Samsung's Master Felt Stifled

The next day, Hailing's sky blazed beneath the scorching sun.

Just like the blazing sales of Origin Mobile. As large numbers of phones were sold, many people who had gotten their hands on one showed off their newly purchased Origin Mobile through various channels.

With cutting-edge technology and solid quality, Origin Mobile's reputation continued to spread. It had already become a benchmark for Chinese phones.

China's media treated it like a holiday. After all, it was rare for a domestic product to surpass foreign ones, and it also stirred everyone's sense of pride.

Don't underestimate that sense of pride. At the same price point and with the same quality, Chinese people were still willing to support domestic products. Not to mention that it was far superior. Consumers had sharp eyes; they could tell what was good and what was bad.

Another piece of news was even more encouraging: Samsung announced that it would visit Origin Company to seek cooperation and upgrade its software. Origin Company also confirmed the news.

China and Korea were separated by only a narrow strip of water, and the distance was short. News released in the morning brought Samsung's delegation to Jinling that afternoon.

Chu Feng also went to receive Samsung's delegation.

Unexpectedly, this Samsung delegation consisted of people from Samsung headquarters, and its leader was Lee Jae-yong, the third-generation head of Samsung.

Lee Jae-yong was born in Korea in 1968. He was the only son of Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, graduated from Seoul National University, pursued an MBA at Keio University in Japan, and earned a doctorate from Harvard Business School in the United States. He was a major shareholder in Samsung Everland and the actual controller of Samsung Group.

When Chu Feng heard that this man was personally leading the delegation, he revealed an amused smile. If this were merely a phone partnership, there was no need to send such a heavyweight figure.

Samsung's status in Korea had been mentioned before. One could easily imagine this man's standing there. This was no longer an ordinary corporate partnership.

Lin Lin also reminded Chu Feng to mind his boundaries.

Before long, Lee Jae-yong's private plane arrived at Hailing Airport.

Chu Feng secretly complained that he needed to get himself a private jet too. Everyone else had one. Although his spacecraft could utterly crush their private planes, to say nothing of its technology, he did not dare reveal it in public.

More than ten minutes later, Chu Feng met the third-generation head of Samsung Group.

He had the typical square face of a Korean man and wore rimless glasses. Beneath his side-parted hair was a broad forehead. His eyebrows slanted slightly downward, his philtrum was deep, and his tightly pressed lips revealed a formal smile when he saw Chu Feng.

"Hello, Mr. Chu. Please forgive this unannounced visit."

Chu Feng clasped Lee Jae-yong's outstretched right hand.

"You're too polite. Welcome to my hometown, Mr. Lee. I hope you have a wonderful time here."

Before long, both sides were seated in the banquet hall of Haiyan Grand Hotel.

The meal was lively. Lee Jae-yong acted as though he and Chu Feng had been friends for many years. Although they did not speak the same language, he was tactful and showed no trace of awkwardness, always finding common ground. Chu Feng could not help marveling inwardly. This was what true breeding looked like.

Both sides were satisfied with the meal, but after arriving at the company, Lee Jae-yong suggested that he and Chu Feng speak privately first.

Chu Feng did not know what Lee Jae-yong was trying to pull, but he decided to adapt to whatever came and hear what he had to say.

"Mr. Chu, I believe you understand the reason for my visit to your company."

As soon as they sat down, the translation device rendered Lee Jae-yong's words, leaving Chu Feng slightly stunned. Was he going to be this direct? Weren't people supposed to speak in riddles and play games?

"Isn't this to discuss phone cooperation and software upgrade development?" Chu Feng said vaguely.

Lee Jae-yong smiled meaningfully and did not mind Chu Feng playing dumb.

"If this were only about the phone business, there would have been no need for me to come. A regional president would have been enough."

Look at him. All he needed was a regional president, while Chu Feng had to handle everything himself like some miserable laborer. Zheng Yun was probably crying himself unconscious in the bathroom.

Chu Feng grumbled inwardly.

"Then what is the purpose of your visit, Mr. Lee?"

Chu Feng smiled at Lee Jae-yong, making him unable to tell whether Chu Feng genuinely did not understand or was only pretending.

But thinking of the undercurrents within his family, Lee Jae-yong stopped putting on airs.

"We can cooperate in electronics, semiconductors, and Artificial Intelligence."

Lee Jae-yong looked steadily into Chu Feng's eyes as he spoke.

Hearing the areas of cooperation Lee Jae-yong proposed, Chu Feng understood. Just as expected.

Samsung had always pursued technology with relentless determination. Samsung had risen by constantly learning from other technologies, then conducting its own research and development, before ultimately surpassing the targets it had learned from.

Samsung Electronics' strategic goal had never been merely to become the most successful company. It also wanted to turn Samsung into the leading brand in the global electronics industry.

To that end, Samsung set itself a powerful rival and swore to catch up to it before eventually surpassing it. That target was Sony. In the Fortune Global 500 rankings, Sony was the only electronics company ranked above Samsung Electronics, the undisputed global hegemon.

Before 1997, Samsung Electronics still had to purchase chips from Sony. But after setting Sony as its target, Samsung spared no expense in building a powerful R&D team. It humbly learned technology from the Japanese, sending technical personnel to Japanese companies with strong technology, such as Sony, until it finally broke through the technological barrier.

Samsung had become one of the world's top technological innovators, creating a series of cutting-edge technologies in numerous fields, including mobile phones, handheld computing devices, flat-panel displays, and ultra-thin laptops.

To surpass Sony, Samsung Electronics not only made frequent moves in fields such as digital cameras, displays, and audio equipment, but also launched its fiercest attack against Sony's weakest area—mobile phones.

Because Sony phones lacked innovation and suffered losses due to poor management, Sony sought to merge its mobile phone division with Ericsson's, once the world's leading phone maker, establishing Sony Ericsson. Yet Samsung still surpassed Sony Ericsson with outstanding performance in 2002. In the global phone market, consumers recognized Samsung, not Sony, as the most popular phone brand. This completely overturned Sony's image as the top player in consumer electronics.

Since 1998, Samsung Electronics had won a total of seventeen industrial design awards and became the company with the most awards for five consecutive years. Its total number of awards was tied with Apple Inc.

Soon after, Samsung Electronics won five awards at the 2002 United States Industrial Design Excellence Awards, IDEA. This annual industrial design award, presented by the Industrial Designers Society of America, was one of the most important awards in the global industrial design world.

Samsung tied with Apple Inc. for first place as the company with the most awards at that year's industrial design awards, ahead of IBM, NEC, Canon, Sony, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Fujitsu. This achievement proved that Samsung Electronics' leading design philosophy had received global recognition, allowing it to take a solid step toward becoming a world-class enterprise.

Thus, from its founding to the present, Samsung's product development strategy had roughly gone through four stages: the "copying strategy," the "imitation strategy," the "following technological leaders strategy," and the "technological leadership strategy."

First, it entered the market in a short period of time and at a low cost.

Then, it digested and absorbed foreign technology, striving to improve its own products and raise the level of alignment between its market and technology.

Next, it used advanced technology to develop new products in the introductory stage of their life cycle, capturing the mid-to-high-end market.

Finally, it led cutting-edge technology and occupied the high-end market!

Now that it had witnessed Origin Company's terrifying technological strength, how could Samsung possibly hold back?

Moreover, the launch of a high-tech product represented that the company possessed even more advanced technological capabilities. Therefore, Origin Company's technological reserves were even more shocking.

No company could possibly release all of its research achievements at once. Once that technology was cracked by others, having no more advanced technology in hand would be no different from courting death.

That was why Lee Jae-yong had come personally. He wanted to probe Chu Feng's depths and see whether Origin Company was truly qualified to cooperate with Samsung.

"Heh, cooperation is possible. But cooperation requires equality. I can provide technology. What can you offer?"

Without changing expression, Chu Feng turned the question back on Lee Jae-yong.

"Our Samsung Group includes twenty-six subsidiaries and several other legal entities. We have established nearly three hundred corporate entities and offices in close to seventy countries and regions, employ a total of 196,000 people, and operate in numerous fields, including electronics, finance, machinery, and chemicals."

He spoke as if he were merely stating something ordinary, yet his slightly impassioned tone still revealed his pride.

"Furthermore, Samsung Group has established itself as an industry leader in technological fields such as semiconductors, LCDs, and communications."

After saying that, he paused briefly before continuing.

"We have our own R&D teams, complete R&D channels, many loyal and outstanding employees, and top-tier manufacturing processes. That is why we are qualified partners!"

Lee Jae-yong spoke with complete confidence.

"Oh? Really?" Chu Feng asked, and Lee Jae-yong's expression darkened. Just as he was about to say something, Chu Feng spoke again.

"R&D teams? Forget everything else—have you developed even one of the technologies contained in Origin Mobile? Have you cracked the Origin System? Do you have 1nm manufacturing processes? And these are only a tiny fraction of Origin Company's technological reserves. Do you understand?"

Chu Feng spoke somewhat helplessly, as though both disdainful and exasperated.

Would Bill Gates brag to a passerby about how rich he was? There was no need. The gap was simply too vast. If Chu Feng were not afraid that the world could not handle it, the technologies he revealed could scare a whole crowd to death.

Lee Jae-yong swore that he had never felt so powerless and aggrieved in his life, because everything Chu Feng said was true.

After Origin Mobile had been brought back, they had finally managed to dismantle it. Yet the company's top researchers had looked like ancient people seeing a mobile phone for the first time.

Other than the battery, which was ordinary, they understood neither the integrated screen manufacturing process nor the CPU process, much less could they reproduce them.

Even for Origin Mobile's color-changing back panel, they only knew that it was an alloy made from multiple materials. As for how it changed color or the principle behind the change, they could not understand it at all, much less its manufacturing process.

In truth, Lee Jae-yong had also complained about Origin Mobile's creators. With so much technology, even if they gave Samsung just one piece of it, Samsung could make far greater use of it elsewhere. Take phones, for example—they could completely crush Apple. Not to mention those cutting-edge technologies, such as the semiconductor manufacturing process that had actually reached 1nm!

Up to now, the highest precision semiconductor materials could achieve was around 7nm. Chips contained many transistors, and those transistors controlled electrical currents. As transistor size gradually shrank, the channel between the source and drain also shortened accordingly. Once the channel reached a certain point, quantum tunneling effects occurred inside the chip, causing the transistor to lose part of its function. Tunneling effects occurred when transistors went below 7nm, so in theory, it was impossible to go below 7nm.

As for 5nm manufacturing processes, he had only heard of a laboratory result that had even reached 1nm, with its transistors made from carbon nanotubes doped with molybdenum disulfide. But it had no commercial application value and remained only at the laboratory breakthrough stage.

Yet Origin Mobile's 5nm technology had already been applied on a large scale. Its manufacturing process was on an entirely different level. And who knew whether Origin Company had long possessed a manufacturing process for 1nm transistors, merely keeping it hidden as a technological reserve?

There was too much that could be done with this. He did not know how China dared apply such a process only to a tiny mobile phone. If it were used in computers and similar fields, would that not be an epoch-making development?

How could Lee Jae-yong know that China was already using Quantum Computers? The technological achievements within them were far beyond those in Origin Mobile. Who would still care about this?

Lee Jae-yong felt utterly stifled... Was there really no way forward?

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