1973 Mobile Phone Hall | Digital Culture
The future development of mobile phone history
In-depth and good writing, comprehensive and detailed
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Meizu was founded in 2003. Everyone is familiar with the brand characteristics and tonality of mobile phones. Meizu fans are called "charming friends" and "kerosene". The founder, whose real name is Huang. The ID of the forum is J.Wong, and the nicknames are: carpenter Huang and China Jobs.
In the domestic mobile phone industry, Huawei, Xiaomi and Meizu are the most discussed topics. OV is relatively low-key, and there are not many interesting things on the Internet.
There are many articles, reports and stories about Meizu on the Internet, and a single article is not comprehensive enough. This article will be the most comprehensive and detailed article that the internet can find, and there is no one.
There are many contents, characters and stories in the history of Meizu mobile phone development. In order to help you understand and sort out your ideas, the development of Meizu is divided into the following five stages.
Founded Meizu, focusing on MP3, with excellent reputation.
Mobile phone transformation, steady development, good momentum
Ali invested, launched Charm Blue, and expanded wildly.
Pro7 failed, internal turmoil, charm blue canceled
Executives leave, state-owned enterprises inject capital and start over.
The first three issues of the article tell the history of Meizu's mobile phone development, and the story of the characters will be placed in Meizu's character collection, including Huang Zhang, Bai Yongxiang, Li Nan, Yang Yan and others.
1976, Huang Zhang, a native of Meizhou, Guangdong Province, never went to university. /kloc-When he was 0/6 years old, Huang Zhang was driven out of his home by his father because he was obsessed with electronic appliances, and then Huang Zhang went to Shenzhen to work alone.
I don't know how Huang Zhang's first bucket of gold was accumulated. I only know that he was a cook and studied Cantonese cuisine. Finally, I don't know what happened in the electronics industry. It is estimated that only Huang Zhang knows.
In 2002, 26-year-old Huang Zhang became the general manager of Aegean Company, a joint venture in Singapore. Huang Zhang owns 49% of the company's shares, and the big boss holds 5 1% of the shares, which has transformed the company from a dying VCD industry into an audio, power amplifier and MP3 enterprise.
Under his management, MP3 products have increased 20 hours of super-long playback, 1.28 MB of memory, drive-free connection to computers, etc., which has made Aegean MP3 products famous.
200 1, Bai Yongxiang, who worked on MP3 product scheme in Shenzhen Wei Jian International, met Huang Zhang, and Huang Zhang went to Wei Jian International to discuss the new MP3 product scheme. Bai Yongxiang is an engineer of Wei Jian International MP3 Products Company. Prior to this, Bai Yongxiang worked as quality director in Delta, sold Panda color TV sets in Henan, burned ceramics, and worked as Panda Gold Card in Shenzhen.
Bai Yongxiang recalled: Huang Zhang is my client, and we talked for half an hour in the office and exchanged views on the product. He looks ordinary, but we are all enthusiasts who have made VCD and played with the stereo, so we hit it off.
We hit it off as soon as we met and spent 15 years together in Meizu.
Huang Zhang is attracted by this engineer who has worked hard in society for many years. He called Bai Yongxiang many times, hoping that he could come to Aegean Sea to do product research and development.
On February 6th, 2002, shortly after Bai Yongxiang got married, she took her children from Shenzhen to Zhuhai and joined the Aegean Sea in Zhuhai.
The development of Aegean technology this year is not good. In June 2002, the contradiction intensified, the company's cash flow was insufficient, and the big boss had not paid his salary for four months.
Duan Qi, an early employee of Meizu, recalled that the boss really couldn't pay his salary, and he hoped to put it off again and again. I had no choice but to intercede in Huang Zhang, hoping that I would work four days a week and give me a day to go out and find something to do and earn some extra money, but Huang Zhang finally agreed.
Because many people want to go out to start a business with Huang Zhang, the Singaporean boss who holds 5 1% shares is unwilling to continue to contribute. According to an exclusive interview with Bigger Technology under Meizu, Bai Yongxiang scolded his boss and shouted: I quit! Smashed the notebook on the table, slammed the door and walked out of the meeting room.
However, because Huang Zhang and his boss couldn't agree on their business philosophy, Huang Zhang left the company and chose his familiar MP3 player to start a new business. Huang Zhang started a new enterprise, and Bai Yongxiang was in a dilemma.
Huang Zhang is not like Jobs: Do you want to sell sugar water all your life, or do you want to change the world?
Instead, he simply said: Lao Bai, I will solve the salary problem and work with me.
At the end of 2002, a post with the ID "All-round Domestic Products" suddenly appeared on the imp3 Flash Forum, announcing that a company named Meizu was about to release mp3 products.
This is the historical origin of Meizu in the forum conference. This post officially announced the creation of Meizu brand, and later generations also called Meizu a mobile phone brand that came out of the forum.
Imp3 Flash forum is an audio digital forum. IMP3 mainly gathers audio-visual enthusiasts, including headphones, HiFi, tablets and e-books.
This forum was officially closed on1October 5, 20165438, and was permanently fixed in 1456000 members, 12483000 posts. Young basin friends may not feel much about this forum, but for those who have played computer and audio-visual digital equipment in those years, it is similar to the later cool insurance, post bar and post bar.
On March 14, 2003, Meizu Company was formally incorporated, and Huang Zhang also sold its shares in Aegean Sea. Meizu was originally located in Gongbei, Zhuhai, and Huang Zhang bought a duplex two-story building as an office, facing Macau across the river.
In June 2003, Meizu's first MP3 Walkman MX series went on the market, and the monthly shipment of MX was only a few thousand. At the same time, Meizu's website and forum were opened, and Huang Zhang registered an English name in the forum: J.Wong
When Meizu started, there were only five backbones and three people engaged in technology. Meizu's MP3 products are excellent in technology, performance and quality. Without its own sales channels, Huang Zhang began to cooperate with other manufacturers to help others make brands. It turned out that a large part of Meizu's products were sold under Onda's brand.
Meizu has always been the biggest customer of American audio chip Sigmatel when it was making MP3 players. Sigmatel once sent someone to Zhuhai to present Meizu with the world's first 3520 chip and 65438+ 10,000 commemorative cards.
A year later, Meizu suddenly abandoned Sigmatel chip and switched to Philips chip. Huang Zhang's reason is simple: Why not use something better?
On June 5438+ 10, 2004, Meizu E2 Walkman was released, which was very popular after it went on the market, because this E2 supports DIY and can change its colorful shell. Also added the TXT e-book function of MP3 for the first time.
After selling MP3 for a period of time, Meizu moved from Gongbei to Nanping and had its own factory workshop and business department.
Another task of Bai Yongxiang in the early stage of Meizu's business was to recruit people everywhere. Guo Wanxi, who used to work as PMC in Delta, Liang Dongming, a college roommate, Ye Qinghui, a college roommate working in UT Starcom, and countless others were recruited to form the first team of Meizu.
What really pushed Meizu to the peak of MP3 was miniplayer, which went on sale in May 2006. At that time, it was a rare MP3 with a touch screen without screws in China.
Bai Yongxiang said: Although miniplayer is definitely not as good as iPod in the world, its domestic sales volume is definitely the first.
In March 2007, the music card went on the market. MusicCard adopts the novel design concept of "one point, one line and one side", and the 6.9mm ultra-thin body is simple and generous.
Meizu only has 10 MP3 player, and the team has developed about 30 products, many of which are ready to go on the market, but Huang Zhang firmly disagrees because he thinks it is not easy to use and is afraid of consumer dissatisfaction.
In its glorious period, Huang Zhang saw the decline of the global MP3 industry, Sony Ericsson Walkman, Motorola, Nokia and other music mobile phones became popular, and a large number of signals reminded Huang Zhang and Bai Yongxiang that MP3 may soon be replaced by mobile phones, and an era is coming to an end.
At the annual meeting of the company at the end of 2006, Huang Zhang revealed his intention to transform into a mobile phone at the dinner table, and consulted a number of technical engineers including Liang Dongming at that time. Everyone's first reaction was very surprised.
At that time, Meizu was located in Nanping Town, a suburb of Zhuhai. At that time, it was just an MP3 company, with only a few dozen employees and no strength to make mobile phones.
At the end of 2007, the only remaining MP3 manufacturer in China held a conference to discuss the future development direction, but Meizu did not attend.
Meizu Hua said: We feel that we can't see the direction on MP3, but we stand on the top of the mountain and find there is no way out.
IRiver, a South Korean MP3 manufacturer that once surpassed the iPod, almost disappeared due to untimely transformation. IRiver also wants to make a mobile phone. After calculation, he needed $65.438+0.7 billion, so he gave up.
Since the release of miniplayer in May 2006, Meizu has not launched any new products, and has launched several minor revisions of miniplayer at a lower price.
By 2007, Meizu gave up its position as the leader in the domestic MP3 market and turned to smart phones, selling MP3 stocks and developing mobile phones.
The first mobile phone has been polished for nearly two years.
On June 9, 2007, 65438+20071October 9, the iPhone that changed people's cognition of mobile phones appeared, and the Android operating system was officially released at the end of 2008.
At the end of 2006, Meizu had only three choices: WindowsMobile, Linux and WindowsCE.
Bai Yongxiang said: Microsoft uses computers as the operating system of mobile phones, which is full of functions, inconvenient to operate, not humanized enough and not aesthetically pleasing. This is not what Meizu wants.
The user interface of Windows Mobile is so poor that the license fee for each mobile phone is as high as ten dollars. Meizu gave up decisively. Meizu, a software engineer with only 18, is not strong enough to use Linux directly. Win CE was the only choice at that time.
The first embedded system development expert hired by Bai Yongxiang is Zhu Guozhi, who is in charge of the switch development of TP-LINK. In June 2007, Zhu Guozhi officially joined Meizu and took over the software development of WinCE.
Microsoft engineers who contacted Meizu at that time were very conservative and refused to open some source code. The function Meizu wants to realize on M8 can only be developed and rewritten.
The GPU used in M8 has weak performance and can't meet WinCE's requirements in graphics rendering. Desktop sliding can only guarantee about 10-20 frames. In the absence of caching technology, Meizu first wrote desktop image caching technology and text caching technology to make the desktop slide smoothly for 24 frames.
One of the designers in charge of M8 interactive animation is Peng Yi, one of the earliest system interactive designers in Meizu. He worked in Singapore Innovation Technology in his early years and officially joined Meizu in July 2007.
Recall: When I first joined the company, Hua, who was in charge of marketing, helped to participate in UI design. After a period of busyness, we felt that if we follow the current progress, we might not be able to finish the UI work of M8 as scheduled, so we tried to contact eico.
In the middle stage of M8 development, eico team was responsible for the visual development of M8, and most of the interface designs of M8 were designed by eico itself.
Eico is a domestic design company, which has designed Meizu M8, 360 browser, sogou input method, Google input method, HTC TouchFlo 3D, Taobao iphone client, Opera China version and so on.
Weico, the most famous third party of Sina Weibo, is eico's own brand.
In fact, eico team cooperated as early as Meizu MP3 era. Around 2004, they discussed the brand design of Meizu with Huang Zhang, such as Meizu's official website, forums, posters and M8 hardware packaging.
Because there was no testing machine for us at that time, JW made its own hand board, so we printed out the finished ui and glued it directly on the hand board to experience it.
Meizu M8 adopts capacitive touch screen. The difference between a capacitive screen and a resistive screen is that the resistive screen can be stabbed with hard objects such as nails, while the capacitive screen can only be touched with the skin, which makes the experience better.
On the touch screen, Bai Yongxiang took the engineers to find suppliers such as Quan Zhi, BYD and Ding Hui, but none of them could achieve the desired effect of Huang Zhang.
In June 2007, the first generation of iPhone went public, and a Taiwan-funded enterprise named TPK (Hong Chen Technology) surfaced, which was the first touch screen provider of iPhone at that time.
Meizu thinks that due to Apple's patent protection, it can't get the opportunity to cooperate with TPK, but TPK actively seeks business expansion and thinks that Meizu can become a breakthrough in China market.
In the choice of touch scheme, Meizu first contacted the British supplier Quantum, which is called quantum touch in China, and can achieve the effect of capacitive touch on glass. After Meizu engineers and quantum engineers tried, the effect could not reach the level of mass production, but they finally gave up.
Then we found Synaptics in America to solve the problem of touch screen. Synaptics is one of the three largest touch screen manufacturers in the world, which is a new idea to provide fingerprint identification under the screen.
Bai Yongxiang and Chen Yuan, the sales manager of Synaptics in China, thought hard for two months and finally got the whole touch scheme of Xinsi.
On the baseband and structural scheme of Meizu M8, Meizu also encountered great resistance. At that time, Philips, Infineon and Qualcomm were three powerful suppliers.
Bai Yongxiang and the engineer went to Shenzhen by car to discuss with Philips executives, but they were directly rejected.
Bai Yongxiang found Infineon, an Apple supplier, and Bai Yongxiang led a team to negotiate in Shanghai, but the attitude remained cold. Meizu finally chose Infineon, but made many compromises.
Huang Zhang also requires external sound quality. Meizu managed to realize the structural design of the rear cavity with dual speakers. In order to achieve a satisfactory appearance, it took a lot of time to make more than 50 handboards.
From 2007 to 2008, Meizu M8 has been in the process of research and development and testing. Meizu devoted all its energy to developing its own system, planning its own hardware and assembling its own finished products. The development of M8 is far more difficult than the current manufacturers buying a chip from Qualcomm and MTK, installing an Android system for optimization, cleaning up bugs, and the factory helping you assemble it.
In 2007, shortly after the release of Apple's iPhone, Meizu released the news of entering the mobile phone and updated the concept map of product design. At that time, Meizu M8 was so similar to iPhone that it was named as "cottage iPhone" before it was released.
On June 5438+1October 65438+May, 2009, Meizu obtained the mobile phone network access license of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
On February 13, Meizu M8 was officially listed. It is the first large-screen full-touch-screen smart machine in China and is known as the "domestic machine king". Needless to say, its status.
Meizu M8' s operating system is called Mymobile, which is based on Windows CE6.0 kernel and uses the same chip as iPhone 3GS: Samsung S3C64 10.
After the launch of M8, Huang Zhang chose not to advertise anything, but only to publicize it on the Internet. Meizu conquered fans in China and even around the world with the accumulated reputation of MP3. France Telecom ordered 50,000 M8 mobile phones, Saudi Prince also used M8, and Lei Jun also used it.
When M8 was released, there was a long queue in Meizu store. According to legend, a Meizu enthusiast traveled to four provinces, took three trains, 1 bus, and rushed from Fuyang, Anhui Province to Linyi, Shandong Province, in order to buy three Meizu M8 mobile phones as soon as possible.
M8 has been on the market for only two months, and its sales volume has reached 654.38+10,000 units. In just five months, its sales volume has exceeded 500 million yuan. In 2009, other domestic mobile phone manufacturers lost money almost across the board, and Meizu M8 created an industry miracle.
20 10 was officially discontinued in February, and M8 sold less than100000 units in two years.
It will be difficult to continue.
These are the eight most difficult words Bai Yongxiang said. M8 has a certain position and significance in the history of mobile phones in China and even in the world. It was once collected in the exhibition hall of Microsoft headquarters.
The success of M8 angered Apple. Jobs publicly criticized M8 for copying iPhone, and Apple asked Guangdong intellectual property department to stop selling Meizu M8.
Huang Zhang later made a statement at the forum: M8 was asked by Apple to stop production through relevant departments, which made me feel that there was almost no hope for private enterprises to grow bigger.
Until 20 12, in the patent litigation war between Apple and Samsung, Apple took Meizu M8 as an independent innovation product to prove Meizu's innocence.
By 20 10, Meizu also began to face a series of challenges. Google Android system began to become the mainstream of the world, and Meizu's Mymobile system showed disadvantages in software. The time interval between M9 and the market was as long as two years.
Starting from 20 10, Huang Zhang withdrew from the daily management of the company, and Huang Zhang moved out of Meizu Building and handed over the daily work to CEO Bai Yongxiang.
I have been living in my home halfway up the mountain, and my daily work is listening to music, soaking in forums and endlessly studying the hardware and UI design of MX. 20 14 before Huang Zhang came out of the mountain, many new employees of Meizu had never seen Huang Zhang.
This is to strike while the iron is hot and make Meizu bigger and stronger. Maybe Huang Zhang is a little simple and optimistic, just sitting at home polishing products.
In the meantime, Huang Zhang has not been idle. At least he contacted and accepted Lei Jun and others and communicated with the outside world. Perhaps, the coming and going dialogue and the rise of Xiaomi mobile phone have given the hermit Zhang Huangxin new insights and opinions.
The development history of domestic mobile phones is constantly updated.
Most of the data comes from the Internet.