77: Industrial design or structural design

Now that Li Huo was complaining in front of Chen Chen, it was obvious he was telling Chen Chen that it wasn't that he was unwilling to sell his shares, but rather that he wanted to continue working in Tianguang's R&D department.

As for who the boss was, he didn't care; he only cared about whether his research could continue.

For someone like Li Huo, who valued his research more than money, Chen Chen naturally wouldn't let him go. After all, the fact that he had worked at Tianguang for ten years without jumping ship proved that he was definitely dependable.

"In that case, Manager Li, you will temporarily remain in charge of Tianguang's R&D department. Once the acquisition is complete and the headquarters sends people in, I will immediately inject capital. I definitely won't interrupt your research."

"You can rest assured on that point."

Upon hearing Chen Chen's definite answer, a flash of joy appeared in the depths of Li Huo's eyes. As long as he could stay in Tianguang's R&D department and continue his Liquid Lens research, the headquarters could send as many people as they wanted.

Afterward, Chen Chen had a deeper conversation with Li Huo, eventually forming a certain plan for the future development of sensors.

[Writing up to this point, I hope readers can remember our domain name, the super reliable Taiwan novel-chasing tool.]

However, to establish a development plan, they would certainly have to wait until the acquisition was complete.

Having settled things with Li Huo, the acquisition of Tianguang became a certainty. It was now just a matter of time for an accurate valuation of the company, as well as contracts and the handover.

Besides Li Huo and Xiao Yuan, the other minority shareholders were naturally delighted to see Chen Chen willing to acquire their company, and they agreed to cash out and leave.

After resolving the Tianguang sensor issue, the next step was to prepare for Red Star's new product launch. September could be said to be a month with many new phones and very intense competition.

Currently known phone companies include Fruit, Huawei, and Red Star.

As for why Xiaomi wasn't included, Chen Chen estimated it was because the mi 3 generation would be equipped with two different processors this time, and the adaptation work was quite complex, so it could only be pushed back to October.

One must know that normally, the August 16th launch event was unshakable for Lei Jun.

In Chen Chen's view, no matter how Lei Jun optimized that Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, it would be useless; this processor could only really be considered a PC-side processor.

Forcing it into a phone meant that the compatibility and adaptation of various software and hardware would definitely not be as good as a dedicated mobile processor.

Chen Chen decided to give Lei Jun's Xiaomi something big this time.

A few days ago, he had already told the marketing department to get ready.

When the mi 3 equipped with the Tegra 4 processor starts shipping, humph, Xiaomi just you wait.

"Big Cola Phone?"

Chen Chen, who was browsing the news, saw news about this phone brand.

This phone brand, which seemed like a distant memory to Chen Chen, now appeared vividly in his sight as their official website had just gone online.

The success of the internet models of Xiaomi and Red Star quickly attracted a group of imitators, and various promotions and business models began to emerge at this time.

In his previous life, this brand saw the success of Xiaomi's internet model and began to learn from Xiaomi's marketing. Chen Chen had only heard of this brand in his QQ Space, and it once caused quite a stir.

Their slogan was even more outrageous: Invest once, and get replacement services for life.

Just ask, isn't that amazing?

But in the end, this phone also went bankrupt due to false advertising.

Compared to Big Cola, a brand that purely "harvested leeks," Chen Chen was more interested in a phone company called Origin.

It wasn't that he was interested in their products; this company only ever released two phones, and the market response was mediocre.

The path they took from the start was wrong. If they could have stuck to a literary and artistic style, they might have survived a few more years, but they wanted to go head-to-head with Hongmi in the thousand-yuan phone market.

It was truly a case of the Old Star of Longevity carrying a lantern to the toilet—looking for death.

What really piqued Chen Chen's interest was their design team. This company's phones weren't very outstanding, but Chen Chen definitely recognized their overall design capabilities.

Regarding true industrial aesthetics, Chen Chen actually didn't know much. Red Star's previous phones had no industrial design at all; they were basically Chen Chen copying the classic shapes of manufacturers from his previous life.

For the second-generation Kunpeng mobile phone, Chen Chen only pointed out a general design direction and didn't perform a deep copy. It wasn't like he could just copy designs from the future for all the phones as the company's product lines grew, right?

If a company developed like that, it would certainly be deformed and unreasonable. It was very necessary to have its own industrial design team.

In fact, every hardware company has conflicts between the ID department and the engineering department. To put it bluntly, it's a conflict between structural design and industrial design.

The conflict of whether a phone should look good or have strong performance. When industrial design dominates a company, their products will definitely be exquisite and beautiful.

When structural design dominates a company, then the products will definitely be for practical and performance purposes.

When one department in a company is strong, the other can only retreat step by step. Cui Yichen, who was responsible for the second-generation Kunpeng mobile phone, had approached Chen Chen more than once, saying that the ID department's designs were difficult to achieve in terms of structural stacking.

But Chen Chen suppressed all of these. This time, the Kunpeng 2nd generation must have its own design language. With the production of the Yangtze River Battery, this conflict was only alleviated after the battery volume shrank, freeing up more space for internal stacking.

In fact, even within the Fruit Company, this conflict is everywhere—whether design leads engineering or design is in turn controlled by engineering.

In the era of Steve Jobs, industrial design naturally led the entire product because Steve Jobs was a typical industrial designer. However, since Steve Jobs passed away, Fruit's products last year began to compromise with structural design.

"Engineers are realists about things today or in the moment, while industrial designers are full of imagination about things tomorrow or in the future.

Designers must decide the overall appearance, material texture, and color of the product, and then, with the cooperation of the engineering team, further create craftsmanship that meets product quality standards, complete the product, and bring it to market."

This passage comes from Jonathan Ive, who was once the Chief Design Officer of Fruit. If viewed from Chen Chen's 2024 perspective, Fruit's product design gradually shifted towards "Mother Nature" after the Fruit X, and it could hardly be called a top-tier global design anymore.

On the contrary, domestic manufacturers have shown unparalleled design capabilities in this regard.

Red Star's previous generation of phones used a method of stacking first and then designing the appearance. That is, after the structure was done, they used a "clothing" technique—putting clothes on the structure and removing redundant elements to complete the phone's appearance design.

This was basically consistent with the method used by Xiaomi's first two generations of phones—prioritizing performance.

But Xiaomi's third-generation phone adopted a brand-new design scheme. At this moment, Lei Jun was looking at a prototype that had just come off the line, unable to put it down.