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While Dongfang Electronics is practicing its internal skills in Hong Kong, its overseas layout has never stopped. After nearly half a year and continuous market promotion, the sales volume of ABC computers of Aikang company has been rising. In the last month of 1980, monthly shipments of the basic ABC-1 computer reached 12,500 units in the North American market, while monthly sales of the improved ABC-2 reached 8,000 units.

It's a pity that Li Xuan's original plan to block Apple was not fully realized. Apple's monthly sales of Apple 2 computers in the U.S. market increased from 10,000 units at the beginning of the year to 20,000 units at the end of the year. In the past 1980, Apple's Apple 2 computers sold a total of 300,000 units worldwide.

It can only be said that the personal computer market in 1980 was in the most savage growth period, although the competition of various companies was fierce, but good products could still obtain a steady stream of huge profits from the rapidly expanding market. It's just that what Li Xuan doesn't know is that if he doesn't appear, the global sales of Apple2 will be at least 100,000 more units.

Of course, Li Xuan's target shooting operation was not without effect, and the Apple3 computer, which was pinned on by Jobs and Apple, reaped a painful defeat after it was listed.

Although the ABC-2 computer, which was released more than a month in advance, has seized a large number of enterprise users who were originally waiting for the Apple3 computer to be listed at a lower price and excellent supporting business office software.

But after all, Aikang Computer is just a fledgling company, and Apple relies on the great reputation accumulated by the previous Apple 2. Let Apple3 still be sought after by the market as soon as it is launched. Soon after a customer buys a new computer, a whole bunch of troublesome problems arise.

Among all the list of defects in the Apple 3 computer. The most serious problem is that the computer is constantly running, and it crashes inexplicably. And the reason for this problem. It is caused by the real-time clock chip on the computer motherboard, which will suddenly fail after a long period of use.

The clock chips of Apple3 computers are all purchased from the National Semiconductor Company, and Apple Computer has found a pig teammate this time. Kookmin Semiconductor has a reputation in the industry for deliberately selling defective products, and their contracts to distributors include a clause in which defective parts are returned within 30 days. So much so that many dealers who attach importance to their own reputation will test their own products before selling the products of the National Semiconductor Company.

The success of Apple2 has made Apple's top management full of joy and confidence in the newly launched Apple3 computer. It was rushed to market without rigorous testing at all. In addition to the clock chip problem, the thermal design of the Apple 3 computer also has strict defects. New computers often have a series of problems due to overheating, which causes the chip to detach from the circuit board, the screen displays a blurry image, or the disk is in a 'baked and melted' state when the machine is taken out.

In addition, the new Apple 3 computer is not perfectly compatible with the software that ran on the Apple 2 computer. Apple's previous advertisement that the new computer will be released at the same time as a series of excellent office software is also considered an empty word.

In the past, the form software that was an important boost to promote the sales of Apple computers, "Visual Computing", had already been put in a drawer after Li Xuan bought out the copyright and became moldy. Apple's own new software is very bad, and it can't be compared with the software such as East-Word, East-Table, and East-dbase on ABC computers, so that consumers who were originally waiting for it have greater disappointment and greater expectations.

As a result, less than three months after the Apple 3 computer was launched, Apple received a large number of return requests from agents. That's when Mr. Jobs and the other executives came to their senses. Start working on a series of problems with your new computer right away.

However, Apple3's market reputation has been severely damaged, and Li Xuan took the opportunity to let Aikang Computer increase the promotion of ABC-2, so that Apple3's sales plummeted, and Apple finally had to decide to temporarily discontinue the production of new computers.

The removal of Apple3 has given Aikang's ABC-2 computer one more selling point to convince consumers. Sales that had been increasing have been increasing even further. According to the analysis of the company's marketing department, January 1981. The monthly sales of the ABC-2 in the U.S. market can exceed 10,000 units.

The reason why Apple hastily discontinued the Apple 3 was to make this work look like it had failed. Do not continue to damage Apple's overall image. Because it was the most critical moment for Apple to carry out its IPO listing action.

"When we created the personal computer. It's the same as creating a bicycle for the 21st century!", is the slogan on a full-page ad that Apple paid for in the Wall Street Journal.

Relying on the success of the Apple 2 computer, Apple successfully went public on the NASDAQ on December 12, 1980, and issued 4.6 million shares at a price of $22, which was enthusiastically sought after by the market, and all of them were sold out in less than an hour after being listed.

By the time the New Year's bell rang in 1981, the total market value of Apple's stock had reached $1.8 billion, and four billionaires and 40 millionaires had been born within the company in one fell swoop. Of course, the most popular of all is Chairman Steve Jobs, who is the number one among all the billionaires in Apple with a fortune of $256 million.

Apple swelled into a large company with a market value of nearly $2 billion in less than four years, and its success once again boiled the American business media, and Silicon Valley created a "car garage" myth!

Li Xuan was a little unhappy about not being able to stop Apple's rise, but Apple's success really couldn't be considered bad news for him. Dongfang Electronics began to plan the listing schedule of Aikang Computer as early as half a year ago, and not long ago selected Credit Suisse and Barclays Bank as the lead underwriters of the listing action.

However, after the two investment banks obtained the detailed information of Aikang, they were not enthusiastic about the listing operation. Because in their opinion, Aikang's listing plan is a little hasty. There are still some gaps between the listing requirements of the London Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange in many respects.

For example, from its establishment to the present, Aikang Company has only been two and a half years old. Listed companies are usually required to have three years of operating records. In addition, Aikang has just been acquired by Dongfang Electronics, and the transfer of ownership has taken place. Li Xuan also recruited Mr. Kortrik Tang from the British General Motors Corporation (GEC) to serve as the new CEO of Aikang Computer.

The UK Listing Commission and the London Stock Exchange, when reviewing the qualifications of listed companies, are very interested in stable operations. These ownership and management changes that have just been completed will undoubtedly make the audit agency believe that there is a huge risk of uncertainty in the future operation of Aikang, which will greatly increase the difficulty of the company's listing.

Therefore, both investment banks have postponed the listing plan, and after half a year, as long as the company continues to operate steadily, it will be able to eliminate the concern of the business crisis caused by the change of equity and the change of management.

But after Apple's great success on the NASDAQ exchange in the United States. The enthusiasm of Barclays and Credit Suisse is suddenly different. In the U.S. market, although the sales of ABC-1 of Aikang still lag behind Apple's Apple2 computers, the catch-up momentum is very obvious. In overseas markets such as the United Kingdom and Australia, ABC-1 has achieved a sales overtake by relying on stronger publicity and a perfect supply and marketing system that has been quickly established.

In addition, Apple's new product, the Apple 3 computer, has just suffered a humiliating failure, while the ABC-2 computer, which is positioned in the same market, has seen a steady increase in shipments since its launch in August. It's a good contrast gimmick. It only takes a little hype to convince the market that Aikang is an emerging computer company with more potential than Apple.

Apple's market capitalization of up to $2 billion on the NASDAQ is Aikang's next IPO action. Convince investors of the best reference objects. A company that is slightly inferior in performance but is catching up, and even has greater potential, should be of similar value to Apple in the United States.

As for the previously mentioned issues that are not conducive to listing. The two investment banks have also changed their tunes. In the elaboration of the listing conditions of the London Stock Exchange, there is also a special clause that can reduce the hard conditions for particularly good companies. And with the company's sales performance in the past six months. The two investment banks said they were confident enough to convince the UK Listing Commission and the London Stock Exchange that iKang was a particularly good company under the special clause.

Just as the listing of Aikang Company began to move forward again. Li Xuan once again embarked on a flight to the United States. The first tape-out of ERM-1 was a success. The first batch of samples obtained basically met the design requirements after testing, and there were no defects.

In fact, the total number of transistors integrated in the ERM-1 is less than 30,000, and the design structure is not complicated, so the probability of error is much smaller. This is also the reason why Li Xuan considered the plagiarism target at that time and chose the ARM architecture instead of the better RISC architecture (reduced instruction set) such as MIPS.

The early ARM-1 and ARM-2 architectures were definitely the simplest, or the most rudimentary, RISC architectures. The first MIPS architecture processor being designed by Professor Stanford Hennessy has progressed much faster after Li Xuan opened his golden finger, but the total number of transistors in the design is at least more than 50,000.

The success of the tape-out of ERM-1 has put Dongfang Electronics' wafer fab plan on the agenda, and the 6502 processors used by Dongfang Electronics were all produced by the wafer fab under Seiko Epson of Japan.

The 6502 chip is one of the mainstream chips on the market today, and its technology has been widely licensed by MOS Technology. Even if there is an accident at Epson's fab, Dongfang Electronics can always find a replacement supplier. But Li Xuan is not ready to hand over the newly developed ERM chip to a Japanese company for foundry, which is equivalent to handing over his life to the other party. (My novel "Rebirth Electronic Empire" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will be a 100% lottery gift for everyone!Open WeChat now, click on the "+" sign in the upper right corner "Add Friends", search for the official account "qdread" and follow, hurry up!) (To be continued......)

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