Motorola is now facing internal and external troubles. Not only has its mobile phone sales been surpassed by Nokia, but its proud semiconductor business has also declined sharply, with its market share getting lower and lower. Their CPU business has been defeated by Intel, and their DSP business has also been defeated.
It was completely overtaken by Texas Instruments.
Taking a comprehensive look, Motorola is still competitive in the mobile phone market. It has only just been surpassed by Nokia and is still at the forefront of the market. Several other businesses have basically been completely thrown away. I am afraid it is impossible to repeat the previous situation.
Brilliant.
There is another thing that has a great impact on Motorola's current situation, and that is their Iridium project.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Motorola began planning the Iridium satellite project. In 1997, the Iridium satellite project began to deploy satellites. In mid-1998, the satellite deployment mission was completed. In November of the same year, the Iridium satellite project began to officially provide communication services. This plan
It was quite a sensation. The Vice President of the United States made a very symbolic Iridium phone call in the Rose Garden of the White House that day.
The so-called Iridium satellite project is a global mobile communication system. Its sky part is composed of satellites running in 7 orbits. There are 11 satellites evenly distributed on each orbit to form a complete constellation.
They look like 77 electrons orbiting around the nucleus of the chemical element iridium atom, hence the name of the project. Although it was later recalculated and only required 66 satellites in six orbits, the name of the iridium project remained unchanged.
Compared with ordinary communication methods, the Iridium satellite project has two advantages. The first is that the orbit is low, the transmission speed is fast, and the information loss is small, so the call quality is higher. The second is that the Iridium satellite system does not require a dedicated ground
At the receiving station, each Iridium ground phone can directly communicate with the satellite, thus enabling communication to be completed anywhere on the earth.
Many people thought that the Iridium project was about to reach glory, but what people didn't expect was that it ended so quickly.
The telephones used in the Iridium project cost 3,000 US dollars each, and the call fee per minute was as high as 3 to 8 US dollars. At such a high price, ordinary people simply could not afford it. After five months, the entire system was no longer in use.
There are only 10,000 users. Even these 10,000 users usually do not use the phone for a long time. It can be said that the 66 satellites in the Iridium satellite system are not fully utilized at all.
There is nothing that can be done about this. After all, the way to use Iridium phones is quite special. Generally, people who do not have special communication needs will not buy it at all. After buying it, they will not use it unless they are in a specific scenario.
The number of users is far less than expected, and the monthly phone bill revenue is very bleak, making the company continue to lose money and cannot make a profit at all. At the same time, Iridium's monthly loan interest alone is as high as 40 million US dollars. This makes their
Debt is spiraling higher and higher.
In this way, it was delayed until March 1999. After defaulting on a huge loan of US$1.5 billion, Iridium filed for bankruptcy protection. At this time, less than half a year had passed since the Iridium project was officially commercialized.
time.
Because the company could not find a qualified buyer, they finally decided to push the 66 satellites in the Iridium system out of orbit and let them burn up when they entered the earth's atmosphere. The cost of burning the satellites is approximately between 30 million and 50 million US dollars.
.
Only some time ago, Iridium completely burned 66 of their satellites.
A plan that had been planned for many years and consumed a lot of manpower, material and financial resources finally ended dismally like this. The blow to Motorola can be imagined.
In just a few years, the company experienced a series of problems, and Chris Galvin's position as CEO was in jeopardy.
If it weren't for the fact that the Calvin family is of great significance to Motorola, Chris Calvin might not have been able to stay in the CEO position long ago. But no matter how different the Calvin family is to Motorola, Chris Calvin is now in the company.
The voices of people leaving the stage became louder and louder.
Colvin was single-handedly promoted by Chris Calvin. Whether he wants it or not, in the eyes of others he is a "royalist" and is tied to the Calvin family. If Chris Calvin steps down as CEO
, then Colvin’s position as president will not last long.
From Colvin's perspective, he must help Chris Galvin gain a position, and he has been in China for many years, so the first thing that comes to mind is Deep Space Company.
This time Colvin came to see Deep Space Company, mainly because he wanted to repair the relationship with Deep Space Company and consolidate Chris Galvin's position.
After pondering for a while, Colvin said, "I need to talk to Chris about this."
Yu Dong smiled and said, "It doesn't matter. This matter is not particularly urgent. In fact, you don't need to go all the way. Just give me a call in the United States. Why waste travel expenses."
Colvin said very seriously, "Because only in this way can we show our sincerity, and our attitude towards Deep Space Company has always been sincere."
Yu Dong smiled and said, "You know, we never care about these nonsense."
Colvin smiled. He didn't even believe the punctuation mark of Yu Dong's words. He knew very well that if he didn't come in person today, let alone negotiate a cooperation, he might not even be able to call Yu Dong's office.
Just like when he came in just now, Yu Dong spoke with a gun and a stick, obviously because Motorola didn't pay enough attention to them before.
After thinking about it, Colvin said another word for his boss, "Actually, Chris also wants to come over, but there are too many things going on in the United States, and he can't spare the time at the moment."
Yu Dong smiled and said, "I heard that Chris is very interested in Huawei recently?"
Colvin's pupils shrank, and then he said calmly, "Is there such a thing? I haven't heard of it. Why would Chris be interested in Huawei?"
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Yu Dong smiled and said, "You are asking questions knowingly. Your core network technology shortcomings are very serious, but Huawei can just make up for your shortcomings. You stay in China
After all these years, I can’t help but understand this matter.”
"I really don't know much about Huawei. When I was in China, I didn't care much about technology. I basically focused on sales." Colvin smiled and added, "But I heard that Huawei has recently
Life is not easy, and we may be sued by Cisco. If Cisco succeeds in suing, Huawei will suffer a major blow in the U.S. market, and it will not be of much use to us."
Although Colvin did not admit that they wanted to acquire Huawei, they showed that they were paying attention to Huawei, otherwise they would not have known that Cisco wanted to sue Huawei.
Of course, what Colvin said is also a lie. Motorola's acquisition of Huawei should be based on two points. One is that acquiring Huawei can help them develop the Chinese market. The second point is that they need Huawei's core network technology. As for the patents that Cisco is suing,
It doesn't affect it at all.
In fact, even if Motorola wants to acquire Huawei, Huawei will probably not agree to it, because Huawei is currently developing well and there is no need to sell out.
However, Yu Dong knew that Huawei would soon have problems. Because Huawei bet on new technologies and missed the market trend in recent years, its share of the domestic communications market would be hit by ZTE and Starcom. In addition, it would be sued by Cisco.
It is really possible to sell yourself.
There is another thing that is also a big trouble for Huawei. Li Yinan, Huawei's youngest executive vice president and nicknamed Ren Zhengfei's godson, spent the 10 million yuan he received from Huawei's equity settlement and dividends at the end of last year.
Yuan founded a new company called Harbor Network.
This company is a senior distributor of Huawei, and it mainly makes a living by selling Huawei products. But just this year, Li Yinan did not abide by the agreement, frantically poached Huawei's technical staff and launched his own routers and switches.
Their products are selling well, and the company has received more than $100 million in investment, making it a strong competitor to Huawei.
The key is that there are many Huawei employees in Harbor Network, so they have a great advantage in fighting Huawei. After all, they know Huawei's technology and market layout very well.
Why does Yu Dong know these things? Because he has also been paying attention to Huawei.
In the last life, Motorola did not acquire Huawei due to various reasons, but it is not easy to say in this life. The situation now is completely different from the previous life. Because of Motorola's cooperation with Deep Space Company, it has extended its glory in the mobile communications sector for two or three years.
, who knows whether the extra two or three years of glory will affect this acquisition?
If Motorola really wants to acquire Huawei this time, Yu Dong will definitely take action.
It is not too difficult for Deep Space to prevent this matter. Why should Huawei sell itself? It is not because its business is blocked and there is insufficient funds. If they can sell to Motorola, they can naturally sell to Deep Space. Deep Space is not
Can't afford the money.
In fact, Yu Dong is not only thinking about preventing Huawei from being bought by Motorola, he is even thinking about Motorola.
If Motorola doesn't turn around in the past few years, they should still be split up and acquired like they did in the previous life.
What attracts Motorola to Yu Dong is nothing more than the patents they hold. If they can obtain Motorola's patents, it will definitely be even more powerful for Deep Space Company.
If you just buy the patent, they will definitely not sell it. Yu Dong has already thought about it. If there is such an opportunity, he will first spend money to buy Motorola, and then keep Motorola's patent, and then sell the other ones at a discount.
Sell ​​to others.
Of course, all this can only be thought about now, as the future of Motorola is still unclear. Maybe Motorola will not fail in this life, and it is not impossible that there will be a great comeback.
…
The next morning, Colvin came to Yu Dong again and expressed his willingness to cooperate with the Deep Space Company. There was no problem with the conditions Yu Dong mentioned before. After returning from Yu Dong last night, he must have contacted the headquarters.
When Colvin said that Chris Calvin had no objections to the conditions, Yu Dong was actually quite surprised. It's not that the conditions he proposed last night were too harsh for Motorola. It was just business, no matter what.
He had to try to haggle over the price. He originally thought that Motorola would probably increase the commission to 25%.
In fact, if they really want to talk, 25% Yu Dong will definitely not agree, but increasing it to 22% can still be considered.
It seems that Chris Galvin's situation in the company is indeed not good, otherwise he would not be so eager to reach this cooperation. He probably wants to use this cooperation to remedy the disadvantage.
Since there was no problem with Motorola, there was no problem with Deep Space Company. The cooperation process went directly to the fast track, and we started studying the contract details that day.
…
Jimmy only found out about this the next morning. His guess was the same as Yu Dong's, and he also believed that Chris Calvin wanted to use this cooperation to save his position.
"Chris is fighting against the odds this time, but I think this cooperation will hardly help him. Have you ever thought that if Chris steps down after our cooperation is reached, his successor will continue to support this project?"
Cooperate?"
Yu Dong shrugged and said, "Our contract lasted for three years, for at least two models. Even if a successor comes up, there is no way to terminate the cooperation immediately, otherwise they will have to pay liquidated damages, which are not much.
It’s only 100 million U.S. dollars, but I think his successor will definitely not be willing to give this 100 million U.S. dollars to us.”
"That can only last three years."
Yu Dong smiled and said, "Three years is enough. After three years, they may not be the ones who want to end the cooperation."
Jimmy squinted at Yu Dong and suddenly said with a smile, "You have some evil intentions."
Yu Dong said with a smile, "I sincerely want to achieve this cooperation. After all, there is no harm to us, but if they want to terminate the cooperation, we don't need to worry."
"I even feel that you particularly hope that Chris will step down, and then the successor will take the initiative to terminate cooperation." Jimmy said.
Yu Dong curled his lips and said, "Don't think bad things about me either."
"No matter what, we are the biggest winners from this cooperation."
Yu Dong nodded. The biggest benefit for them from this cooperation is not that they can earn a commission from it, but that they can cultivate user habits and expand publicity through Motorola.
If Motorola really terminates its cooperation with them in the future, a large number of users will definitely be brought to the BenQ store, because these users are already accustomed to using the store.
Habits are terrible things. Once formed, they are difficult to change. Motorola users are already accustomed to using the same products as BenQ stores. If they are suddenly not allowed to use them, some people will definitely switch to BenQ phones.
Chapter completed!