Technological Supremacy Chapter 38: Enter the field of optics!

Near four in the morning, the joint press conference between Sony and Samsung finally came to an end.

The content of the press conference is very simple. Samsung President Lee Jae-yong and Sony President Kenichiro Yoshida jointly announced that Samsung will acquire Sony's mobile phone camera department for US$2.7 billion in cash.

This acquisition includes Sony's camera module factory in Kumamoto Prefecture, the entire mobile phone camera development and design department, and Sony's global right to use camera patents.

As for Sony's camera and video camera division, it is not included in the acquisition.

Luo Jia lit a cigarette.

Sony's optical department is a very large organization. In addition to SLR cameras, professional cameras used by major TV stations, and image compilation and acquisition equipment, Sony also occupies the world's number one market share.

However, these areas of expertise are not included in the acquisition.

Just for the mobile phone camera, this small component costs a huge sum of 2.7 billion US dollars. Luo Jia can easily conclude that Samsung is now crazy.

Sony's mobile phone camera department is worth at most a billion dollars, but Samsung has offered almost three times the purchase price. It would be a fool not to sell it.

After all, in the field of optics, mobile phone cameras are just a small component, while SLR cameras, video cameras, medical imaging systems, and astronomical imaging systems are the ones with higher technical content.

What's more, Sony's patents were not sold, but Samsung was given the right to use them, and the intellectual property rights are still in Sony's hands,

Although Samsung did not make it clear at the press conference, everyone knows that they will definitely cut off the supply of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers in the next step.

In terms of business rules, the company's operators have undergone major changes, and all previously signed commercial contracts need to be re-drafted.

Moreover, Sony is an absolutely strong supplier in the market, and the contract signed has great flexibility.

In this world where the weak prey on the strong, the so-called high penalty is only effective for weak suppliers.

You come up with a contract with a high penalty, but Sony doesn't even bother to talk to you, because they have the technology, they are not asking to sell you goods, but you are asking them to supply, what kind of contract will they give you? , You sign and it's over, there is no room for bargaining.

For example, the semiconductor foundry giant TSMC, every time they make Apple's orders first, and wait until Apple's orders are completed, it will be the turn of Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin.

Therefore, every year when a new mobile phone processor is released, Huawei always lags behind Apple. Who can I ask for reason?

Samsung can completely end its cooperation with Huaxia manufacturers with only paying a small amount of liquidated damages, while Huaxia manufacturers can only suffer this dumb loss and go to a foreign country to file a lawsuit, with no hope of winning at all.

After all, in the business world, the law of the jungle is the law of the jungle.

Luo Jia stubbed out the cigarette butt, and opened the secret database located in Alibaba Cloud.

This database is specially used to collect the information of mobile phone users around the world. After being processed by the encryption technology of the extraterrestrial civilization, no one except Luo Jia has the ability to access the data.

Gradually, a smile appeared on Luo Jia's face. There are a total of 120 top-level cloud servers, which contain first-hand big data that is more precious than gold. It is one of Luo Jia's trump cards.

In addition to industrial design, mobile phone cameras are more important than software and algorithms.

Apple's main camera has only 24 million pixels, and Huawei's IMX600 has 40 million pixels. There is a huge gap between the two, but when it comes to DXO scoring, the difference is only four points.

Why?

It's not because Apple is more experienced in software tuning and can tap the greater potential of hardware.

Optics is a very magical technology. The reason why Huawei spent a lot of money to ask German Leica to adjust the camera for them is because Leica has been the leader in the field of cameras for many years, and it has far more experience in optics than Huawei.

Now, Luo Jia has installed mobile assistant software on more than 1.8 billion mobile phones around the world, and has quietly collected enviable massive data. hand information.

In this day and age, any mobile phone manufacturer has to boast about AI-assisted technology when it comes to cameras.

The low-level artificial intelligence of the extraterrestrial civilization possessed by Luo Jia is undoubtedly far superior to all opponents in terms of performance.

As for the industrial design and manufacturing links, Luo Jia has the primary optical sensing technology of extraterrestrial civilizations, and has intelligent robotic arms capable of precise manufacturing.

With its advantages in hardware and software, as well as big data and artificial intelligence, Luo Jia may be able to take this opportunity to forcibly enter the optical field and grab a large piece of meat from the mouths of international giants.

Of course, the difficulty is still very large.

Laymen always think that the small part of the mobile phone camera is a whole.

That's not the case at all.

A small mobile phone camera module, but its interior is extremely complicated, and it is divided into seven parts.

Protective film, lens group, focus motor, infrared filter, image sensor, main control chip, circuit connection substrate, the seven major components are indispensable, and they must reach an extremely precise level to finally present a perfect image. image.

The most important component is undoubtedly the image sensor.

At present, there are three main image sensor players in the world, Sony, Samsung, and OmniVision.

It is worth mentioning that OmniVision Technology has actually been quietly acquired by my country's Weier shares, and has become an out-and-out domestic company.

In the process of technology transfer and acquisition, our country has actually been working hard, but because these things are very far away from the lives of ordinary people, most people don't know it.

The establishment of trade wars and global siege is largely due to the fact that our country is really strong in the field of technology. As long as you are willing to sell, I will buy them all. of.

Regardless of the low-end products, as long as the high-end products on the market, whether it is a module made by OFILM or Sunny Optical, if you take it apart, most of it is Sony's image sensor.

That's why Samsung's big move this time caused a huge wave. They were originally the second largest player in image sensors, and now they have acquired the largest player Sony, which is equivalent to monopolizing the sensor market.

Once they cut off the supply, all domestic mid-to-high-end camera modules will be discontinued.

As for OmniVision, the third largest player in sensors, they are relatively small in size, and their technology is inferior to that of Samsung and Sony. It is completely impossible for them to supply large quantities in a short period of time.

Luo Jia, who didn't smoke before, smoked one after another at this moment, and his brain was running at an alarming speed.

The crisis in the eyes of most people is actually an opportunity.

Samsung's supply cutoff this time gave up a large amount of market share. The key is who can stand up and fill this huge vacancy in the first place.

As it was getting brighter, Luo Jia picked up the phone, called Li Moran, and explained to him the company's decision to enter the optical field.

On the other end of the phone, Li Moran should have just fallen asleep. When he heard Luo Jia's words in a daze, he was immediately taken aback and entered the completely unfamiliar field of optics? This is too risky, right?

"Take a risk, technology is not a problem, the real thing is that time is tight." Luo Jiaxin said, he has the technology of extraterrestrial civilization, so he is naturally very confident.

The calls were made one by one. Li Moran was in charge of software development, Luo Jia was in charge of designing the architecture and writing core modules, and other programmers in the company completed auxiliary work.

The hardware is in charge of An Ran, a double Ph.D. graduate from MIT, Luo Jia is in charge of the main design, and An Ran is in charge of leading the hardware team to complete it.

Sha Zhan and Gu Pengdong were in charge of contacting various colleges and universities, and urgently recruited an optical team, which was managed by An Ran and responsible for sensor design. Afterwards, Luo Jia made some changes on the basis of the original design, including material application and imaging analysis. , algorithm and so on.

Anyway, the momentum must be great, and it will be said that it is the credit of the teamwork. Don't let Luo Jia take up all the halo.

Finally, Luo Jia called Hong Tao.

Hong Tao is a native of the capital~IndoMTL.com~ he is full of Beijing movies, he is very sneaky, and his social skills are second to none among the company's engineering and engineering geeks, and he is most suitable for dealing with the outside world.

Luo Jia found out on the Internet that a few days ago, a mobile phone module factory located in Wuxi Industrial Park, named Yingtai Optical, was about to go bankrupt due to insufficient income.

Thousands of workers lost their jobs and sat outside the factory to ask for wages. The labor department and the local government are negotiating with the factory to get them to pay the wages owed to the workers.

The person in charge of Yingtai Optics should be in a hurry to get so mixed up that he can't even pay his salary. The Luo family asked Hong Tao to talk about buying this factory at a low price and making it the company's production base.

After the task was assigned, Luo Jia drove to Wuxi Electronics Market and bought a whole carload of raw materials and parts. In addition, he also bought 20 latest models of Huawei MATE series mobile phones.

Then, he closed the door and went into the workshop to conduct research.

Almost all the components in the camera module can be purchased from the market, except for the sensor that Luo Jia needs to make by himself.

The reason why Yingtai Optics went bankrupt was because the sensor was so poor, but their production line was ready-made, and when the time came to replace it with a high-precision mechanical arm, and then redesigned and improved raw materials, it would be able to greatly improve sensor performance.

While researching the camera module, Luo Jia is also constantly connected with the head office in Shanghai to promote the work of the design department. The key technologies are all in Luo Jia's head, and it would be impossible without him.

After three days of tossing day and night, the first batch of camera modules from Xingchen Company finally came out. Each 40-million-pixel sensor was built by robots with their dexterous handwork.

Luo Jia contacted Shazhan in Shanghai, and then took the batch of samples to Huawei's 2012 laboratory in Shanghai overnight.