428: Chapter 428 Puppet Equity Agreement

"Damn! Every single word Zhao Ming says is targeting Xiaomi..."

"Clearing inventory? Which company is he talking about? Isn't that Honor itself? How do they have the nerve to point fingers at others?"

"Garbage Taishan 920s, a product purely for clearing inventory, and he's even proud of it."

"So what if it's a crippled chip? It's still stronger than Snapdragon, and the power consumption is even lower..."

Honor's confidence indeed comes from Transsion.

The Taishan 920s is a six-core version of the Taishan 920. Based on production line yields, some versions had two large cores removed to reduce peak power consumption, but the single-core performance was retained.

The overall benchmark score is around 70,000, which is significantly higher than the Snapdragon 801, but in terms of heat generation, there is still a huge gap compared to Qualcomm.

The original intention behind choosing this packaging for the chip was for Honor to use it.

It's a 7-series chip wearing the name of a 9-series.

This is the Under-display Fingerprint module used by the Honor 8. This is the charm of self-research and self-production: large-scale shipments reduce R&D costs.

...

As the launch event draws closer, more and more news is circulating online.

It seems this launch event is about to announce the death knell for Xiaomi!

After all, whatever Honor needs, they just need to buy it from those two old men, while Xiaomi has to source globally to make phones.

Every item requires asking for help, every item requires looking at others' expressions. Xiaomi is not a mobile phone manufacturer; Xiaomi is just a carrier of the supply chain.

But unfortunately, procurement in this industry is not easy; one has to look at their expressions.

When Lin Bin pushed the door open and walked in again, he was holding the latest financial report in his hand.

"Lei Jun, the sales data for December is out.

This month, we sold a total of 1.68 million mobile phones, with 780,000 in the India market, and only 900,000 in the domestic market, most of which are low-end models.

The high-end series Note3 and Mi 6 sold less than 200,000 units in total, and among them, over 50,000 Note3 units were returned."

Lei Jun got angry looking at these sales figures, and he irritably pushed the document aside.

He turned to look at the Xiaomi 6 plan on the side.

The number 6 has a very good meaning in China, so the team has poured immense attention into this phone!

This will be Xiaomi's comeback masterpiece, and a legendary device beloved by countless Mi Fans!

Of course, right now it's still just a PPT!

"The debugging of the Snapdragon 801 is slower than expected. The development kit provided by Qualcomm has issues. A few baseband-related APIs are incompatible with domestic 4G frequency bands. The engineers at Qualcomm said we need to wait two months.

And regarding the procurement price of the Snapdragon 801 4G, Qualcomm is digging in their heels; it's like they have us cornered and absolutely refuse to lower the price."

Lei Jun fell into a state of irritation once again, his fingers tapping continuously on the Xiaomi 6 plan.

"How about switching to MediaTek's MTK6575? This chip also supports 4G and is cheap."

Mentioning MediaTek, although they once relied on Transsion and had a good run with enhanced chips, with the rise of Transsion Semiconductor and HiSilicon, MediaTek has returned to the state of being ignored by everyone.

Although the two blue and green factories still purchase their chips, their strategy is that the basic version is sufficient; there's no need to spend money on better ones.

So they entered a phase of giving up~

Lin Bin shook his head directly: "No! The price is cheap, but their performance is too weak. The benchmark score is less than 40,000, not even comparable to Snapdragon, let alone Transsion."

"Furthermore, MediaTek's 4G baseband currently suffers from severe network drops in areas with weak signals. We've tested it, and at the time, there was absolutely no signal in the underground garage."

"Our engineers said that if Xiaomi uses MediaTek, the signal will be like Apple's, and we'll definitely be cursed to death by users."

Lei Jun gave a bitter smile. This won't work, that won't work, so how should they choose!

Finally, he even had a wild idea and said: "Then how about we self-develop the baseband, just like..."

But before he could finish, Lin Bin walked over quickly, touched his forehead, and then touched his own!

"You don't have a fever, why are you being so confused?

Old Lei, did you pass by somewhere last night? Possessed by something dirty?"

Lin Bin was very firm in this thought; after all, that is a self-developed communication baseband!

A single patent issue could kill them.

After all, there have always been rumors that Apple Inc. is self-developing a baseband, but it's been years, and there's still no movement.

Right now, Xiaomi doesn't even have a team. If it were like Lenovo, it would be fine, but if it's truly self-developed, starting from scratch to build a team, buying IP, doing tape-outs... at least 10 years...

By the time 10 years have passed, 5G will have already arrived.

Just then, Zhou Shouzi walked in again. Seeing Lin Bin, he subconsciously wanted to leave and come back to report later.

Lin Bin also noticed the abnormality and looked at Lei Jun. His eyes were also a bit evasive, which made Lin Bin's heart skip a beat. The camaraderie between the two seemed a bit impure!

"Wait! Old Zhou, come in. This matter is just right for Old Lin to give some reference."

Lin Bin looked at the two of them constantly speaking in riddles and felt a bit confused. What exactly is going on?

After receiving Lei Jun's permission, Zhou Shouzi walked up to the two of them.

"There is news from Silver Lake Capital again!"

Lin Bin took the document and glanced at it briefly. It was roughly about a new investor, an investor that had just been established not long ago.

But the valuation given to Xiaomi was as high as 12 billion USD, which is a full 5 billion USD higher than the last financing valuation. This is not a small amount!

The most critical part is that they insist on taking 40% of the shares.

Lin Bin originally wanted to ask Lei Jun to reject it directly. After all, the Xiaomi founding team plus Lei Jun's capital only left them with 53% of Xiaomi's shares, which could no longer achieve absolute control.

If another 40% is taken away, then Xiaomi would completely be a wage earner.

But thinking about the PPT for car manufacturing, smart home, and the comprehensive factors regarding mobile phones.

A valuation of 12 billion USD, they really couldn't refuse.

"Has the background of this company been checked clearly?"

Zhou Shouzi shook his head!

This was also the point Lei Jun was most worried about. He couldn't find out, but currently, it can be inferred that Qualcomm's investment is involved.

"It should be a United States consortium. After all, they require Xiaomi to use Qualcomm chips in overseas markets, and in the domestic market, we can use Qualcomm plus MediaTek; apart from that, there is no third choice.

This is the bottom line for this valuation!"

"Why is only the use of these two chips allowed in the domestic market? They are afraid of Transsion growing big in the domestic market!"

Zhou Shouzi also nodded in a difficult manner: "It should be.

Currently, most domestic manufacturers have cooperation with Transsion, just to a greater or lesser extent.

Furthermore, internationally, the combat effectiveness of Transsion and Huawei is getting stronger and stronger. Directly banning them won't work, so they can only take this path to cultivate new spokespersons.

But the prerequisite for the spokesperson is that they must obtain absolute holding rights!"

"This is a deed of enslavement!"

Lei Jun sighed again. He really couldn't make this decision! Once it's made, then...