Every year in July, it is the time for Shirakawa Electric Products to be introduced.

This year is no exception, the new generation of the portable CD player D-02 has finally gotten rid of the shockproof and portability problems that were previously criticized by consumers.

The shock resistance has been greatly improved, the body has become thinner, and there is no longer a need for an additional battery box for power supply.

The most critical price remains unchanged at 49,800 yen, which can be described as a real increase but no price increase.

Such a sincere new generation of products has naturally been well received by many consumers.

After almost a year of development, the CD record market is no longer as stretched as it was last year.

Now the neon market has been flooded with a large number of CD records, and almost all record companies have released a few of these new records to a greater or lesser extent.

Because of the abundance of content, more and more people are starting to try this brand new music player.

In the first half of the year, Panasonic, Hitachi, Toshiba, etc. also launched their own CD players one after another.

But like Sony, the original CD players they developed were desktops.

After seeing the popularity of Shirakawa Electric's portable CD player, a related project was immediately launched in-house.

But to actually go public, it is estimated that it will not be possible until the end of the year.

Therefore, the CD players on the market are basically desktop computers.

As for portable CD players, it is not for nothing that other manufacturers besides Shirakawa Electric have such products.

Sony, too, launched its own portable CD player in the spring.

However, the embarrassing thing is that because I saw the portable model at the Shirakawa Electric briefing in July last year.

In a hurry, Sony launched its own portable project that month, when the chewing gum battery of white appliances had not yet produced results.

So now the portable model launched by Sony in the spring is the same as the original product of Shirakawa Electric, but also has an additional external battery box.

Don't you think that's a coincidence?

It was indeed a coincidence, Shirakawa Electric turned his hand upside down, replaced the all-in-one model after the gum battery, and looked at Sony with a smile and did not speak.

A portable one with an extra cumbersome, a thin and light all-in-one portable, the public knows very well how to choose.

In terms of product innovation, Sony is once again one step behind.

As for CD players from other manufacturers, portable is still a blank slate.

Even in the field of desktops, Shirakawa Electric did not fall behind and directly began to compete with them head-on.

After several years of development, Shirakawa Electric is no longer as cautious as before.

With sufficient technology accumulation, it is not afraid of the fierce encirclement and suppression of several well-known large factories.

In addition to the release of portable CD players, Shirakawa Electric's Walkman and other products have not stopped upgrading.

Its biggest highlight is to solve the problem of battery life, and the application of chewing gum batteries has also made the public curious about this new type of battery.

It is not only found in Shirakawa Electric's Walkman, CD player and other products, but also in a new model launched by Sony.

According to the official statements released by the two companies, one chewing gum battery is enough to support the Walkman for two hours of continuous playback.

A portable CD player equipped with four gum batteries can last more than two and a half hours.

After someone did the relevant tests themselves, this powerful battery began to gain popularity.

The number of charging and discharging times can be more than 500 times, and the price is only about 450 yen, which is actually a great deal to calculate carefully.

The Walkman can play for a maximum of one hour on two dry batteries, and the battery can be replaced 500 times to say tens of thousands of yen.

But now with the chewing gum battery, not only the battery life has increased, but the cost of use will also be greatly reduced.

This type of battery, which can be purchased at street vending machines, has been warmly welcomed by users of Shirakawa Electric and Sony.

However, it is a pity that it is only applied to the products of these two companies at present, and it is far from enough in terms of popularity.

Of course, because of the good feedback from the market, Sony has decided to use the design of the gum battery on other models as well.

In addition, several battery manufacturers such as Panasonic and Sanyo are also negotiating with Shirakawa Electric for the authorized production of chewing gum batteries.

For their active request, Shirakawa Electric did not refuse.

Only when more brands are added will chewing gum batteries accelerate their popularity and be accepted by more and more people.

According to internal estimates, in three or five years at most, or as little as one or two years, chewing gum batteries should be widely used in portable devices.

With the rapid development in the past few years, Shirakawa Energy should have made initial achievements in the field of batteries.

And with profits, there is money to invest in a series of research in the field of new energy, such as nickel-metal hydride batteries and lithium batteries.

Shirakawa Kaede's goal is not high, as long as Shirakawa Energy no longer needs to pay for itself, it can achieve internal circulation on its own, it will be considered a success.

But looking at the current situation, it is likely that Shirakawa Energy will be profitable this year.

Tsk, with the R&D expenses of the past few years, the subsidiaries under Shirakawa Holdings have gradually ushered in the harvest period.

It is foreseeable that from this year onwards, Shirakawa Holdings' annual profit will grow faster and faster.

…

In August, Shirakawa Kaede was in the office to check the profit statements of various products of Shirakawa Electric in the past six months.

As a listed company, in fact, there will be financial statements disclosed every quarter.

Of course, the regulations vary from company to company, some are disclosed once every six months, and some are disclosed once a year.

However, most companies will choose to publish once a year, as this is the minimum number of times required by law.

The same is true for Baichuan Electric, after all, who has nothing to do with the financial reports issued every day.

Of course, for the internal enterprise, monthly, quarterly, and semi-annual profit statements are also indispensable.

They are the basis for the company to make various business strategies, and it is also the most intuitive way for the decision-making level to view the company's operation.

According to the report in hand, the profit of the game console division in the past six months is roughly more than 20 billion yen.

Most of them came from the newly launched FES and game cartridges in April, which directly contributed nearly 16 billion yen to Shirakawa Electric's profits.

The handheld console is basically the same as last year, with only more than 4 billion yen in the first half of the year.

According to the year-on-year growth analysis, this market share is actually declining.

Of course, this is not to say that Shirakawa's market share has not grown, Nintendo has more.

The truth is that the two are about the same, and there is no significant growth in the handheld business.

This has something to do with the weakness of the original handheld consoles and the impact of home game consoles.

After all, the price of a disposable handheld is close to 5000 yen, and if you have this money, you can bite your teeth and go directly to the blue and white machine or the red and white machine.

And I bought a home console, and I can also play other games on this platform in the future.

The price of a box of game cartridges is also about 5,000 yen, which is basically the same as that of a handheld. But its gameplay, gameplay, and graphics all blow up the latter.

Children may not compare prices, but they just need to know that home consoles are fun and not expensive, and that's enough.

Therefore, the decline of handheld is inevitable in the market, and if no changes are made, its profits will not only not grow next year, but may even decline.

Shirakawa Kaede realized this a long time ago, which is why he urged HAL to hurry up and develop the next generation of handhelds.

As with any product, only by constantly innovating can it continue to maintain its market position.

Otherwise, it will be eliminated sooner or later, and from this point of view, the market is fair to a certain extent, of course, provided that there is no interference from external factors.

However, when it comes to the development of the next generation of handhelds, Shirakawa Kaede's face has also become a little unsightly.

HAL's progress there has been a lot of delay, and it's already a few months behind the expected launch date.

If it weren't for the fact that he has been too busy lately, Shirakawa Kaede would have gone to the scene to see what the problem was.

By next week at the latest, he'd have to squeeze in a day to see what's going on.

I was thinking about the handheld phone when suddenly there was a knock on the door outside.

"Please come in" Shirakawa Kaede put down the report in his hand and rubbed his eyebrows.

"President, do you know what just happened?" As soon as Akagi entered the door, he couldn't wait to open the conversation.

There was something strange on his face, and he couldn't tell whether he was happy or gloating.

"Is it a good thing?"

Looking at the lively expression, Shirakawa Kaede knew at a glance that this guy was stealing fun.

"Hehe," Akagi laughed first, "Nintendo is starting to recall their FC." ”

"Huh?" Shirakawa Kaede looked up in disbelief, "Recall? ”

"That's right! Not only were all of them recalled, but the current models were also discontinued across all channels. ”

This time, Shirakawa Kaede saw it very clearly, this guy was gloating.

"What the hell is going on?" Kaede Shirakawa also came to be interested.

This red-blue war is not over yet, why did Lao Ren withdraw his troops first.

It can't be a fraud, then the price is too great.

Recall, not to mention what damage it will bring to the corporate image.

The cost of manpower and material resources in this operation alone is staggering.

Considering the loss of the product itself, it will cost more money in the end.

Generally, it is not a major defect or safety issue in the product, and the company will not consider this step anyway.

And the next Akagi's explanation also confirmed Shirakawa Kaede's conjecture that the reason why Nintendo recalled FC was indeed a major quality problem.

With the official launch in April, Nintendo's FC has also sold nearly a million copies three months later.

But because of the increase in products sold, Nintendo has received more and more complaint calls here.

At first, Lao Ren thought it was a quality control problem, after all, some of the millions of products have quality problems.

But gradually, the after-sales personnel found that almost all the complaints were about a problem.

That is, Nintendo's FC game console will have flickering screens, freeze problems, and even direct downtime during use.

Feeling a hint of the unusual, the after-sales staff immediately reported to Masayuki Uemura, who was in charge of the development of the game console.

Masayuki Uemura, who got the news, took this issue very seriously, and he knew very well that if this matter was not handled well, it would bring immeasurable damage to Nintendo's reputation.

The hurried development team disassembled the problematic game console overnight, and after several days of investigation and verification, it was finally found that there was some problem with the circuit on the motherboard.

To be precise, there is a problem with the graphics chip PPU that assists the CPU, and its role is to reduce the pressure on the CPU and provide computing power for physics modeling, collision simulation, etc.

The PPU of Nintendo FC is also supplied by Ricoh, and if you want to solve the problem, you must change the circuit or replace the PPU.

After counting the previous complaint calls, Masayuki Uemura found that there were thousands of problematic game consoles.

With a numb scalp, he didn't dare to assert himself, so he could only hurriedly report the matter to Yamauchi Pu.

As Nintendo's "tyrant", it goes without saying that Yamauchi Pu is furious.

But now that the problem has arisen, it must be solved. The longer this kind of thing drags on, the greater the loss.

Yamauchi immediately decided to recall all FCs that had been sold before and immediately stopped selling new products.

This kind of thing can't be hidden at all, and if you let it go, it will be Nintendo's century-old signboard.

So from the beginning of August, Nintendo issued an announcement to start the recall process.

This is also the reason why Akagi came to Shirakawa Kaede for the first time after learning the news.

Friends and businessmen are in difficulty, do you think we will continue to watch the excitement, or will we fall into the ground?

PS: Nintendo FC recall, it is true in history, not made up by the author.

In addition, I've been too busy lately, and I haven't had time to read the comments, so forgive me~!

(End of chapter)