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Jianye River, Xicui Garden, and the Lion Garden west of the Lion Rock are the two best high-end villa communities in the geographical environment of Jianye Linjiang. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Lee Jae-so stood in front of the north window, looking out at the blurred river at night, listening to the low sound of the river lapping against the shore rocks, and on the windowsill was a report by Samsung Economic Research Institute's assessment of Microsoft's acquisition of a 30% stake in Global Music Online.

Li Zaixin Yu sat on the sofa, tilted her head to look at the report on the windowsill, and pursed her lips slightly.

Samsung Economic Research Institute is Samsung's think tank, and it is also recognized by the HG public as the most outstanding industrial economic research institution of HG. Samsung's development of the Chinese market is not as smooth as expected, in addition to other aspects of industrial adjustment, the headquarters also made a decision, that is, in Jianye to set up the Samsung Economic Research Institute China Center to systematically study the deep problems of the Chinese market.

The reason why Li Xinyu is sitting here with a frown is because she is required to contribute to Samsung as a member of the family, and she is asked to participate in the work of the Samsung Research Institute China Center, but the center is still under construction, and she can be lazy and not participate for the time being.

"Has Xinyu read the report from the headquarters?" Kim Nam-yong walked in with coffee and gave it to Lee Jae-so and Lee Xinyu.

"Hmm!" Li Xinyu nodded, feeling really sad in her heart.

Who knows, ordinary brothers and sisters love each other, but Li Xinyu rarely gets this feeling from the brothers and sisters in the family, his father was originally cultivated as an heir very early, and the previous situation, Li Xinyu was still young and had no memory, but after the death of her grandfather in eight or seven years, she had gone to school, and the strange atmosphere in the family during that time made her remember it deeply, and now everyone began to fight for the position of heir again.

What exactly is Lee Jae-so's idea, and why does he have to force himself to participate in the work of the Samsung Economic Research Institute's China Center under the pretext of his family? Is it possible to shift the blame for the failure of the Chinese market onto someone else? Could it be that by allowing herself to participate in trade secrets, is it expecting her to betray the family?

Jin Nanyong saw Li Xinyu frowning, took the report in his hand, flipped through it casually, saw that the atmosphere was a little solemn, wanted to divert the topic, thought about it, and read the last part of the unfinished report.

Kumho opened his mouth to the Microsoft lion and asked for $900 million, which was discussed in the outside world, and the Samsung Economic Research Institute, which provides strategic think tank support for the Samsung Group, soon entered into an in-depth study of the matter.

In the second half of '97, when the financial turmoil hit Asia, Aida Group RB acquired the global music online website at a price of less than $1 million, and then ESS and Aida Group North America injected $20 million in funds for development, and obtained online sales authorization from most traditional music distributors, including the four major international record labels such as Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI.

At the end of '98, Toshiba and Scober jointly injected $60 million into Global Music Online, acquiring a 30% stake. On the one hand, the global music online does not have to worry about the lack of capital, on the other hand, the top three hardware manufacturers of digital music players are completely bundled with the global music online.

Toshiba and Scober paid a total of $60 million in cash last year for a 30 percent stake in Global Music Online. When Toshiba and Scooper accepted this offer at the end of last year, the industry felt a little incredible, but from the favorable perspective of iplayer hardware sales, it is not an unbearable thing to give Kumho a little extortion - if you don't extort Kumho, you will lose even more in the future, which is not something unimaginable.

A year has passed, Kumho has once again raised the price of Microsoft by fifteen times for a 30% stake, and Lee Jae-so does not know whether Toshiba and Scooper's top brass are secretly rejoicing or secretly wiping the sweat from the tip of their noses......

Compared with the amount of money invested by Kumho, if Microsoft accepts this offer, it means that Kumho's investment has achieved an excess return of nearly 150 times in more than two years.

Mr. Lee stared at the glimmering river in the night, and remained silent for a long time, partly because of Xinyu's resistance and because of the economic data that gave him a heavy feeling in the report, which seemed to tell him that he was far from being one of the best among the rising stars of the world's financial and business world.

Kim Nam-yong also remained silent, and when the outside world generally questioned that Kumho's lion's big mouth would definitely anger Microsoft, the final conclusion of the Samsung Economic Research Institute's report turned out to be "the offer of $900 million is not too outrageous"!

The report points out that this year's copyright storm in Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea and the expanding dmp-iplayer hardware market have determined the growth space of global music online.

Although the copyright storm set off by traditional distributors in Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea and other economically developed regions this year has made decisive progress after the summer, and the free Internet music resources in economically developed areas have decreased sharply, and the region is the current market focus of iplayer, so it has seriously limited the increase in iplayer hardware sales, but due to the increasing maturity of flash memory commercial technology, iplayer has a great room for price reduction. In fact, the impact of the copyright storm on the sales of iPlayer hardware is far less than imagined.

It's just that everyone is enjoying the excess profits at this time and is not in a hurry to adjust the price.

According to the report, as long as the price of mainstream iPlayer products in the market is reduced by one-third, the increase in hardware sales can return to the level before the copyright storm.

As one of the top three suppliers in this field, Samsung certainly knows what stage of the development of NAND flash memory commercial technology is.

Samsung Electronics' HG headquarters has just developed a prototype of a flash memory chip with a 1G reserve, and it is expected to be ready for large-scale commercial production in less than a year. Although it is not possible to accurately judge which step Kumho's technical level has reached at this time, but it can be roughly judged that the technical gap between Kumho and Samsung in flash memory chips is between the first and second generations, if necessary, Kumho should also have the ability to put a large number of flash memory particles with 256M storage capacity on the market - Toshiba's technology investment in flash memory chips has declined, Toshiba and IBM have set their sights on the micro-hard disk technology with a larger storage capacity, compared with the technical prospects of micro-hard disks, Mass production of flash memory chips with 1G storage capacity at the earliest by the end of next year is still too small.

Toshiba and IBM have been developing microdisk technology for more than a year, and there is no mature commercial technology yet, and flash memory chips are still the core factor that determines the price of iplayer.

Kumho launched four iPlayer products in the North American market at this time, with prices ranging from $199 to $699, and Kim believes that even if Kumho cuts the price of the highest-end four-core 512M iPlayer with a market price of $699 to less than $300.

The report pointed out that Kumho has a considerable initiative, and Kumho has significantly lowered the price of iplayers in North America to stimulate the rapid growth of the hardware market, and to promote the global music online to gain more growth space at the expense of hardware profits, and the equity value of the global music online will naturally rise.

Including Samsung Electronics, other digital music player hardware manufacturers certainly do not want the price of hardware to drop sharply, and the market increase caused by the sharp drop in price cannot offset the loss of profits caused by the sharp decline in price in a short period of time.

Although Microsoft has not yet shown its skills in the consumer electronics hardware market, what consumer electronics manufacturer in the world dares to underestimate Microsoft's expansion?

All the initiative is in the hands of Kumho, including Samsung, Toshiba, and Scooper, and everyone is looking at Kumho and watching Kumho's interests weigh.

Toshiba and Scooper are better, after all, Toshiba owns 20% of the equity of Global Music Online, and Scober owns 10% of the equity of Global Music Online, and their profit loss on hardware sales can at least make up for some of the equity appreciation.

Of course, there are only a few to make up, and if Microsoft accepts Kumho's offer, Toshiba's $4,000 stake will increase to $600 million.

You must know that dragged down by the financial turmoil, Toshiba's total net profit of all consumer electronics, telecommunications, and computer businesses in '98 was less than $600 million.

Toshiba and Scober have any profit losses in hardware sales, and it is enough to make up for the transfer of part of their equity to venture funds at a low price.

Kim Nam-yong stood a little closer to the north window in his heart and pondered all kinds of tricks in it, only Samsung is a motherless child, and the hardware sales profit may suffer a great loss, and it is impossible to get compensation from the global music online like Toshiba and Scooper.

After a year of hard work, Samsung's global sales of iplayer will surpass Scober and squeeze into the top three, but what's the use? When Kumho closely integrated iPlayer with the online music sales model of Global Music Online, Samsung was destined to be in a passive position forever by seizing only hardware sales.

Lee Jae-so suddenly turned around, and Kim Nam-yong was startled, seeing Lee Jae-so's eyes wide and shining, he forgot to ask him what he had in mind.

"Microsoft is going to step in, and we can't stop it, so why can't we take the initiative instead of letting Microsoft cooperate with Kumho?" Lee Jae-so asked loudly, hitting his palm with his fist hard, seeing that the market size of iplayer was getting bigger and bigger, and the rope on Kumho's head was getting tighter and tighter.

"Replicating Global Music Online Beyond Global Music Online?" Kim Nam-yong asked, and he and Mr. Lee were communicating in Korean without finding it laborious to describe him.

"Although it is a little difficult, it is better than us strangling Kumho and Microsoft blackmailing Kumho for $900 million!" Lee Jae-so said.

"We want to cooperate with Microsoft, and Kumho will take the initiative to lower the price of Microsoft?" Jin Nanyong asked and glanced at Li Xinyu.

Li Xinyu pursed her lips and didn't speak, pretending to think, but she didn't let the atmosphere be too stiff.

"Kumho's initiative to cut Microsoft's price is also beneficial to us," said Lee. "Kumho will not give up too much profit from hardware sales and slow down the pace of significant price reductions due to the reduction of profits from the global music online equity transfer; The decrease in the amount of funds that Kumho received at one time is not a bad thing. ”

Kim Nam-yong thinks what Lee Jae-so said makes sense, but he thinks it's too simple, could it be that when Kumho made an offer of $900 million to Microsoft, he didn't consider that it would anger Microsoft, and he didn't consider that it would give them a chance? There are some things that I can't think through and can't do anything, so I can only judge things based on the amount of information I already have. In addition, they can only make suggestions to the headquarters, whether the headquarters will adopt it or not, and after the headquarters adopts it, most of them will also be implemented by American companies.

Kim Nam-yong thought again, what does Mitsui's Ikesa Hidezo think about this? Thinking so, he glanced at Li Xinyu again.

Hidezo Ikesa and others are also in Jianye, and as the general representative of Mitsui & Co. in China, he was invited to attend the completion ceremony of the main project.

The Asian wafer market is far from recovering, except for a few wafer factories that can be full, such as NEC Electronics has spare capacity in RB's local wafer factories, and naturally will not distribute the business to this side.

Chi Sahide didn't want to attend the completion ceremony of the main project, but the reality was that if he didn't come forward to cheer up Huaxia NEC, Huaxia NEC didn't know how much it would suppress Zhongjing Microchip.

He has now received news that the US authorities also hope to promote China's accession to the WTO and reach a bilateral agreement between China and the United States as soon as possible, and the US authorities hope that China will make greater concessions in opening up the domestic market, so it is very likely that the Wafer Technology Transfer Association of China Chip Microchip and Deyi will relax the review standards.

This is a situation that almost all electronics manufacturers in RB, Taiwan, and HG do not want to see.

Once the wafer technology transfer agreement between Sinochip Microchip and Deyi is reviewed by the U.S. authorities, the wafer manufacturing level of Sinochip Microchip can be improved by two generations in a very short period of time, and the growth of Aida Group and Kumho, which stand behind Sinochip Microchip, is so amazing in recent years that it is almost certain that once the technology transfer agreement is reviewed, it will have a great impact on the Asian electronics industry.

Some basic electronic industries in RB, HG and Taiwan can only be forced to move to China, where labor costs are lower and human resources are abundant.

Whether it is observing the changes in things from a realistic perspective or the personal grudge with that guy, Ikesa Hidezo wants to promote the production of Huaxia NEC as soon as possible.

Huaxia NEC is not a loss, he doesn't care, and he doesn't need the Japanese side to bear the loss anyway. If Huaxia NEC loses a lot of money, and Zhongjing Microchip makes a lot of profits, according to his understanding of Chinese officials, Chi Zuo Xiuzang does not have to worry that the Chinese official will agree to Huaxia NEC to let Zhongjing Microchip acquire, and the Chinese official will definitely hold Huaxia NEC strongly, sometimes it is too difficult to support, and it will naturally pull the shelf.

With such a thought, Chi Zuo Hidezo came over to participate in the completion ceremony of Huaxia NEC in a high-profile manner, and also pulled some important figures of NEC Electronics over, and also eagerly coordinated in the middle, so that NEC Electronics promised that the trial production would hand over some wafer foundry orders to Huaxia NEC for completion - always give some sweetness first.

Ikesa Hidezo only learned about Kumho's big mouth to Microsoft Lion almost before boarding the plane to Jianye, and he was also a little confused at the time, and he didn't know why Kumho dared to offer a price of 900 million US dollars.

It is precisely because of some contexts that I feel more headaches, and when attending the completion ceremony of the main project of Huaxia NEC, Ikezo Hidezo will subconsciously frown even if he wants to laugh.

For the past two decades, the portable music player market has been dominated by Japanese companies, from which Japanese electronics companies have made huge profits. So far, Sony has sold nearly 200 million Walkmans, 50 million CDs, and 5.2 million MD-Walkmans worldwide.

The reason why Sony can ascend to the throne of the global consumer electronics industry today is that the portable music player market has made a great contribution.

Before Kumho launched DMP-iPlayer, Sony and other Japanese companies never considered any other company that could compete with them in the portable music player market, and when Kumho first launched DMP-iPlayer on the RB market in early '98, Sony and other Japanese companies except Toshiba were dismissive.

Toshiba's alliance with Kumho did not change their stance either, and it was not until the end of '98 that the total sales of DMP-iPlayer in North America surpassed that of MD for the first time, and Sony and other Japanese companies were a little panicked.

The reason why dmp-iplayer can rise rapidly in 98 years is related to the existence of a large number of free music resources on the Internet, Sony and other Japanese companies are very clear about this, and they really want to turn the situation back from this aspect.

As one of the world's four major music publishers, Sony authorizes Global Music to sell music online and the copyright is owned by Sony. For this reason, it is inconvenient for Sony to directly come forward to arrest Kumho and fight the infringing officials, and the Recording Industry Association of America has become the best representative. However, I never expected that the infringement lawsuit that I thought would be able to deter Kumho from withdrawing from North America has led to almost all emerging Internet-related capital forces in North America inclined to sympathize with Kumho, which has also made the IDEA brand famous in North America, and the sales of products have surged, so that the sales of Japanese brands of CD and MD in North America have declined slightly since March.

After a period of scrambling, Sony and Japanese companies and the Recording Industry Association of America adjusted their tactics to directly target the infringement lawsuits at Internet companies that provide free music resources. Not only the Recording Industry Association of America, but Sony, as one of the world's four major music distributors, can also go shirtless and launch dozens of lawsuits in RB.

This time, they found the right beat, and after the sharp decline in free music resources on the Internet, the sales growth of dmp-iplayer in developed countries and regions came to an end temporarily. Although copyright problems in economically underdeveloped countries and regions are still serious, the low penetration rate of computers in economically underdeveloped regions and the high price of dmp-iplayer further limit sales in the region. Kumho began selling 64M ordinary iPlayers at a price of 2,000 yuan in the domestic market in the summer, and sold less than 20,000 units throughout the summer.

Ikesa Hidezo is quite clear about the whole thing, and he also uses Mitsui's forces to secretly coordinate and promote; Hiroyuki Nakamura, the contact person who came forward to coordinate this matter, is also an old acquaintance of Kumho. Seeing that the momentum of dmp-iplayer sales growth was contained, Hidezo Ikesa and Hironoto Nakamura thought that the first battle was barely won.

Nakamura Hiroyuki looks at this matter more from Sony's standpoint, Ikesa Hidehide is more or less mixed with personal grudges, who would have thought that this kind of pleasure of temporarily winning would not be held for a month and be shattered, only to find that he should not have any pleasure at all.

Curb the growth of global DMP-iplayer sales, but Kumho has nearly tripled its sales in North America through an official with the Recording Industry Association of America, and it has only eased a little in the past month -- however, Sony and other music publishers' purging of free music resources on the Internet has directly led to a sharp increase in the market value of global music online, which is the fundamental reason why Kumho dares to open his mouth with Microsoft Lion and offer $900 million for 30% equity.

From the beginning to the end, Kumho was picking up big bargains and thinking through some things, and Ikesa Hidezo felt bitter in his mouth, and he felt like he was going to vomit blood.

Toshiba and Samsung's joining the dmp-iplayer camp threatens the king of Japanese companies in the portable music player market.

In Ikesa Hidezo's view, the reason why Kumho can rise, can miraculously rise in more than five years, has a lot to do with the big tree of Kumho Deyi, not to mention far, without Deyi, Zhongjing Microchip with its own ability to improve the wafer process technology for two generations, not to mention ten years - if Kumho is next to Microsoft, then it will be necessary!