constantly suppressing Little Japan's attempts to break through in televisions.
It was not easy for them to find an opportunity to break through with the development of imaging technology.
As for steel, Little Japan's alloy steel research is far behind Dongda's alloy steel. They can only take the low-end route of running volume, relying on their low-price sales to the rogue Eagle Dad and some Asian allies. Little Japan's steel has also found a certain international market.
In terms of international market development, the difficulty for Little Japan to rise is more than ten times greater than in its historical space-time in the main world.
Looking at the development over the past ten years, Little Japan is not at the same level as the development in the original main world space-time.
The industries in which Little Japan took off in the main world are now directly choked by Dongda. Whether it is steel, electronics, or automobiles, Dongda has now begun to take off, while Little Japan is still struggling.
What makes them even more desperate is that the development of these industries in Dongda is accelerating. Whether it is in terms of scale or technology, Dongda is comprehensively suppressing them and forming a leading advantage facing the Liangjian world.
The existence of the Dawn Research Institute has now become an unavoidable oddity in the Liangjian world. Many countries are comprehensively studying the history of the Dawn Research Institute's development and its management mechanisms, but no matter what, they cannot figure out why this research institution has such a strong ability to research cutting-edge technologies.
Not to mention top-secret things like rockets, nuclear power, and nuclear bombs, just at the level of applied science, the Dawn Research Institute alone is worth the combined research capabilities of several major countries in the Liangjian world, and even stronger!
This is completely unscientific, so even though the whole world is making unremitting efforts to study and send secret agents to infiltrate, they have not yet figured out how many research project groups the Dawn Research Institute has!
And what they are currently researching.
They have now formed a psychology that Dongda will suddenly burst out with a new technology, shocking the world. If there are no such achievements in two or three years, then it is even more dangerous, which almost means that Dongda is making a particularly major breakthrough!
Just like this year's manned unmanned spacecraft! (End of this chapter)