Nokia chose to hold the iphone launch event on the first day of 2002, which shows that they are confident enough in this product to challenge the position of Mphone in the high-end field.

It's not that there are no mobile phone companies that want to make mobile phones more than $500, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Samsung and other giants have tried, the problem is that consumers don't buy it.

Everyone knows the benefits of being a premium brand, especially a global brand like Nokia, who had previously thought of adopting a sub-brand model, mimicking the relationship between Volkswagen and Audi and launching a sub-brand like Rittal in 1998 that focuses on the high-end market.

When Nokia's definition of Rittal was to create high-end mobile phones from luxurious gemstones and luxury leathers, Zhou Xin launched the Mphone.

Purely in terms of price, the pricing of tens of thousands of dollars in Rittal is obviously a few streets ahead of Mphone, but in terms of overall revenue and future mobile phone development direction, Mphone is obviously far ahead.

No one dares to guarantee which direction the future of mobile phones will develop, Zhou Xin's fame and the success of Mphone prove to peers that applications equipped with Internet mobile phones may be the right way.

So Nokia has invested a lot of effort in the iPhone, hoping to create a good enough Internet mobile phone, but also for Nokia to capture the market of more than $500.

At present, only Matrix can be said to have gained a firm foothold in the global mobile phone brand above $500, and even if there are other mobile phone brands that sell such an expensive mobile phone, the sales are also very impressive.

Time in Finland is five hours behind Yenching time, so when Zhou Xin woke up, Nokia's press conference was over, and he found a summary email from Matrix's market analysis department about the iphone in his mailbox.

For the first time, the iPhone is equipped with NFC, giving users a new option to bind their credit cards to their phones via NFC.

This allows users to complete the payment through the iPhone, because the Europa region is only open to electronic payments, and NewPay just obtained the Europa electronic payment license last month, and the Europa region's electronic payments are far less mature than American.

It just so happens that the NFC chip designed by STMicroelectronics has come into play, and Nokia and STMicroelectronics have created the NFC function, and Nokia hopes to overtake in the corners of the Europa region with a feature that the Mphone does not have.

Zhou Xin felt a little funny after seeing it, and now the NFC function is a little whimsical, because the NFC chip wants to work, and the POS machine that needs to swipe the card also has an NFC chip.

What's the use of having an NFC chip on your head now? Of course, it can also be promoted, but for supermarkets, it also costs to change this.

When NewPay promoted QR codes, it took a lot of effort to replace the manufacturer's scanning equipment with cameras that support QR code scanning, which is still based on NewPay's tens of millions of users in Americon.

Of course, the iphone also comes pre-loaded with NewPay, and like the Mphone, it supports all the features of NewPay.

At the same time, the iphone is equipped with a similar Weibo and Chat, and Weibo is called Nokia Show.

They understand Weibo as a kind of show, a kind of display of your life.

Although Weibo is more of a role now, key politics enthusiasts are still in the minority, and the power of key politics has gradually grown after September.

At the time Nokia designed this feature, the Twin Towers were still alive, and their understanding of Weibo was to show.

Finally, there is the app store, where Nokia has launched a store similar to the Mphone, where you can change mobile apps on your computer, and at the same time, EA, Ubisoft, and Nintendo have helped them create several high-quality mobile games.

A lot of space was devoted to games at the press conference, and it can be seen that Nokia quickly grasped the focus of Internet mobile phones, at least just for the game, there will be a lot of users who pay for it.

In the early days of personal computers, one was for commercial offices, and the other was for video games.

After Zhou Xin finished reading it, he felt a sense of threat, but it was not strong.

Because the native application design of the iphone is far less perfect than that of Mphone, and more importantly, the chip, which is at least three years ahead of the entire era in the field of commercial mobile chips.

About a month before the iphone press conference, Zhou Xin knew the specific parameters of Nokia's mobile phone chip, the XScale chip designed by Intel based on the ARM v5 architecture.

This chip was designed to fill Intel's gap in low-power processors, and Nokia used the first generation of the XScale family: the PXA25x

PXA25x has three frequency versions of 200MHz, 300MHz, and 400MHz, according to Zhou Xin's speculation, the high probability is the 200MHz version, the small probability is the 300MHz version, and it is almost impossible to be the 400MHz version.

Because of the power consumption, the higher the frequency, the higher the power consumption.

Zhou Xin knew a lot about Intel's XScale series of chips, and later when he chatted with Intel's engineers, Intel regretted this series of chips internally, thinking that it was because he missed XScale that he missed the bonus period of the mobile Internet for more than ten years.

PXA25x is Intel's first product to enter mobile chips, Intel was originally built for handheld computers, so it will focus on power consumption, but not so much.

Mobile phones and handheld computers have completely different requirements for battery life, Mphone has been criticized by users for 6 hours of high-frequency use and 10 hours of battery life for low-frequency use, and it is also the main reason for Mphone's opponents on online forums to attack Mphone.

"People with bad brains would pay $599 for a phone that only lasts six hours."

It's like attacking ideal users, focusing on buying electric cars just to buy sofas, refrigerators, and color TVs, and attacking NIO users, focusing on buying JAC cars.

As for Xiaopeng, the name alone does not need to be said by opponents.

The battery life of a handheld computer is generally around 3 hours, so the PXA25x does not do a good job of balancing battery life and performance.

Therefore, Zhou Xin estimates that the power consumption of the iphone is likely to be 200MHz, which also determines that when it is first listed, there will be a bug that supports loading too many apps because of insufficient performance.

But Zhou Xin knew that he couldn't let his guard down at all, because a giant like Nokia reacted very quickly.

From a historical point of view, Nokia's collapse in the field of mobile phones seems to be an instant, and Zhou Xin still feels strong pressure in the face of this era.

Because of the hurricane effect he brings, it is likely that Nokia will pay far more attention to the mobile Internet than later generations, so that he does not have much first-mover advantage to speak of.

Of course, Zhou Xin knows that he has Samsung's chip technology in his hands and will definitely be able to occupy a place in the mobile Internet era, but he is worried that there will be no status of Apple in the future.

Judging from the product design of the Nokia version of the iphone alone, Zhou Xin did not read Nokia's arrogance at all, and they borrowed a lot from Mphone's successful experience in the app.

Zhou Xin put down the Mphone and frowned, he was thinking about whether to launch the Mphone with a touch screen this year.

It is better to wait for the technology to be more mature next year before launching it.

Because Mphone's sales are very good, in the face of competitors also fighting, and Matrix's patent accumulation in the field of touch screen is not enough, this year can achieve the results he expected, but it is still a little bit interesting.

Therefore, Mphone can hold on for another year, and if the second-generation Mphone is launched next year, it will definitely be able to beat other mobile phone brands to the north.

In addition, Americon will not launch 3G until 2003, so Zhou Xin believes that next year is a good time point.

But the frequency of updates is too slow, and there are so many changes from the first generation to the second generation, which leads to higher and higher expectations from users for Mphone, which is also not a good thing.

Li Jingyi saw Zhou Xin's face full of sadness, and she asked, "What's wrong?" Nokia's new product works too well and puts too much pressure on you? ”

Zhou Xin returned to China this time and came back with Li Jingyi, originally Zhou Xin wanted to go to Shenhai to meet and chat with Hu Zhengming and Lin Benjian, the core backbone of Xinxin Technology.

As a result, they all went back to America for Christmas and New Year's Day.

That's the case with Ameriken's executives in China, who can take both Christmas and Chinese New Year, which is equivalent to two long vacations.

Zhou Xin said: "No, Nokia is not under much pressure, at least not now."

I was thinking about something else. ”

Jingyi Li: "Well, I took a course on the history of technology at Berkeley last semester, and the professors who took this class spoke very highly of Mphone, thinking that Mphone represents the direction of the future.

Then in class, I asked everyone, what do you think is the best app for Mphone?

There are all kinds of answers, Weibo, including "Prince of Persia", "Graffiti Jump" and so on. ”

Doodle Jump is a mobile game developed by Flamingo itself, which is completely their own idea, and Zhou Xin did not interfere.

It's just that after seeing this game, although the game art is different, the gameplay is very similar, Zhou Xin quickly associated it with graffiti jumping, and then clapping the board called graffiti jumping.

The $2.99 mini-game sold half a million copies in just six months of its launch, making it the best-selling app on Mphone.

Li Jingyi asked, "Do you know which application the professor thinks is the best?" ”

Zhou Xin said: "It is obviously the Mphone store, and there is a follow-up application with the Mphone store."

I was even able to know what he was trying to say. ”

Li Jingyi's eyes widened, with an incredulous look: "What do you want to say?" ”

Zhou Xin said: "He definitely wants to compare Intel's 4004 chip with Mphone."

It is believed that Intel's 4004 chip opened the era of personal PCs, and the Mphone store opened the era of mobile Internet. ”

Li Jingyi was completely shocked, because Zhou Xinquan was right, "Have you ever taken this class?" ”

Zhou Xin thought to himself, this is still difficult to get me, "No, but this is a logic."

As a professor at Berkeley, he is obviously well-informed, and he believes that Mphone represents the future development direction, and to reach such a high height, it can only be compared with the wintel alliance in the PC era dominated by Intel and Microsoft.

Then I asked which app is the best, there are other apps only if there is a Mphone store, if there is no Mphone store, then there is no essential difference between Mphone and other mobile phones.

The Mphone store is similar to Intel's 4004 chip, before the 4004 chip, the function of the chip was defined, and the only way to change the function was to change the hardware. After the birth of the 4004 chip, users only need to change the instructions to make the chip achieve different functions.

The software industry was born. The Mphone store did something similar. ”

(End of chapter)