How do local electronic system manufacturers break the innovation dilemma?

3/9/2023 11:13:53 AM

In 2012, with the explosion of the smartphone and tablet market, an era of "new heroes come forth in large numbers" and "market reshuffle" has arrived. However, we can see that the performance of various manufacturers is very different: Samsung exerted its strength on smartphones and tablets at the same time, and the smartphone rode out of the dust, ending Nokia's 14-year dominance in mobile phones and becoming the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer. In the previous two years, HTC, which had unlimited scenery, began to shrink its profits and shipments, and announced that it would do so. On the other hand, Huawei and ZTE, which cut into the smart phone market with low-end customized products, are realizing the value of profits, and hope to move towards the high-end boutique market through product innovation and even thinking about establishing brand-new brands; Xiaomi mobile phone, which was branded with IT, stood out in the doubts and became a local model of marketing and technological innovation ... However, is innovation just a game of "aristocrats", and the majority of small and medium-sized electronic system manufacturers with congenital genes or insufficient strength are doomed to stay away from or wander on the edge of innovation?

In fact, regardless of the scale, the performance of manufacturers is related to the innovation ability and the construction of innovation systems. Samsung once copied a large number of products from Japanese and American manufacturers, but this did not hinder its achievements today. From Samsung, HTC and Xiaomi, we can draw such a conclusion: as long as you integrate innovation into the company's genes instead of staying on the slogan, as long as you grasp the three steps of discovery, integration and sublimation, you can combine your platform with innovative technologies.

Now, many system manufacturers have diverted the "task" of innovation to the upstream IC chip manufacturers. So, what is the positioning of system manufacturers in innovation? What is the relationship with IC design vendors and solution vendors? How to solve the problem of innovation through interaction? In the past, we sought quantity and speed, which gave birth to many "cottage" products. Now the flood of "cottage" has begun to recede. How can we establish our own product characteristics? How to improve the brand value and profit of your products? How to innovate hand in hand with solution providers? These are all issues that people in the electronics industry need to think about. Here, we try to answer this question through three steps: discovery, integration and sublimation.

I. Discovery
There is no doubt that system manufacturers should be the leaders of innovation, because any innovative technology or product must be passed on to the final consumers through system manufacturers. If a system company wants to innovate, it must build a unique platform suitable for its own development. Here, we emphasize building the platform first, not the product, so we must have the platform before the product. So what is this platform? This platform is built for demand, and it is a basic environment that can be used to derive other products. It focuses on the concept of system, and only when the platform is built can products be produced.

How to build and maintain the platform? This requires the CTO/ system architects of system companies to "discover" all excellent technologies with wide eyes, which is the first step of the innovation trilogy. The key point of the "discovery" stage is to adopt an open attitude towards all new technologies and discover new technologies from different companies and regions as much as possible, because the more technological diversity you build, the greater the innovation tension it produces. The essence of innovation is the collision of diversity, which is similar to the natural ecosystem- The Macintosh computer that Apple became famous at that time was the result of the integration of a large number of popular new technologies, such as mass storage, built-in printers, color icons and so on.

The development of human science and technology is exponential. A large number of new technologies are constantly emerging, and they are constantly merged with traditional technologies to produce new technologies again, which makes many system manufacturers overwhelmed, and sometimes the losses are very amazing. For example, the smart phone broke out earlier than predicted, causing a large number of functional machine manufacturers to suffer heavy losses. A value-added service provider of functional machines found that customers lost 90% after the Spring Festival this year! The company immediately declared bankruptcy! Another example is that the single-core tablet platform, which was still popular last year, has jumped to a dual-core platform, and its processing performance has been greatly improved. In the past, tablet manufacturers should consider how to improve the user experience. Now it is time to consider how to integrate more new technologies into the dual-core platform, because the improvement of performance has crossed the threshold of experience.

New technologies are constantly emerging, and the platform decision makers of system companies should constantly discover new technologies through various media platforms, including industry exhibitions, such as ultra-high-definition display, wireless high-definition video transmission, power line carrier communication, digital power supply, 3D naked-eye display, mass storage and so on. An irreplaceable advantage of the exhibition network is that you can have face-to-face technical exchanges with people, which makes it easier to collide with inspiration and help you understand the advantages of new technologies. Therefore, a shortcut to discover technologies is to participate in influential technology exhibitions. In view of this, we organized the "Shenzhen (International) Integrated Circuit Technology Innovation and Application Exhibition", which is the first step to help the majority of system manufacturers to "discover". Many innovative IC products and solutions in our exhibition reflect the latest technical trends of today's products, which can help system manufacturers to develop innovative system products that meet the market demand.

In fact, IC itself can also be regarded as a system platform, which integrates many technologies, in fact, it is a combination of many IPS, and the functional differences between them can be analyzed in detail from the perspective of IP. In addition, the excellent EDA design tools and design services displayed at our exhibition can help system manufacturers customize IC products with innovative consciousness and characteristics.

Second, integration

Although many new technologies have been discovered, in fact, not all new technologies are suitable for your platform. Here we need a process of removing the rough and selecting the fine, that is, denying new technologies and retaining the process that suits us. This is integration. When evaluating Jobs' achievements, Apple said that one of his greatness was to help the company deny many new technologies, which shows the importance of integration.

When communicating with some industry leaders, their general view is that the weakest system manufacturer in China is the system integration ability. Take Apple as an example, touch screen technology, voice recognition technology, cloud technology and IC chip design technology are not what it is best at, but it can integrate these technologies into iphone and ipad to become a powerful product that attracts consumers. This ability is worth learning.

How to achieve effective platform integration? There are two important points:
1. Be sure to choose between users and angles: Be sure to know that not all good technologies are suitable for you, and choose a technology that is suitable for your own sustainable development and the purchasing power and needs of users from the convenience of cost, users and design complexity. A few years ago, when MP3 developed to MP4, some manufacturers put many new technologies such as GPS, e-books and mobile TV on MP4, and as a result, many manufacturers became martyrs. On the contrary, some manufacturers who focus on improving MP4 user experience and audio and video effects have survived, so we must be cautious about technology integration, which Apple has done very well. In view of the current integration of PC and tablet, Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the analyst meeting after the company's financial report that the company would not consider the integration of PC and tablet. He said: "The integration trend is very popular, but if you integrate the toaster with the refrigerator, the users of the products will be dissatisfied. Therefore, before you do the synthesis, think more about it from the user's point of view, see what they really need, and don't pat your head from your own point of view, then your synthesis will be close to success.
2. Give users more value while bringing convenience.
When considering the integration of new technologies, we should also pay attention to the principle that it gives users more value while bringing convenience. Many times, when giving users a new function, such as using wireless technology to realize high-definition video transmission, do you consider giving users more value while realizing convenience? Note that this is not more price. Is this function only provided to users as an upgrade function of the platform for free? Have other products compatible with users been considered?

In addition to technology integration, system manufacturers should also consider resource integration, that is, after integrating technology, they should cooperate with software optimization companies, put forward the definition of product planning, select appropriate CPU/SOC suppliers, select appropriate software and hardware technical resources, select appropriate manufacturing platforms and core components, formulate a reasonable profit model, combine the profit model with software and hardware, and select appropriate customers as strategic partners, etc. These are all areas of integration.

Integration ability is often the embodiment of a system manufacturer's core competitiveness. The essence of integration is to take its own unique application know-how as the core point and take it as the basis of integration. Only in this way can system manufacturers become the leading force in the innovation circle without becoming the processing factory of IC manufacturers or solution manufacturers, and only in this way can they better protect their core technologies and derive their own characteristic innovations in various vertical fields.

Third, sublimation

Having your own platform environment and integrating appropriate technologies and resources, the third step of innovation is "sublimation". Why is it sublimation rather than integration? This is because innovation is not simply to integrate new technologies into your existing platform, but to combine with your platform to become a new platform. This is the most difficult step. Here are some principles to follow. For innovators, we should understand two principles:
1. Innovation is a kind of mutation. Innovators should make use of all kinds of trends to create mutations, subconsciously identify the changing technology that is taking place, find this symptom before others, and then fuse the symptoms. The fusion of various trends can form a mutation. As American futurist John naisbitt said, innovators grasp "the future rooted in the present" by intuition. In particular, it is necessary to find out the intersection point of various single trends, which often has the ability to lead to drastic innovation and destruction, and from this point, it can open a huge opportunity for industrial transformation. The intuition mentioned here is also needed to be cultivated by the decision makers of system manufacturers. Intuition is also called inspiration. It is rooted in your experience and knowledge accumulation and can be obtained through cultivation.

2, innovation should meet the needs of the future, as the first point said, system manufacturers should find the intersection of various trends, this point.
Not in the present, but for the future, let your innovation and integration meet the needs of that point. In the semiconductor industry, Lingerlite has the highest gross profit. Lothar Maier, CEO of Lingerlite, once said that the reason for Lingerlite's high gross profit is that it can always take the lead in developing a new market, and to open these markets, it is necessary to understand the needs of users first, and then Lingerlite will turn the needs into a product that meets the future needs of users, thus ensuring that it will always enter the market in the first place to seize the opportunity.

Therefore, for system manufacturers, it is important to understand the trend and put their innovative products at the mutation point in the future. To do this is to really launch the right product at the right time.

IC Innovation and Application Exhibition: Promoting Industrial Linkage and Breaking the Dilemma of Innovation

Nowadays, people in the industry are pinning their hopes on the linkage between the upstream and downstream of the industry. In fact, discovery, integration and sublimation are exactly the three steps of this linkage. As mentioned above, innovators can find opportunities through some exhibitions focusing on innovative technologies and applications. From June 20 to 21, 2012, "China IC Expo" will open in Shenzhen. Aiming at the needs of China electronics manufacturers, this exhibition focuses on the hot application fields in the market, focusing on integrated circuit technology innovation, system innovation and application innovation, and high-end manufacturing, and helps electronics manufacturers to make future product plans and select technical partners through product and scheme display. Combined with the supporting advantages of the Pearl River Delta industry, the exhibition covers the upstream and downstream industrial chains and ecological circles, including chip design enterprises, IC design services, wafer manufacturing and sealing and testing, scheme design companies, distribution and agents, etc. It is a platform for high-level technology and market interaction in the era of the integration of integrated circuit design and manufacturing technology with traditional electronic manufacturing, system software development and application and content.

It can be said that Shenzhen (International) Integrated Circuit Technology Innovation and Application Exhibition is a platform tailored for the vast number of system innovators. Here, you can find strategic innovation partners, build your own unique platform, and exchange ideas with the industry. Welcome to pay attention and participate!