When the first iPhone sales ban went into effect in Colombia, the Apple-Ericsson patent battle took to a new level. Now, Apple appears to be preparing to apply for an injunction against the import and sale of Ericsson products.
The move would mean a new legal move for Apple, aided by its $1 billion acquisition of Intel’s modem business in 2019…
Colombia’s iPhone 12/13 5G mobile phones were banned from sales, Apple first filed a lawsuit against Ericsson for SEP infringement claims
background Ericsson has accused Apple of infringing its patents on the 5G chips used in the current iPhone 13. Apple has paid royalties for the use of patented technology in the past, but failed to renew the license when it expired. It is reported that Apple hopes to negotiate a better deal on 5G licenses after earlier agreements on 2G, 3G and 4G patented technologies.
The situation heated up last December when Apple sued Ericsson, claiming the Swedish company had violated FRAND terms. International law requires standard-essential patents (SEPs: technology without which smartphones could not be made) to be conditional on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. In other words, Apple is claiming that Ericsson is overcharging for licensed patent licenses.
Ericsson, in turn, accused Apple of wasting court resources by forcing unnecessary litigation on two fronts. Apple has fought back against Ericsson with additional patent infringement claims.
Apple refused to pay to put pressure on Ericsson, which wanted to reciprocate Apple by banning the import and sale of iPhones in several countries. The Swedish company achieved its first iPhone ban in Colombia.
Apple files first SEP infringement lawsuit against Ericsson Apple has filed several patent infringement counterclaims against Ericsson before, but never filed a patent infringement lawsuit against standard-essential patents (SEPs), probably because Apple’s previous R&D work did not involve them.
But after acquiring Intel’s modem business in 2019, Apple owns some standard-essential patents, and Foss Patents reports that Apple has filed a patent infringement claim on standard-essential patents for the first time.
“More and more ‘firsts’ in Ericsson v. Apple 5G patent dispute. Colombia’s first-ever Standard Essential Patent (SEP) judgment (Ericsson is enforcing a 5G ban that Apple is trying to block); First-ever ’emergency motion’ for an anti-litigation damages order; now Apple’s first SEP lawsuit. Apple has been a recipient of SEP lawsuits before.”
The patent in question applies to 4G/LTE technology.
Florian Mueller said that while it’s unclear whether Apple is seeking to ban the import and sale of Ericsson’s 4G/LTE products, the court of Apple’s choice offers a huge clue.
Well-known foreign media The Information recently answered these questions with a long and in-depth report titled “Apple’s Eight Years of Efforts to Build Self-Driving Cars”.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Screenshot of The Information report
Since it was exposed in 2014, Apple’s car-building project code-named “Titan” has been attracting the attention of the global technology and automotive industries.
As one of the few technology giants with the highest market value, the strongest R&D capabilities, and the strongest revenue capabilities in the world, the outside world’s expectations for Apple’s cars are not lower than Tesla’s – after all, it has created a lot of technology in the era of PCs and mobile phones. A disruptive product…
But it is quite ironic that Apple has been involved in the car project for eight years. Although there are various news, there has been no official announcement or announcement, or even a sign. And Wei Xiaoli, who started later than it, is already well-known in the global smart electric vehicle field.
In the past 8 years, has Apple been concentrating on research and development to save big moves, and it can’t do it when it encounters difficulties, or has it abandoned the car-building project as rumored?
After interviewing more than 20 people who have participated in the Titan project, The Information partially restored the various attempts and efforts made by Apple’s car-building project in the past 8 years, as well as the setbacks it faced, with a large amount of first-hand information and real stories. with difficulty. There are examples of Cook’s attitude and real participation in automotive projects at the top, as well as the difficulties and internal biases faced by lower-level employees. It is very worth reading.
The following is a compilation of the full text of the report, with slight deletions on the basis of not changing the original meaning.
Autopilot is mainly based on Demo. Cook read it and said yes In August last year, several of Apple’s self-driving cars drove about 40 miles (64.4 kilometers) in Montana. Apple used a drone to film a self-driving car from Bozeman (a city in Montana) to the ski resort town of Big Sky to show Apple CEO Tim Cook the progress of their project Titan.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Apple’s self-driving test car
Apple executives hailed the demo as a success, arguing that the vehicles showed Apple’s self-driving cars could drive without relying on high-definition maps, which are required for most rival self-driving cars.
However, the good vibes after Bozeman’s presentation didn’t last long. Project Titan participants revealed that Apple’s test vehicle, a modified Lexus SUV, had difficulty navigating the streets near Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters without a map, sometimes crashing into curbs and sometimes having difficulty crossing intersections. Implement lane keeping.
It’s worth noting that earlier this year, one of Apple’s test cars nearly hit a jogger who was crossing the road and had the right of way.
These issues reflect the challenges facing Apple’s car project, which has wobbled over the past eight years as goals and leadership have changed.
Foreign media The Information’s report, based on interviews with 20 participants in the Titan project, also revealed how software problems became a key factor affecting the project. And when to release to the public is also an important reason for the team’s repeated swings.
The demo at Bozeman and its aftermath also highlighted a repeated mistake by Apple and most self-driving car companies: Engineers waste precious time choreographing demos on specific routes, programs that only work there but are of little use elsewhere , this kind of program is called “presentation software”.
Arun Venkatadri, who worked on self-driving cars at Uber, said, “If you have enough money, you can use self-driving software to plan a fixed route to work, but it’s not certain that this self-driving software can expand other functions to ensure that users can Driving in other non-fixed areas.”
Insufficient experience in autonomous driving, commercialization is far away Unlike deep-pocketed companies like Alphabet’s (Google parent)’s Waymo, GM’s Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox, Apple wants to run its own Uber-like Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) with the goal of selling its eventual vehicle to the public .
That means Apple faces a bigger challenge than its rivals, as it has to wait until its own self-driving technology is in use before launching its own self-driving cars.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ One of the Apple car concept images circulating on the Internet
The Information estimates, based on public documents and interviews with self-driving car developers, that these and other companies have burned through more than $30 billion developing self-driving cars with little to no revenue. billion) in cash.
And self-driving technology is far from ready to operate at scale, and companies like Apple don’t seem to know how long it will take to get there.
Nor do they know what technological breakthroughs they would need for vehicles to reliably predict how other cars, bicycles, and pedestrians will move around them—a key obstacle for autonomous vehicles to be able to drive like humans, let alone more than humans. All right.
What’s more, Tesla and other traditional automakers already generate billions of dollars in revenue each year by developing and selling semi-autonomous features like adaptive cruise control, lane-keep assist and automatic steering.
That raises the question of whether Apple is making a major business mistake by betting on fully autonomous driving.
The team was neglected by Cook and the leadership changed frequently But Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said the bet made sense for Apple. Because, aside from Apple’s VR headset, Project Titan is one of Apple’s biggest efforts to break into a new category since the death of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2011.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering
Today, about 1,000 people are working on Project Titan, an initiative led by Apple head John Giannandrea and AI chief John Giannandrea.
However, the problems encountered by Project Titan are similar to those faced by the development of Apple’s VR headset.
It is understood that Cook is a very different CEO from Jobs. Jobs was closely involved in product design and often inspired product design, guiding the company in a particular direction. According to multiple people who have worked on the Titan project, Cook is more distant from the project, and he rarely visits the Titan project office near Kifer Road in California’s Silicon Valley.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Titan Project Office (Source: Google Street View)
Some former Apple employees say this hurts the project because it lacks a leader who clearly defines and articulates what the product should be. Constant changes in strategy have exhausted employees, and Cook has also been reluctant to commit to mass-producing cars, which has frustrated some of the program’s executives.
In addition, Apple’s executive team’s support for the project, which is internally code-named T172, is uneven.
Notably, Craig Federighi, a key Apple executive overseeing software development, was not involved in the T172 project. He has been skeptical of the project for years, according to two people who have heard him talk about it privately.
It’s unclear whether Craig Federighi’s criticism has affected Cook, and in other parts of Apple, Project Titan has become the object of ridicule because of its frequent leadership changes, which in turn lead to changes in strategic goals and layoffs.
Several former Apple employees said some managers proactively warned employees not to participate in the program.
In addition, the financial cost of the Titan project is also high, costing more than 1 billion US dollars (about 6.73 billion yuan) per year in recent years. But this is a drop in the bucket for Apple, which spends more than $22 billion (about 148 billion yuan) on research and development every year.
You know, Apple also spent 430 billion US dollars (about 2892.70 billion yuan) to repurchase its own stock. However, an Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
It’s worth mentioning that Project Titan has also gone through four leadership changes over the past eight years, each with different ambitions and ambitions.
In 2014, when Apple was about to release the Apple Watch, Cook agreed to explore electric vehicles, eager to grow Apple’s business and push the company into new product categories. At the time, Tesla’s electric cars had been on sale for six years, and Google’s self-driving cars had been in testing for five years.
To Cook and other executives, developing the car seemed like an obvious goal because of the company’s strengths in engineering and design, two of the people said.
So four senior Apple employees formed the core of Project Titan, also known internally as the “Four Kings”, namely Steve Zadesky, Benjamin Lyon, John Wright and DJ Novotney, who told Dan, then Apple’s head of hardware engineering, to Reporting to Riccio, Dan Riccio is also a major proponent of Project Titan on Apple’s executive team.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive (left) and senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio
While Riccio is in charge of the technology, he still doesn’t get involved too much, because the actual leader of Project Titan is Zadesky, Apple’s vice president of product design for the car project.
Zadesky started his career as a mechanical engineer at Ford, and given his automotive background, he was a good fit for the project. Under Zadesky’s leadership, Apple set out to build a conventional electric car that would outpace Tesla on the highway with more advanced driver-assist features.
Still, some of Zadesky’s counterparts on Project Titan have pushed for more ambitious goals, including fully autonomous driving, which has created tension and infighting.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Early Titan project leaders Steve Zadesky (left) and Bob Mansfield
Early cooperation with Magna, hoping to come up with new tricks At the time, Apple teamed up with upscale automaker Magna Steyer to create an initial version of the car, designed to resemble a minivan. During this period, Project Titan was more concerned with the passenger experience than autonomous driving.
For example, the project team has envisioned how a car could detect a driver’s heart attack, take them to the hospital, or provide surround sound and noise cancellation technology so that each passenger in the same car could listen to different music.
Within two years, the project expanded in multiple directions. At the time, employees thought the project was a “technical investigation,” but they were told Apple hoped to sell a car as soon as 2019. At that time, Zadesky also hired auto industry experts to design doors, lighting and car interiors, and began to list auto parts suppliers.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Foreign media renderings based on Apple’s car patent design
Project Titan also drew on development ideas from some employees in Apple’s consumer electronics division, but Apple’s industrial design team came up with some radical ideas. For example, because the car is safe enough, it is hoped that the car can be made mostly of glass. One project member had to warn the industrial designer (don’t overthink it) because other cars might hit the Apple car.
The main challenge, however, came from Apple’s decision to develop its own car engineering knowledge rather than leverage decades of experience with existing car companies.
But engineers think reinventing basic automotive engineering concepts is a waste of time, and managers won’t accept that without seeing the bad results firsthand.
By the end of 2015, Cook was hesitant to continue building cars and take on a new set of tasks, the Titan project was stalled, and Apple was required to take on a huge new set of costs and security risks. At this time, Zadesky also left the Titan project for personal reasons.
Spend a lot of money on autonomous driving and also buy a test field After about six months of searching, Riccio, one of the “Big Four,” persuaded a retired former Apple executive, Bob Mansfield, to restart the project.
Under Mansfield’s leadership, Project Titan paused development of the car to focus on fully self-driving software that would enable future Apple cars to drive without a driver.
One reason for this shift was the strong influence of Jonathan Ive, Apple’s head of industrial design at the time, who was adamantly opposed to building conventional electric cars.
Jonathan Ive believes that self-driving will do to cars what multi-touch gestures (tapping, scrolling and zooming with your fingers) did to iPhones, and that future Apple cars will have to be like iPhones in the smartphone industry .
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive (left) and senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio
In 2016, after Mansfield ended its partnership with Magna, Apple’s industrial design team has repurposed the Apple Car into a compact sedan that looks similar to the BMW i3.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ BMW i3
No one knew when Apple’s self-driving software would be ready, and many of Project Titan’s employees were reassigned to work on the self-driving test vehicle, code-named Baja, to work on batteries, motors and drivetrains.
In 2017, Mansfield believed the company’s self-driving system wasn’t fully finished, and was trying to set a more realistic goal of rolling out self-driving features in stages, according to multiple people involved in the plan. The team then worked with Volkswagen to develop a self-driving shuttle that could transport Apple employees from Palo Alto, California to Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, California.
Facebook’s parent company Meta canceled a back-office contract at its Silicon Valley headquarters, which will cost hundreds of workers at the outsourcing company their jobs.
It is reported that the logistics services of Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters are outsourced to the American “ABM Industrial Company”. And in mid-June, Meta informed the company that the partnership would be canceled. The layoffs resulting from the cancellation will take effect July 25, according to a regulatory report the outsourcing company submitted to the California Department of Labor Development.
ABM, which filed a report on July 1, said the layoffs will affect 368 ABM employees working at Meta’s headquarters (1 Hacker Drive, Menlo Park, Calif.), the company’s human resources manager said.
The logistical service jobs that have been cut include kitchen cleaners, night cleaners, park bicycle organizers, cafe waiters, etc. The layoffs also include 10 directors and seven managers.
ABM company sources said that the logistics outsourcing companies Meta will recruit in the future may retain some positions and continue to hire the affected workers, but the specific recruitment plans of the new outsourcing companies are not yet clear.
The downsizing this time comes at a time when Meta’s business development is facing many uncertainties. Worsening U.S. inflation and Apple’s new privacy policy for iOS have caused Meta’s revenue growth to slow down and even face a year-over-year decline.
In May, Meta said that it would suspend the social recruitment plan. When it announced its first-quarter financial report, Meta also said that there may be a year-on-year decline in operating income in the second quarter.
In the above-mentioned regulatory report, ABM did not address the specific reasons for Meta’s termination of the cooperation agreement. A Meta spokesman said the company plans to switch to a back-office outsourcer, but did not elaborate on how many existing jobs would be retained under the new partnership.
ABM is a publicly traded facility management and logistics service company in the United States with a total workforce of 100,000 people. When it released its fourth-quarter earnings report last year, the company disclosed that the list of customers for logistics outsourcing included technology companies such as Meta, Google and Adobe. ABM also mentioned that, among all clients, these tech companies are expanding the size of their offices for outsourcing logistics services.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Meta’s office park has begun to quiet down, with the company adopting a work-from-home model for its employees. Today, Meta is preparing to bring employees back to the office, though the company is also giving employees the option to work from home permanently. In May, Meta opened some office buildings in California’s Bay Area, bringing some employees back to the office.
Last week, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said that this year’s planned hiring of engineers would be cut by at least 30 percent. On Monday, US media reported that Meta’s management encouraged employees to report poor performers around them to their superiors, saying “these people are dragging down our company.”
An internal memo sent by Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday said the company will “slow down the pace of hiring for the rest of the year.” In the face of economic uncertainty, Pichai asked employees to “be more entrepreneurial.”
Pichai said the uncertain global economic outlook has been his top concern. Like all companies, Google is not immune to economic headwinds. However, Google has never seen these types of challenges as obstacles, but as opportunities to deepen the company’s focus and long-term investment.
In this economic climate, Pichai asks employees to demonstrate greater entrepreneurship, greater urgency, sharper focus and greater hunger than in good times. In some cases, Google needs to consolidate where investments overlap and simplify the process. In other cases, this means pausing development and redeploying resources to higher priority areas.
He also said that Google isn’t freezing hiring outright, but that the company will be slowing hiring for the rest of the year given its hiring progress so far this year. For the rest of 2022 and into 2023, Google will focus its hiring on engineering, technology and other key roles, and ensure the company is hiring the best talent that aligns with long-term priorities.
Tesla’s new Berlin Gigafactory can only produce Model Y electric cars in black or white, and European customers who want to order Model Y in other colors will need to wait until March next year for delivery.
Earlier, when Ford planned to start producing the Model T, it had a similar strategy. Henry Ford told his team: “Any customer can paint a car any color he wants, as long as it’s black.”
According to foreign media reports, Tesla’s Berlin factory currently only produces the Model Y electric SUV in black or white.
Due to capacity constraints, Tesla’s Berlin factory temporarily only produces black and white Model Y
European customers who want to order the Model Y in a different color will have to wait for the electric car produced at the Shanghai Gigafactory, with deliveries starting as early as March 2023, the report said. If Tesla customers choose to order the Model Y in black or white, they can expect to receive the car in October of this year.
Problems have been reported in the paint shop at Tesla’s Berlin Gigafactory since March, which is why the Berlin Gigafactory can currently only produce the Model Y in black or white.
Due to the continuous increase in production and the production bottleneck caused by the limited capacity of the factory’s paint shop, Tesla had to close the Berlin Gigafactory for two weeks in July this year in order to optimize the production process. Production doubled.
After optimizing the factory’s production process, Tesla’s Berlin Gigafactory will resume operations in three shifts, with the body only needing to stay in each production workshop for 45 seconds, instead of 90 seconds as before. These adjustments will also apply to the paint shop.
Tesla delivered 254,695 electric vehicles globally in the second quarter, matching Wall Street analysts’ estimates.
Tesla still expects its global annual production to increase by 50% this year, much of which will come from capacity growth at its Gigafactory in Berlin, Germany, and Austin, in the United States. But analysts reportedly believe the two plants together produced only about 6,000 vehicles in the second quarter.
Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), an authoritative consultancy in the global display field, said in a report today that production of Apple’s new 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Max this year is behind schedule.
Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro design is based on multiple leaks (Image credit: CONCEPTSIPHONE)
He said that based on supply chain data throughout August, Apple’s iPhone 14 Max still lags behind the iPhone 14 Pro Max in panel volume, and is “far behind.”
He went on to say that this year Apple has more than triple the supply of the iPhone 14 Pro Max as the iPhone 14 Max.
Apple’s iPhone 14 Max and iPhone 14 Pro Max will allegedly share the same 6.7-inch screen, although the panel itself will be different (the iPhone 14 Max doesn’t support Apple’s adaptive refresh rate technology), only the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone The 14 Pro Max will enjoy ProMotion; in addition, the iPhone 14 Max will continue to use the unrecognizable “bangs” screen, but the iPhone 14 Pro Max will use the “Pro limited” “exclamation mark” punch-hole design.
IT House reported that the Nikkei Asian Review said in May that the production plan for the iPhone 14 Max had been delayed due to supply chain restrictions. But then Ming-Chi Kuo reported that while production of the iPhone 14 Max was behind schedule, the situation was “still under control.”
According to Ross Young’s report, the supply chain situation seems to have deteriorated after May. Of course, it may also be that Apple deliberately chose to prioritize Pro Max orders.
After all, in a two-month period, a lot of things can change drastically. If the iPhone 14 Max panel supply is as poor as Ross Young said, it means that the device may be delayed or severely limited (early launch).
Judging from the currently known information, the new iPhone 14 Max this year features a large screen and long battery life. Once released, it is expected to become the hottest model, although it may be more expensive than the “non-Pro” price in everyone’s mind. Much higher.
Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, but he founded LoveForm Design, which continues to serve Apple as a consultant, and his partnership with Apple is now over.
Ive has helped Apple design important products such as the iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple retail stores. In June 2019, Ive left Apple to create his own design company. Since then, Ive has assisted Apple in designing the 24-inch iMac and contributed wisdom to the Apple Car.
Ive left with a multi-year contract with Apple worth more than $100 million. According to the terms, Apple will be LoveFrom’s main customer, and if Apple thinks a project is competitive, Ive will not be able to take orders.
Now it’s time for Apple and Ive to renew their contract, but the two sides announced their separation. Some Apple executives are said to be unhappy with the high fees paid to Ive, and executives are frustrated that some designers have left Apple for LoveFrom. Ive has his own appeal, and he wants to be free to choose customers without having to clarify his work to Apple.
There are rumors that Ive left because Apple paid more and more attention to operations and neglected design. Cook’s lack of interest in the product development process and the growing preference of boards for people with financial and operational backgrounds over technical talent irked Ive.
After Ive left, the Apple design team was handed over to Jeff Williams, industrial design by Evans Hankey, and software design by Alan Dye in charge. Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak is also said to have some say in product design choices.
Loongson Zhongke opened at 96.28 yuan per share, an increase of 60.31%. After the opening bell, the stock price of Loongson Zhongke declined. As of the writing of Core East and West, the share price of Loongson Zhongke was 89.33 yuan per share, an increase of 48.73%, and the total market value was 35.8 billion yuan.
Domestic CPU leading enterprise! Loongson Zhongke was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and the opening price rose by more than 60%
Godson Zhongke originated from the “Godson” project started in 2001 by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was established in 2008 and began to market in 2010. “Godson” is one of the earliest general-purpose processor series developed in China. It has been supported by the Knowledge Innovation Project of the Academy of Sciences, the 863 Program, the 973 Program, the Natural Science Foundation, and the Nuclear High-Tech Major Project.
According to the prospectus, Loongson Zhongke’s products are mainly aimed at industrial control and informatization chips, which are applied in the field of key information infrastructure and are gradually expanding to the commercial market. At present, Loongson Zhongke has basically completed the technical “supplementary course” and formed its own instruction set, LoongArch. Its general-purpose processor performance has approached the level of mainstream products in the commercial market, and the operating system has become mature and stable.
During the reporting period, the revenue of Loongson Zhongke achieved rapid growth. From 2019 to 2021, its revenue was 486 million yuan, 1.082 billion yuan and 1.201 billion yuan respectively.
The controlling shareholder of buy ios app reviews Godson Zhongke is Tiantong Xinyuan Company, and the actual controllers are Hu Weiwu, chairman and general manager of Godson Zhongke, and Jin Hong and his wife, investment director.
In this IPO, Loongson Zhongke plans to raise 3.512 billion yuan, which will be used for three projects: “R&D and industrialization of advanced process chips”, “R&D of high-performance general-purpose graphics processor chips and systems” and “Supplementary working capital”. After the subscription, Loongson Zhongke raised a total of 24.62 yuan, a difference of more than 1 billion yuan from the expected fundraising.
Fundraising of Loongson Zhongke Plan
▲ The fundraising situation of Godson China Science and Technology Co., Ltd.
It started from the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but it was necessary to “clean up the academy-style poison” Godson Zhongke originated from the “Godson” project of the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. According to Hu Weiwu, chairman and general manager of Loongson Zhongke, not long after he graduated from his doctorate, he was full of enthusiasm and felt that a big country like China could not have its own CPU, so he began to develop CPUs by himself.
However, the development of the “Godson” project has not been smooth sailing.
During the “Tenth Five-Year Plan” period, there was also a “Hanxin fraud” incident in the domestic chip industry, and the reputation of “Godson”, which was also supported by state funds, was also implicated. In 2005, Zhang Fuxin, Wu Shaogang, Hu Mingchang and others from “Godson” went to Changshu to build an industrialization base. When no one was using it, they started with the whole machine and promoted 150,000 sets of Godson educational computers for primary and secondary schools in Jiangsu.
In 2009, the “Godson” team began to organize enterprises, and few people were interested. Hu Weiwu laughed at himself: “I’m just like Don Quixote. He takes a spear and calls him Godson. He wants to fight two windmills, one is Intel and the other is Arm.” Industrial Development Investment Corporation (Beijing Industrial Investment) came to invest.
Hu Weiwu, Chairman and General Manager of Loongson Zhongke
▲ Hu Weiwu, Chairman and General Manager of Loongson Zhongke
The chairman of BIT went to the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and said bluntly that he knew that investing in Godson would definitely cost him, but he had to invest even if he lost, because this is a political task. Beijing Industrial Investment invested 100 million yuan, which led private capital to invest 100 million yuan, which became the first financing of Loongson Zhongke.
In 2010, the “Godson” team transformed into a market-oriented operation. Hu Weiwu mentioned that a researcher like himself started a business from a “negative number”, because he had read too many papers and national project guides, and it was necessary to eliminate the “academic” poison.
To this end, Hu Weiwu set several basic principles, one of which is: the Godson team will not judge the national award or report to the academician. In 2009 and 2011, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences voted to select Hu Weiwu as an academician, but he rejected it because “China does not lack academicians, but it lacks a company like Intel.”
In 2013, Loongson Zhongke carried out the transformation of management, market and R&D, and clarified the policy of “taking innovation and development as the theme, industrial development as the main line, and ecological construction as the goal”. In 2015, the sales revenue of Loongson Zhongke exceeded 100 million yuan for the first time and achieved breakeven for the first time.
It is reported that in 2016, CDH Capital led the B round of financing of Loongson Zhongke. In 2017 and 2019, Loongson Zhongke completed the C and D rounds of financing respectively. The C round investors include Linzhi Dingfu, CDH Investment, etc. The D round lead investor is the Guoxin Science and Technology Innovation Fund.
In the market practice, Godson Zhongke finally clarified the two market directions of industrial control and informatization. Its industrial control chips are oriented to embedded special equipment, industrial control and terminals, etc.; the information technology chips are oriented to desktops and servers.
So far, Loongson Zhongke has launched Loongson 1 series, Loongson 2 series and Loongson 3 series products. Loongson 1 and Loongson 2 are mainly for industrial control applications, while Loongson 3 is mainly for information applications.
Loongson Server CPU Roadmap
▲ Loongson server CPU roadmap
The average annual revenue growth is 57%, and the net profit in 2021 will exceed 200 million During the reporting period, due to the formation of technical core competitiveness and the continuous improvement of the industrial environment, Loongson Zhongke’s revenue continued to grow during the period from 2019 to 2021, with an average annual compound growth rate of 57.28%.
In 2019, 2020 and 2021, the revenue of Godson Zhongke was 486 million yuan, 1.082 billion yuan and 1.201 billion yuan respectively. Its net profit also rose from 192 million yuan in 2019 to 237 million yuan in 2021, and its net profit in 2020 was 72.23 million yuan.
Changes in revenue and net profit of Loongson Zhongke from 2019 to 2021
▲ Loongson Zhongke’s 2019-2021 revenue and net profit changes
In the three years from 2019 to 2021, the annual R&D investment of Loongson Zhongke was 78.2139 million yuan, 208 million yuan and 322 million yuan, accounting for 16.11%, 19.26% and 26.78% of the annual revenue respectively.
During the reporting period, the main business income of Loongson Zhongke can be divided into industrial control chips, information chips and solutions according to products. Informatization chips are the main source of income of Loongson Zhongke, and the revenue of this business will account for more than 50% from 2019 to 2021.
Apple recently made available new AirPods beta firmware, rolling out alongside iOS 16, macOS 13 Beta, and more.
Apple AirPods Max Beta Enables LC3 Codec, AirPods Pro 2 Wireless Headphones Expected to Support Bluetooth LE Audio Technology
Now, a developer has confirmed that the AirPods Max beta has added support for a higher-quality Bluetooth codec, which should at least improve the quality of voice calls on Apple’s high-end earphones, and provide an early preview of the AirPods Pro 2’s best features.
Twitter user @George discovered that the LC3 codec can be enabled via the AirPods Max beta firmware. The LC3 codec is Bluetooth’s future LE low energy and high quality codec that will be coming to headphones soon.
Apple AirPods Max Beta Enables LC3 Codec, AirPods Pro 2 Wireless Headphones Expected to Support Bluetooth LE Audio Technology
The Low Complexity Communication Codec (LC3 for short) will be able to transmit at much lower bit rates without degrading Bluetooth audio quality.
The LC3 codec will improve audio calls, but the true potential of this technology will require Bluetooth 5.2 and a new generation of AirPods hardware.
AirPods Pro 2 will support LE audio technology The LC3 codec will improve audio calling, efficiency and stability for Bluetooth devices, but the requirements to take full advantage of the standard will include Bluetooth 5.2, which is not currently supported by AirPods at the hardware level.
Apple AirPods Max Beta Enables LC3 Codec, AirPods Pro 2 Wireless Headphones Expected to Support Bluetooth LE Audio Technology
9to5 Mac sources have confirmed that the next-generation AirPods Pro 2 (codenamed B698) will feature the new H1 chip, a technology Apple’s in-house developed audio chip can handle.
Additionally, the iOS 16 references reveal that it will support the LC3 codec and LE low-power audio. In terms of LE audio support, a senior engineer at Apple is heavily involved in developing this new standard.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said earlier this year that the audio experience of the AirPods Pro 2 will be greatly improved.
With support for Bluetooth 5.2 and LC3, Apple will be able to get rid of the AirPods out of sync when the user wears them, and thanks to the LE standard, battery life will be improved, while focusing on buy ios installs efficiency and stability.
Notably, just after the WWDC22 keynote, the Bluetooth Association released Auracast broadcast audio technology (also known as Augmented Reality Audio Broadcast), which will improve the existing experience on AirPods while unlocking new possibilities.
For example, with Auracast, users can listen to songs, watch movies, and more while connecting more sets of wireless headphones at the same time. Currently, users can only connect up to two sets of AirPods from the same source.
Rumors about upcoming AirPods and ‘lossless Bluetooth’ Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple’s new AirPods Pro 2 will still feature a Lightning charging port. Additionally, rumors talk about a new form factor design and health and fitness tracking features. Apple has predicted that AirPods will complement Apple Watch health tracking capabilities by providing additional data points in the future.
Apple last month quietly raised prices on Apple Music student plans in countries including South Africa, India, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and Israel. Now, Apple is adjusting the price of Apple Music student subscriptions in the US, Canada, and the UK.
Apple Apple Music student subscription increases in price in US, Canada and UK
Apple Music student subscription users in the United States are now priced at $5.99 per month (about 40.13 yuan). Previously, the same plan cost $4.99 per month. In the UK, the price of an Apple Music student subscription has increased from £4.99 to £5.99 per month.
The web version of Apple Music archived on June 21 still shows the old prices from the US, Canada and UK sites, suggesting that Apple has increased the price of Apple Music student subscriptions in the past 48 hours buy app reviews. Apple has not officially announced a confirmation of the price increase.
In the United States, the cost of an Apple Music personal subscription is $9.99 per month (about 66.93 yuan) – currently unchanged (the national version of the personal subscription is 10 yuan / month). A family subscription for up to six people costs $14.99 a month, while an Apple Music voice subscription costs $4.99 a month. Eligible students can subscribe to Apple Music at a discounted price through the UNiDAYS program.
All Apple Music subscriptions have full access to the platform’s song catalog across devices, except for Apple Music voice subscriptions that only use Siri on Apple devices. Notably, the Apple TV+ subscription includes the Apple Music student subscription at no extra cost, which Apple says is a limited-time offer.
