Shockingly, a counterfeit factory has produced a 3-nanometer chip.

Chapter 208 Jobs' Retirement: A New Era Begins

A day later, Texas Instruments officially announced: "It will gradually withdraw from the smartphone chip market, sell off its chip-related divisions, and focus on industrial control and automotive electronics in the future."

After the announcement was released, the semiconductor industry and Wall Street all reacted.

The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page headline: "Texas Instruments abandons mobile chip business, with the rise of Chinese manufacturers likely being a major reason; we should be wary of this risk."

Nikkei commented: "Transsion's strategy has finally succeeded, and American giants have no choice but to retreat."

In China, this news only occupied a small corner.

Manufacturers with ideas have already set up their benches at the "factory gate" and are waiting. Meanwhile, Lei Jun, CEO of the rice company, has once again convened an emergency meeting.

Chip manufacturing may have become an opportunity to overtake competitors, while Lenovo has also set its sights on Texas Instruments' assets.

……

When the message was placed on Shen Fei's desk, he was still taken aback.

Texas Instruments is dead now?

He remembered that Texas Instruments, like in his previous life, at least managed to hold on until 2012, but now...

However, Shen Fei's eyes lit up. Although Texas Instruments had become less capable, the patents they had accumulated during the 2G and 3G eras were still useful.

They only want the patents, not the people, since the truly capable individuals have already joined Transsion Semiconductor "with the help of various parties."

…………

At the fruit company headquarters, Cook had never felt that this conference room was so large.

The layout remained unchanged; the familiar executives still sat around the rectangular conference table.

Jonathan Ive, Director of Industrial Design; Phil Schiller, President of Global Marketing; John Sruggie, Vice President of Hardware Technology; and Jeff Wesley, Director of Supply Chain.

The only thing that changed was that one chair was empty... it was Jobs's.

It's a great pity that he couldn't attend this crucial meeting.

"Let's begin."

Cook cleared his throat; it was his first time chairing a meeting, and he was still a little "unaccustomed" to it.

The others in the conference room immediately understood that the Jobs era was over and the Cook era was about to begin.

"Let me first report on the Motorola S2."

The sales manager turned on the projector, which displayed alarming data.

"As of yesterday, Motorola Eisel's cumulative sales in the US market have exceeded 9.2 million, and are expected to exceed 10 million by the end of this month, and 11 million by mid-June."

A sales curve appeared on the screen; the line was almost vertical and very close to the yellow line above it.

"That's our iPhone 4, which sold 1100 million units during the same period." The sales manager revealed his concerns very frankly.

"As word of mouth spreads, their growth rate far exceeds ours. If they maintain this growth rate, they will surpass us by July at the latest."

"How could their sales grow so fast?"

"Don't the American people know that this is a Chinese brand?"

They're aiding the enemy! What is the propaganda department doing?

The scene immediately turned into a massive blame game, with everyone trying to shift the blame, especially those close to Jobs, who became the perfect scapegoats.

Cook remained silent, tacitly approving of the move. Power transitions are always accompanied by problems.

Once these issues are resolved, the company will enter a new fast track.

"There's nothing we can do; the design department just made such an ugly design."

The Motorola S2 feels more like an Apple phone; both its appearance and operating logic make it a more worthwhile purchase.

The head of the design department slammed his fist on the table and stood up: "Are you implying this is our design department's fault?"

After a long bout of accusations in the meeting room, during which the table was slammed down several times, Cook finally coughed and looked at John Sruggie.

"What about hardware analysis?"

The meeting room immediately fell silent; Cook had made his decision…

This immediately disheartened some employees, as Steve Jobs hadn't stepped down yet.

Has Cook already started to discard his useful servant after he has served his purpose?

John Slugie shook his head slightly. In terms of hardware, fruit was indeed at a disadvantage, even far behind.

"In terms of core performance, our self-developed A5 chip is incomparable to theirs."

But that's not the most crucial point...

He pointed to the communication baseband below: "Their chip supports seven modes and thirty frequencies, and can be used by any operator in any country in the world. It can be used with a card reader."

Our fruit has no problems in the United States, but it often has signal problems in Asia and Europe.

This has resulted in our sales in these countries falling far behind theirs.

The most powerful feature of the Taishan 900 is its performance, which makes people subconsciously overlook its supporting network format.

To ensure the phone could be launched globally, Li Jiahui maxed out all network formats.

All network formats used by a certain number of people are included.

Of course, this is the effect of multiple communication basebands working together.

It wasn't as outrageous as John Srougi made it out to be; after all, patent fees are a considerable sum.

Anyway, we can also offer delivery... If we develop more options, there definitely won't be any problems.

……

Phil Schiller stared at the hardware department: "Why can't we do it?"

John Srougi gave a wry smile: "Because of baseband patents. Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson... and Transsion, they have a firm grip on communication patents."

We want to bypass them, but it's impossible; we have no choice but to buy Qualcomm products.

But the chips Qualcomm sells to us are more expensive than the ones they sell to others, and their performance isn't even the best.

Furthermore, we have to pay them the Qualcomm tax; for every phone we sell, we have to pay a significant amount.

Cook frowned; this was a huge mess.

"Are there any other alternatives?"

"Yes! That's buying Transsion... Their prices are a bit more reasonable than Qualcomm's."

They can provide us with the most advanced technology, but their cut is also substantial.

Cook pondered for a few seconds, then suddenly thought of something...

"Let's see if we can acquire Texas Instruments' semiconductor business, join the A-series development team, and develop our own communication baseband."

John Sruggie nodded, but ultimately shook his head.

Texas Instruments' semiconductor business once had some experience in communication baseband, but it has been declining since the advent of the 3G era.

Since 2007, Texas Instruments has abandoned the development of communication baseband chips. Purchasing its chips usually requires the addition of other baseband chips, which has made its CPUs less competitive.

The capable technicians have all been poached; what remains there is just an empty shell.

"Mr. Cook, you can give it a try, but I don't think it will be very effective."

First of all, their technological accumulation is far too little. Even if we acquire them, we will still need to pay patent fees to other peers, though the amount will vary.

Secondly…

Before he could finish speaking, Phil Schiller reminded him:

"John Slugie, don't be so pessimistic. We're the fruit."

"If Transsion can produce a product in a year, we can definitely do it by acquiring a few more companies..."

The others in the meeting room shared this view, because they (the fruit company) couldn't be afraid of failure.

"Mr. Cook, what's your opinion?"

Just as Cook was about to answer, the conference room door was pushed open...