"Pass on the orders from Huaxia?" Upon hearing Edward Zamp's suggestion, everyone's mouths fell open in surprise. Then someone immediately asked, "Mr. Edward Zamp, if we refuse the orders from Huaxia, who will we give the orders to?"
"There are so many companies in the world, how can we not find a place to take our orders?" Edward Zamp's eyebrows twitched, and he then said, "Huaxia's mobile phone contract manufacturing industry has only started in the last decade, and it only entered a phase of high-speed development in the last two years. Before that, they only handled less than 20% of the contract manufacturing orders."
"Whoever we contracted with two years ago, we can continue to find them now!" Edward Zamp stated.
"But they now occupy more than 60% of the production volume of the entire mobile phone industry, not 20% from two years ago!" The person who spoke earlier said angrily, "Mr. Edward, if I cut off more than 40% of your Motorola phone orders, do you have the ability to find a replacement manufacturer within a month?"
"A month is indeed a bit difficult..." Edward Zamp licked his lips, "But if you give me three months..."
"Even with three months, it's impossible!" A representative coldly snorted, "Currently, almost all of the world's mobile phone memory chip market is procured from Jiangnan Group. Sony has completely abandoned its memory chip business, and Samsung... Right, Representative Li from Samsung, are you still producing memory chips?"
"We... we... of course, we still produce memory chips!" The Samsung representative who was called out looked somewhat embarrassed, but he quickly responded, "We Samsung have been constantly researching in the field of memory chips. It's just that we are currently primarily targeting next-generation memory chip technology with higher efficiency and larger capacity. The old-fashioned chips are no longer planned for production. We want to eliminate backward capacity!"
"That's right, your Samsung has already upgraded to the point where 80% of your memory chips are procured from Jiangnan Optoelectronics!" The Nokia representative, who had been lacking a sense of presence, finally spoke up with sarcasm, "By the way, mobile phones are just a small business for you. Your other businesses require more memory chips from Jiangnan. You dare to show Jiangnan a stiff neck, I'd be surprised!"
"But Jiangnan also cannot resist Samsung's screens. All of their phones use our Samsung screens. We are conducting equal transactions!" The Samsung representative retorted angrily.
"Yes, Jiangnan procures at most 1 million screens from you annually, but the chips you procure from Jiangnan have exceeded 50 million!" The Nokia representative continued to mock.
"What qualifications do you have to talk about us? Didn't you, Nokia, also procure chips entirely from Jiangnan? Moreover, you even directly handed over your assembly work to Huaxia people. Your Nokia phones are now completely manufactured in Huaxia!" The Samsung representative immediately counterattacked.
"That's different. We still have our own factories in Finland, and the equipment is still there. They undergo regular maintenance every month, and our factories can resume operations at any time!" The Nokia representative said proudly.
"Is that so?" The representative from Ericsson Mobile, also from Europe, couldn't help but interject, "I heard that last year, to save costs, you forcibly laid off those workers and paid over 400 million US dollars in severance packages."
"Let's not even talk about whether you can find those laid-off workers again. The problem is, if you do find them all back, won't your 400 million dollars be wasted? Are you really willing to rehire those workers?" Ericsson's words left the Nokia representative speechless.
They had just, with gritted teeth, spent 400 million US dollars to lay off their workers. This was because, according to calculations, Huaxia's contract manufacturing could save them 400 million US dollars in costs annually, so they had unceremoniously laid off these workers.
And now you expect them to rehire those workers. If anyone dared to propose such a suggestion, the company's board of directors would have them dismissed shortly thereafter.
Everyone was amused by this dialogue, which was almost like a crosstalk performance. However, amidst the amusement, no one brought up the idea of transferring the production chain anymore, because it was already an impossible matter.
In the historical development process, the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century were the decades when the global industrial chain shifted to the Huaxia region.
Most other industries had already completed this transition. It was only in technologically advanced industries like mobile phones that the transfer process was slightly lagging. Historically, it would have been completely finished around 2008.
However, with our Boss Huang and the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance he launched, this progress has been greatly accelerated.
By sharing more advanced technology and reducing production costs among alliance members, Huaxia has been able to produce products with more advanced technology and lower costs, which is an irresistible temptation for any capitalist.
As long as costs can be reduced, they are willing to do anything.
Therefore, the entire mobile phone industry has basically completed the transfer of production capacity. Except for some components that Huaxia cannot currently produce, all producible components have been transferred to mainland Huaxia for manufacturing.
Asking them to reverse this trend and return to previous procurement channels is essentially impossible.
Historically, similar situations have occurred later. For example, a certain president loudly advocated for manufacturing to return to the United States, investing trillions of dollars and using various means to encourage companies to return, but the result was still a mess. Huaxia's total exports not only did not decrease but began to reach new highs.
The same logic applies now. Moreover, even if they wanted to go back, they would not be able to find companies that could process and produce parts for them in a short period.
This is because these companies have either gone bankrupt directly, or have chosen to join forces when they couldn't win. They closed their domestic factories and went to various development zones in Huaxia to establish joint ventures, and incidentally joined the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Alliance, becoming proud members of the alliance and enjoying preferential policies for alliance members.
Many companies, in order to obtain more favorable policies as full members rather than foreign members, are even willing to change their foreign capital structure, reducing foreign capital to below 50% so that domestic Huaxia capital accounts for more than 50%. At the same time, they appoint a Huaxia person as the CEO, making it a Huaxia enterprise.
Even more extreme is the direct acquisition of companies with founding member status. Because founding member status brings more benefits, many entering capitals try their best to acquire a company with founding member status, which leads to a sharp increase in the value of such companies.
For example, a domestic company with an astonishing debt of 40 million yuan was acquired by a capital firm for 80 million yuan just because of its founding member status, and the firm also assumed the 40 million yuan debt.
And this was the price before the Chinese New Year. Now the price has risen to over 100 million yuan, but there are not many companies willing to sell their membership status because everyone believes that their status will be worth more money in the future.
This is because the founding member status only decreases and never increases. Thank you all. Moreover, if a company declares bankruptcy, or has no transactions with the alliance for a long time, or commits acts that violate the alliance's charter, or commits acts that violate social morality and laws, these actions will lead to the cancellation of the company's founding member status.
In the past two years, more than 30 companies have had their founding member status revoked. Every time a founding member's status is reduced by one, the price of this status continues to rise. No one is foolish; no one would be willing to sell their founding member status unless absolutely necessary.
Ahem, I've digressed a bit. Let's get back to the point. In any case, all the representatives present could treat Edward Zamp's words as nonsense. In fact, Edward Zamp himself knew this.
Because if you asked Edward Zamp to abandon Huaxia's contract manufacturing and return to the previous model, which would increase production costs by at least 60% on the label, Edward Zamp felt he would be kicked out by the board of directors that very evening.
"Everyone, we are not saying that we should actually do this. We are just trying to scare the Jiangnan Group and make them retreat!" Edward Zamp pondered for a moment and then came up with a perfect phrase: "We are just engaging in strategic deterrence."
"Scaring them might work, but what if they aren't scared?" the Nokia representative retorted.
"Then we'll talk..." Edward Zamp said vaguely, "In any case, everyone, what's truly important is for us to show our attitude and make them understand that we cannot accept Jiangnan Group entering the mobile phone industry as a manufacturer."
"We must have Jiangnan Group promise that they will never enter the mobile phone industry, so that we can confidently hand over various orders to its alliance. Otherwise, we would be using our own money to cultivate the world's largest competitor!"
"Because wouldn't we want to see a future where Jiangnan Group's mobile phones crush all of our brands, and our companies are acquired by large Huaxia enterprises like Jiangnan, Microsoft, or even Lenovo?" Edward Zamp said loudly, and the crowd nodded. This indeed made sense.
Since Edward Zamp wanted to give it a try, let's give it a try. What if Huang He is directly scared away by us?
So, the next day, over a dozen industry companies, including Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung, simultaneously issued a statement within the industry, expressing their opposition to certain companies using their advantages in the supply chain to disrupt the industry structure and cause the collapse of the industry environment.
Therefore, they demanded that certain companies must correctly position themselves, otherwise, they would seek more suitable partners!