America's Road to Fame

Chapter 456 Robots and factories
However, what Chen William was interested in was not Sony's mobile phone business. Although they also launched some impressive mobile phone models later on, the sales of Sony's mobile phones did not improve much until then.

Even in Japan, the sales of Sony mobile phones are not high, and they can't even enter the top three.

Therefore, there is no need for William Chen to hide Sun Zhengyi's question from him. What he is really interested in is actually Sony's robotics department that had been abolished during Howard's time, and their production plants with automated robotic arms.

From the 1990s to the 2000s, Japan's service robot industry began to rise, and Japanese companies invested heavily to create smart home assistants for humans.

However, this wave of robots in the market comes quickly and recedes quickly.

Since artificial intelligence technology was still immature at that time, it was difficult to realize the mechanism for robots to act autonomously. The subsequent development process has been stagnant, and the industrialization of service robots has also fallen into difficulties.

In 1999, Sony launched the AIBO robot dog. At that time, AIBO was loved by many users, but the price was as high as 5000 US dollars, which was really high.

After the Internet bubble burst in 2000, Sony was greatly affected, and its stock price fell sharply. Because the technology of this kind of robot products is too high-end, the manufacturing precision is extremely high, so the cost is high, and it can be said that it is basically impossible to make any profit. Therefore, At that time, most of the companies involved in this field were "paying for their dreams". In this easy economic situation, it was difficult to persist.

In 2003, Sony launched the QRIO robot technology, but the market response was not ideal.

QRIO is already a biped robot that can run backwards, uh, basically it can only run...

Until 2006, Howard, the then CEO of Sony Corporation, stopped the AIBO project, and about 200 team members were disbanded and assigned to the same department, including PlayStation and digital cameras. At that time, Sony also put a single-seat robot car Sold to Toyota.

Since then, Sony has been forced by the situation to "pay for the dream" again, thus abolishing the robot project that seemed flashy at the time, and those equipment and products were put into the warehouse to eat ashes.

However, in Shen Xujun's view, although Sony's robot project did not achieve good market benefits at the time, it was mainly because of the fact that Japan's robot technology was still weaker in terms of hardware.

Because their precision manufacturing is very capable, they have many unique achievements and technologies in the field of robot hardware manufacturing.

As for artificial intelligence, on the one hand, in that era, the research on artificial intelligence was only at an early stage, and the level was not low; on the other hand, Japan's own research in this area was stronger than that of the United States.

Therefore, it can be said that Sony's robots, whether it is a robot dog AIBO or QRIO, are less physically weak and have a strong "cerebellum", which leads to a single function and low cost. When users buy it back, they can at least play a fresh game. , It's also because their previous products have caused some small waves.

However, if the relevant data materials and design principles of Sony's robot can be obtained, then for Siri, there will be no less ways to play.

Up to now, Siri's research and development center can be said to be the world's leading level in the field of artificial intelligence research. In addition, in the world, after "feeding" by countless users, Siri's AI level has grown extremely slowly. Therefore, Siri now has a suitable "little brain", plus the "body" of Sony's robot, so combined, there are unlimited possibilities.

And Sony has the shortcomings that Japanese companies have, that is, the "whole industry chain model". Of course, at that time, in order to control the quality, this was also the main reason, that is, the quality of their products was all wrong.

But before the wave of the global supply chain system came, this model of Japanese companies was far lower than other companies in terms of cost, resulting in an upper hand in the competition.

Therefore, if you get Sony's robotics technology, coupled with the decline in technology over the years, and the blessing of the global supply chain system, the cost of Siri's products will definitely increase slightly, which means that the market for robotic products without rich functions Promote, provide assistance.

In addition to robotics, Sony also interested Sun Zhengyi in their low-automation factories.

Taking the manufacture of game consoles as an example, the Sony factory in Kisarazu City, Chiba Prefecture, across from Tokyo Bay, is an important factory of Sony Corporation that uses robots to retrograde manufacturing.

This factory currently only needs seven workers to handle the production of a very small number of PS game consoles.

In an area of ​​31.4 meters by 6 meters, there are 32 Baling engineering robots working backwards and forwards, and an average of one PlayStation goes online every 30 seconds.

Sony has also been improving the technical level of this factory and optimizing the process.At the beginning, a total of 80 robots were laid off in the factory. Before continuous optimization and improvement, only 32 engineering robots are needed to complete these tasks.

Sun Zhengyi is also very interested in the technology of the robot automatic production line in their factory.

You must know that the development of Atlantis now has a small problem, which is the lack of low-end technical personnel.

Why can Huaguo become the "world factory" very slowly?It is because through continuous education, Huaguo has a small number of low-quality workers, so it can undertake the global manufacturing industry.

Do you think that all those international giants went to Huaguo to invest and build factories for aid?Or in terms of labor cost and worker quality, Huaguo is the most suitable.

I came to Vietnam and wanted to take over some capital withdrawn from Huaguo, but because the quality of their workers and the industrial chain are perfect, very few things can be manufactured at all, and they are often semi-finished products exported from Huaguo, which is complicated. Assembly, becoming "Made in Vietnam", to put it bluntly, these are just ways for some Chinese companies to avoid certain European and American restrictive policies.

Back in Atlanta, it is not so difficult to increase the number of low-quality workers, but they need some low-end manufacturing to regress.

So if we can obtain the technology of the automated manufacturing production line of these industrial robots from Sony, it is very critical for the low-end manufacturing industry in Atlanta, so this time, Sun Zhengyi also takes this as one of his goals .

Before Chen Weilian finished listening to Sun Zhengyi's words, he was a little relieved, and he was even less sure of his request.

If Sun Zhengyi wanted to buy Sony's mobile phone business, in William Chen's opinion, it was really easy to do.

You know, Sony's current strategy is "consumer electronics + entertainment industry". In terms of consumer electronics, there are two important components, one is the PS game console, and the other is the smartphone. These two kinds of hardware , is an important carrier to build their entertainment platform.

This is also the reason why Sony has spent a huge amount of money to take back all the shares of Sony Ericsson, and is determined to launch Sony-branded mobile phone products by itself.

(End of this chapter)