Outside the San Francisco branch of Sutar Commerce, a black Ford sedan with middle-aged men in gray coats in them parked across the street from the early days of the day, and then stuffed piles of coins into the automatic parking meters, and has been parked ever since.

When the door of the store opened and the business officially began, the chubby middle-aged man who was sitting in the passenger seat with the door facing the door of the store raised a binoculars and stared closely at everyone who entered and exited the store.

In the camera, the first customer happily rushed out with an unopened tape recorder with an irrepressible smile on his face.

"One!" The chubby middle-aged man calmly spat out a word.

Beside him, another man in gray immediately pressed the calculator in front of him, and then stopped.

A few more people laughed at each other, and walked out of the store, looking like a group.

"Two!"

With the help of professionalism, the telescope did not stop on their faces, but quickly swept over the packing box they were holding.

The teenagers probably bought it with money, but the five of them only came out with two portable tape recorders.

The other man in gray was expressionless, and his fingers clicked twice.

"One!"

"Three! Today's kids are so rich, I think I only had five dollars a week in pocket money. If you want to buy a basketball, you have to ask your mother to give it! ”

The gray-clothed man with a telescope nodded calmly and complained.

His companion entered the number correctly according to his report, and said indifferently: "When I was a child, I didn't even have pocket money, and I had to work at a gas station to afford to go to school. ”

The two chatted and counted at the same time.

They are professionals in this line of food, although there are many people in and out of the supermarket, and sometimes the view is occasionally blocked. But the gray-clothed man who counted the points always kept his head clear, and he knew who had already counted and who had missed it just now.

The supermarket is open all day, and there are people coming in between, and the two can't walk away. However, they were also prepared, and they all brought their own burgers, meat dogs, and cokes, although it was already cold, it was better than being hungry.

They didn't drive away until 9 p.m., when the supermarket closed.

The next day, the car appeared opposite the supermarket again, paid enough parking fees, and continued to count.

Ten days later, an investigation report was presented to Koney Boxer, LhK's product development manager.

"A total of 1,058 units of ...... were retailed in 10 days"

Kony put down the report, whose investigators could only make statistics on retail outlets. In fact, he has more detailed data in his hands, which is the data of Suteng Trading's secondary market development, and the source channels are those local sellers who have cooperated with LhK.

Sumeng San Francisco has sold a total of 5,000 to 6,000 portable tape recorders in the past ten days!

In addition to San Francisco, Suteng Commerce also has a New York branch, with a total of more than 10,000 units on both sides......

That's just ten days of data.

If it is maintained, it will not be less than 30,000 units sold in a month. Then, this is only the United States, not counting Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Southeast Asia......

All of them add up, is there 100,000 units?

Kony turned back in his chair and looked out the window, quickly crunching the numbers in his head.

The portable tape recorder launched by the new era retails for as little as $299 and as high as $999. In fact, the $999 deluxe version won't sell too much, so the average selling price should be around $400.

100,000 units, the total value is 40 million, and the annual turnover reaches 400 million!

A greedy gaze was cast in Kone's eyes.

The total sales volume of the tape recorder industry in the United States last year was more than 9 million units, including desktop recorders, cassette recorders, and car stereos. If you count the total of the global industry, the total number is more than 20 million units, with a total value of more than 14 billion US dollars.

According to the survey, the emergence of portable tape recorders quickly squeezed out the market for cassette recorders, and also had a certain impact on desktop tape recorders.

In the future, this portable tape recorder is likely to become the mainstream of the market, and the total sales volume may reach more than 10 million units per year, or even more!

Kony was a little moved.

If it is a million units, the total is several hundred million, but if it is counted as tens of millions of units, the value of the entire industry will rise to billions, or even tens of billions of output value, which is very exciting.

That's enough to entice LhK to get a piece of the pie.

But when he thought about it, and calculated the chips that LhK had in it, he didn't feel depressed.

LhK is a long-established tape recorder manufacturer with a history dating back three or six years, from the earliest steel wire recorders, to manufacturing and selling recording equipment. After decades of development, after World War II, the company's business scope also expanded to power amplifiers, audio, speakers, cables and other fields, and reached its peak in the fifties.

However, the good times were short-lived.

After the Japanese bought tape recorder technology, they quickly introduced Japanese-made transistor radios and tape recorders, which were then sold back to the United States. The Japanese took advantage of their cheap labor costs to sweep the U.S. market and beat local companies to the ground.

Up to now, in addition to continuing to adhere to high-end Hi-Fi amplifiers, audio, speakers, and cables, the original tape recorder products have almost disappeared. The tape recorders sold on the market are now all made in Japan, Sanyo, Mitsubishi, Yamaha, ......

LhK is no exception.

Admittedly, the equipment it produces is all very high-end and expensive. The price of a power amplifier is as high as thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, and a pair of speakers is even more expensive for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but this kind of business is still too little, and it may not be possible to close a single order in a week.

In fact, LhK no longer has its own line of tape recorders.

Looking at a huge piece of fat that can't be eaten, it's really an ordeal.

Kony folded his hands, pursed his lips and pondered for a while, then suddenly got up from his chair and walked out of the office and downstairs.

He didn't try to knock on the door, it was a soundproof door with a wooden package, and he wouldn't hear it if he knocked inside.

As soon as he pushed the door open, he was surrounded by melodious music, and several testers who were auditioning inside were listening intently, with intoxicated expressions on their faces.

"Hey, Andy......"

"Shh

As soon as Kony spoke, everyone in the room raised their fingers and shrugged him, motioning for him to be quiet and for him to close the door so that the outside noise would not disturb him.

He shrugged his shoulders and gently closed the door.

He is not a listener and does not have a particularly strong sense of analysis, but after working in a recording equipment company for so many years, he also knows that what is playing is the masterpiece "Four Seasons" composed by the Italian composer and violinist Vivaldi.

Naturally, it's not that the staff is lazy, on the contrary, it's their job.

This is LhK's vocal listening room, which is dedicated to practical testing of the company and foreign equipment.

At the moment, on the test bench, there is a tape recorder.

As soon as Konecranes looked at the unique handle, he knew it was the same portable tape recorder that the company had bought and handed over to the vocal room for data testing.

However, this recorder is much larger than the portable recorder in music videos and commercials. The overall black color of the tape recorder has a dark surface with a matte surface, while the bright silver metal strip edges give the tape recorder a sci-fi color and look more elegant and elegant.

This is a deluxe version of the hand-held recording introduced in the new era.

It is said to be portable, and its size is not much smaller than the desktop audio, which can be said to be a combined audio. The top layer is the record player, the second layer is the radio, the third layer is the equalizer, the fourth layer is the amplifier, and the fifth layer is the recording deck.

It's priced at $999!

In order to test the quality of the recording equipment of its competitors, LhK also contributed nearly $2,000 to their sales.

Kony didn't want to disturb their work, so he just sat bored and listened quietly.

With his unprofessional hearing, he feels that this tape recorder works very well, and the music analysis and explosiveness are very good.

He even had the illusion of smelling the pine scent when the violin was playing!

The so-called pine fragrance actually refers to the bow of the small lift, and the little noise brought up by the burrs when the bowstring touches. It's actually a kind of noise, but the human ear will naturally associate it with this ambient noise, as if smelling the pine scent applied to a violin.

He was shocked!

This is the basic quality of high-end desktop audio!

A tape recorder that costs less than 1,000 yuan can actually make him, a layman, hear the smell of pine, which is terrible.

If all the tape recorders sold in the new era had this sound quality, how could they sell thousands or tens of thousands of amplifiers?

The music subsided, and it came to an end.

Kony couldn't wait to ask eagerly, "This is the new-age sT140?" Although he clearly saw that this portable tape recorder was being tested, he still asked in disbelief, he really couldn't accept the result.

"Yes!"

The tester replied grimacingly, and handed him a sheet of test data.

Kony hurriedly took it and quickly skimmed through it, there was so much data in it, he just skimmed it, turned straight to the key data, and then exclaimed.

"Frequency response range: 20~20kHz, plus or minus difference 0.5? So high! ”

The audio signal that the human ear can receive is between 20 hertz and 20 kilohertz, and in fact, many people do not reach such a wide listening frequency. Therefore, a playback device, as long as its playback effect reaches this interval value, it basically meets all the audio signals that the human ear needs to hear, that is to say, the signal is not missing.

That's what Hi-Fi means.

The positive and negative error is the stability of the audio playback process, and whether an audio device is good or not, this data is also critical.

A device of 20~20kHz with a positive or negative error of 3db and a device of 50~16kHz with a plus or minus error of 0. 5. Compared with the equipment, although the former has a high frequency response width, the actual listening quality is not as good as the latter.

And on this test form, both of these data have reached a very high level, which cannot but surprise Kony.

He continued to look at another important piece of data, the signal-to-noise ratio.

The signal-to-noise ratio refers to the ratio between the various noises generated by the device and the signal level, which is usually identified by db. The signal-to-noise ratio is as large as possible, and the signal-to-noise ratio can reach 98 for the highest-end audio and power amplifier of LhK at present.

Here he breathed a sigh of relief, the test data of the sT140 was 89db.

But he only lowered his snack slightly, and his face immediately became grim.

This value is already remarkable, according to the high-fidelity standard established in '73, as long as it reaches 85, it is considered high-fidelity, and 89 is close to the level of top record players.

"This is the test data played back with the recording deck......"

"What?"

Kony exclaimed, he thought it was the result of a record player test, so he could accept it, although the data was relatively high. However, this is actually the data tested with the recording deck, which is unbelievable.

"During the analysis of the whole machine, we found that they used a series of new technologies, such as ceramic heads, audio integrated circuits, new noise reduction circuits, gain circuits, etc., and the stability of the movement was also extremely high, with very little jitter, so as to ensure high-quality audio output, and ......" The tester explained various technical issues to him based on the previous data.

"Stop!"

Kony pressed his hands down and stopped the other man from continuing to explain.

"I don't need to know so many technical details, I just want to ask, can we copy this product?" That's what he cares about.

Several technicians looked at each other, made eye contact, and then the lead technician said tactfully, "Replication is definitely no problem." The level of integrated circuits, we are the highest, there are no integrated circuits that cannot be copied. However, replication is certainly not cost-effective, we have calculated all kinds of new technologies in it, and if we do it ourselves, the construction of the production line alone will cost a lot of money......"

"I see!" Kony didn't need him to explain.

This is also the reason why the United States' electronic level is much higher than that of Japan, but it cannot compete with its rivals.

Low labor, not only the cost of the final product, but the entire industrial chain, from raw materials, production lines, components, spare parts, assembly, and a series of production processes, all intermediate products are lower than the United States!

That's a terrible statistic.

The cost of the final product is slightly lower, which can be compensated by other means, but the entire industrial chain, every intermediate link is low, which is simply desperate.

There is only one countermeasure: to be high-end, to be more high-end.

Or give up!

"I need to report to the general manager immediately!"

Kony couldn't stay any longer, so he hurriedly opened the door to the listening room and rushed out like a whirlwind, forgetting to close the door.

Several technicians looked at the door, also in a daze.

LhK has been driven out of the recording booth market by the Japanese, and they are guarding high-end amplifiers and stereos, so are they going to lose even this last market?

This time, it is no longer the Japanese who come to seize the market, but the Chinese!

(The editor's notice will be on the shelves next week, and I completely messed up my thoughts in a hurry.) Now the more anxious I am, the more I can't sort out my thoughts.,Today I'm just going to figure it out.,I haven't thought about it yet.,I'm sorry)