"The second direction is big data and cloud computing. ”

"We now have FF, QQ, and Renren.com, and these social networks generate massive amounts of data every day, and our game business also generates huge amounts of data every day. At the same time, after the opening of Alipay, it has successively connected to e-commerce websites including Joyo.com and Dangdang.com, and reached a payment cooperation with Ctrip, cutting into the online travel industry. ”

"These data, when they reach a certain scale, we can analyze and study these data, and accurately carry out some professional processing and processing, which is of great significance for us in marketing and advertising in the future. ”

"With the establishment of data centers in various parts of the country, we must carry out technical reserves in cloud computing, and in the future, Internet entrepreneurship and product services will become more and more vertical and diversified, and a large number of small and medium-sized companies need to provide data services, and big data and cloud computing are the core competitiveness of the future. ”

"The third direction is data-based deep learning and artificial intelligence. ”

"We don't have our own search business, but our social network will also provide us with massive data, and when Andriod enters the application stage in the future, I believe that there will be more data content based on mobile search converged to our background, which will be of great help to us to carry out the research and development of artificial intelligence, and in the future, we will be the direction of our research in the fields of speech recognition, fingerprint recognition, language and image understanding, intelligent search, automatic control, computer vision, etc. ”

Lin Feng smiled: "Of course, little by little, we are not in a hurry, this is a process of slowly accumulating in ten years." ”

Only then did Wang Hao know that Lin Feng had a more ambitious goal in mind, perhaps this was the real dream and peak of a high-tech company.

As for the content services such as music and games that were popular before, they are just a means to accumulate funds in the early stage for these lofty goals.

Content accumulates funds, capital drives technology, and technology feeds back content, and ultimately provides users with more convenient services.

That's the way a high-tech company grows!

"I understand, I took the matter of the Silicon Valley Research Institute!" Wang Hao nodded deeply, his heart full of a sense of mission and infinite passion.

Lin Feng said with a smile: "Lao Wang, don't be so serious, take your time, our footsteps are steady, so that we can accumulate deeper, Fengxing still has a long way to go." ”

…………

University of Delaare, Newark, Delaware.

As one of the oldest top-ranked public research universities in the United States, the University of Delaware is a research university with global influence and a world-renowned university with independent land, sea, space, and state-backed research institutions.

The two founders of Fingerorks came from this university.

When Ayne Esterman was a Ph.D., he was so busy with computers that he could barely type on the keyboard, so he turned to ergonomic keyboards in a fit of rage, using multi-touch technology to create a new type of tablet keyboard.

The keyboard can receive input from anywhere on the panel, and can receive multiple inputs at the same time, allowing the user a lot of freedom to operate without forcing you into an uncomfortable position like traditional keyboards. At the same time, with the software driver, the keyboard can also recognize various gestures, for example, several fingers touch the panel at the same time and then rotate clockwise, just like opening a bottle cap in life, which is equivalent to issuing a "Ctrl-O" command.

Westerman earned his Ph.D. in this technology, and then together with his mentor, Professor John Elias, he started a company called Fingerorks that specialized in the production of such keyboards.

Valued by their technological achievements, Westman and Elias hired professional agents through the University of Delaware, developed patent prosecution strategies for them, and drafted and filed patent applications.

However, the development of Fingerorks in the past few years has not been smooth.

At the end of the 90s, the popular touch screen products at that time were mainly LCD single-touch technology, and the invention of multi-touch technology was difficult to make truly mature and cheap products under the hardware conditions at that time.

In 2000, Fingerorks, like many start-ups, was still struggling with what kind of products to make and how to finance them.

By chance, they met Jeff hite, a business-savvy investor at an investor conference, who offered to join after seeing their technology demos and patents, promising to help them make a profit, on the condition that he would take charge of the company's management and operations. It was under Wright's leadership that Fingerorks began to engage with IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies.

At this time, Apple was looking for a patent related to touch control, and the two parties almost touched each other and began pre-acquisition negotiations.

Why did Apple start to pay attention to touch technology?

On the one hand, Apple's multi-touch tablet project has been underway for a long time, and in the HMI department, a few input engineers and key designers have actually made a prototype of a multi-touch interactive demonstration a few years ago, which looks a bit like the iPad. But due to a series of hurdles and the high price, the project, called the Q79 tablet, was finally discontinued, and many of Apple's ideas could be reimplemented if there was better multi-touch technology.

On the other hand, at this time, Lao Qiao is finally ready to make a mobile phone!

And what he wanted was "it had to have a small screen, a touch screen, no buttons, everything had to run on it." ”

Yes, at this time, Old Joe already had an idea to make a mobile phone similar to a touch screen.

Therefore, for the Fingerorks sent to the door, Old Joe nodded happily and could be acquired.

This matter was already in the past.

For Lao Qiao, how to balance the mobile phone ideas proposed by the NeXT gang (human-machine interface department) and the IPod department at this stage is more energy-consuming.

Since '04 was a year of IPod generosity, accounting for more than 50% of Apple's revenue, Tony Fadel, the head of the IPod department, has a very important position in the company.

At this time, many mobile phone manufacturers have begun to implant MP3 playback functions in mobile phones, Tony believes that if this continues, the IPod is likely to be subverted by mobile phones, so he has been a strong supporter of Apple's internal mobile phone project.

Even before Jobs began to agree to make mobile phones, he had already pulled a group of people into the IPod department, ready to make an iPod mobile phone first to convince Old Joe.

In this way, within Apple, two mobile phone research and development directions have been formed:

1. Make a mobile phone from the popular and well-known iPod (technically it would be easier to walk, and Jobs did not envision the iPhone as a mobile computing device but as a horsepower-enhanced mobile phone), which is also a project led by Tony Faddell of the Ipod department.

2. Transform a Mac into a miniature touch-based, phone-calling tablet (the idea is exciting, but full of futuristic abstraction). The idea was developed by Scott Forstall, who followed Steve Jobs from NeXT all the way to Apple, and who headed the HMI division, which has been developing the development of touch tablets.

Old Joe wasn't sure which direction was the best, so he simply asked the two teams to do it together to see who made the product that was more in line with what he wanted......

However, at this time, news suddenly came that a company from China was popular online and intervened in the acquisition of Fingerorks.

They actually put forward an outrageous purchase price of $100 million!

This is more than double the $50 million price offered by Apple before.

You know, although Apple's fame is very big in the industry and has a great attraction to the two founders of Fingerorks, it ...... , this is the United States, no one will get along with the dollar!

The purchase price of Fengxing is fully doubled, and for the two founders, it is enough to offset the appeal of Apple's fame.

When Adrian, Apple's head of mergers and acquisitions, got the news, he reported it to Old Joe as soon as possible.

"What kind of company is this?" Old Joe was a little curious, most of the opponents he met were Microsoft or IBM, Google has taken a lot of risks in the past two years, and in addition, few companies will go toe-to-toe with Apple, especially in acquisitions.

"An Internet company from China is mainly engaged in online games and social software, similar to Skype. The company is not publicly traded and, according to the data, has annual revenues of around $300 million. But its owner, Richard Lin, as you may have heard, is the richest man in China. He also has a NASDAQ-listed company. ”

Lao Qiao had indeed heard of Lin Feng and nodded: "It's him......." ”

He rubbed his fingers on his temples, a rare hesitation.

$100 million is obviously a lot of money, but that's not why hesitating.

Apple has abundant cash flow, not to mention 100 million US dollars, even 300 million, 500 million, which can be taken out at any time.

It's just that it's a bit big!

Apple's mobile phone project is top secret internally, and almost no one knows that Apple has begun research and development of the mobile phone project except for a few executives.

Jobs didn't want to attract attention because of such an acquisition.

Of course, Apple can claim to the outside world that the acquisition of Fingerorks is for the Trackpad touch platform project, but it is bound to attract media attention and industry discussions, such as Apple will have new great ideas in the field of tablets, and some people will even think about the topic of mobile phones.

And Lao Qiao's original idea was to make a quiet acquisition.

"What do you think?" asked Old Joe.

Adrian Perica, head of mergers and acquisitions, hesitated and said, "Purely in terms of price, it is indeed too high for a company like Fingerorks. It's just that I don't understand the urgency of this touch technology on the business side and can't make a judgment. Whether you continue to raise prices depends on what you mean. ”

Jobs nodded, he was a little hesitant.

Perhaps, whether or not Fingerorks must be acquired, he should listen to Foster's opinion. [.]