Chapter 22 Hello MOTO

Chapter 22 Hello MOTO

Unlike the two Langchao employees who looked around the office area like sneaky thieves, Jared sat lazily on the sofa, studying the front desk design with great interest.

Compared to the reception areas of other domestic companies, this one was much more impressive—simple yet full of technological feel.

The receptionist girl, who had previously looked quite professional, still seemed a bit timid when facing them.

Soon, the girl reappeared. "Gentlemen, please follow me."

Jared stood up first and strode toward a side office.

...

Su Yuanshan liked sitting at Xi Xiaoding's desk because this guy loved snacking; there were always biscuits and treats scattered around. Whenever Su Yuanshan wanted to take a break, he would come over and mooch.

At that moment, he was again sitting on Xi Xiaoding's desk, betting with him.

Xi Xiaoding bet that the three visitors were here to buy software. Su Yuanshan bet they were here to beg.

"Jared?"

"Xi?"

"OMG... you're actually here?"

Xi Xiaoding stood up in shock and greeted Jared warmly. They hugged and patted each other on the back.

"Yuanshan, let me introduce you," Xi Xiaoding said, turning back. "This is Jared, my friend."

"Hello, I'm Su Yuanshan," Su Yuanshan said, hesitating for a moment before quickly smiling. Then he turned toward the two bewildered Langchao employees. "And you gentlemen?"

"Li Kejian," said a man in his thirties, quickly regaining his composure. "This is my colleague Wang Qiang."

Xi Xiaoding led the three to the guest sofas nearby. A slight blush rose on his cheeks as he asked with a smile, "Just now, we were betting on what you guys were here for. Jared, are you here to sell computers?"

"Computers? Oh... no," Jared shook his head and smiled bitterly. "Xi, you secretly developed a Chinese pager decoding chip without announcing it, and made us take a pointless trip to Wuxi."

Su Yuanshan coughed lightly.

Xi Xiaoding instantly understood what was happening. Though he hadn't directly worked on the paging chips, Su Yuanshan had often come by to mooch snacks and brag about progress. Over the past month, he had seen it all firsthand—Su Yuanshan repeatedly said that if Yuanxin and any other company were developing Chinese pagers simultaneously, it would be hilarious.

Unless both companies accidentally chose the same Chinese character encoding, one would inevitably suffer.

Clearly, now it was Langchao—or rather, Motorola—who had suffered.

"Our chip is entirely independently developed, with full intellectual property rights. Even the selection of Chinese characters for encoding was done with great care," Xi Xiaoding said, smiling.

Langchao's Li Kejian gave a bitter laugh. "Ours too, President Xi."

Su Yuanshan bit his lip hard to stop himself from laughing. "I guess you collaborated with Motorola?"

Xi Xiaoding coughed into his hand. "Well... but we were first."

"Yes, yes, you were first," Jared said, patting Xi Xiaoding on the shoulder. "I'll be direct, Xi. We need your encoding standard."

Xi Xiaoding turned back, and Su Yuanshan understood immediately, smiling as he took over: "Sure. How much are you offering?"

"Money?" Jared blinked.

Su Yuanshan nodded naturally. "Of course. We spent a lot of time selecting common-use Chinese characters to create this private encoding library. We've already submitted the patents."

"But character encoding is a natural form of expression. It shouldn't be patentable!" Li Kejian said urgently. "And the patent office won't approve it either!"

Su Yuanshan shrugged. "Who knows? But we've filed it anyway. If it's not approved, it'll simply become a commercial secret."

The three visitors stared at Su Yuanshan with barely concealed frustration.

This was exactly the advantage of establishing patent or technical barriers first. As long as you wished, there were endless ways to play dirty.

If the patent was granted, anyone using their encoding would have to pay royalties.

If not, it would be protected as a trade secret, forcing competitors either to reverse-engineer the chip—costly and time-consuming—or to start from scratch.

Sure, Langchao and Motorola could refuse to cooperate and develop their own encoding system. But Yuanxin had already produced decoding chips, encoding chips, and even published the first working prototype displaying Chinese messages.

Langchao never expected Yuanxin would create chips that could directly replace the existing microcontroller-based encoders in paging stations, allowing seamless upgrades.

For Langchao, redeveloping everything would take time, not to mention the risk of hitting Yuanxin's hidden patent traps.

"Xi..." Jared shrugged. "If you force us to develop a competing system, the market will become chaotic, which will hurt overall growth."

"Well... I'm curious," Xi Xiaoding said, ignoring Jared's 'threat,' and turned to Li Kejian. "How far along are your chips?"

Li Kejian didn't answer, but Wang Qiang, who had been silent until now, spoke bitterly, "We're already preparing for tape-out!"

"Ha... ha..."

Xi Xiaoding couldn't hold it in anymore. He bent over, laughing with his hand covering his mouth.

"Alright," Su Yuanshan said, full of smiles. "We'll give you two options."

...

After watching the three leave with resentment in their eyes, Su Yuanshan raised his hand, and Xi Xiaoding gave him a high-five.

Clearly, Motorola wasn't bold enough to fight openly. Although Yuanxin was a private company, it had fully independent IP, and Huajing's endorsement via the "birthday gift" broadcast made it politically sensitive. There was no doubt about who the Post and Telecommunications Bureau would favor.

Earlier, Su Yuanshan had laid out two basic options:

Either pay to license the "patent," or from now on, Motorola's Chinese pagers would have to use Yuanxin's decoder chips.

Of course, Motorola could also resort to administrative pressure to force Yuanxin to open its encoding standard—this wasn't unheard of and was probably their most realistic option. After all, as Li Kejian pointed out, Chinese character encoding was a natural language system and might not qualify for patent protection.

In Su Yuanshan's previous life, after Motorola and Langchao jointly developed their Chinese decoding chips, they had eventually opened up their encoding as a public standard.

But Su Yuanshan wasn't worried.

Yuanxin was a private firm. Even if an administrative order came down, they could stall and fight. As long as they dominated the pager market first, it wouldn't matter if they eventually opened the standard.

"So," Xi Xiaoding asked, "which path do you think they'll choose?"

"I think... they'll pay," Su Yuanshan said, squinting with a grin. "Though honestly, I don't really want their money."

"Uh, why? Didn't you say we're short on cash?"

"Simple. Motorola made too much money over the years. Paying us would be a small loss of face, but if we accept, we'd lose valuable time for market expansion. If we can delay until mid-next year, Motorola will have no place left in the Chinese-language pager market."

"Unless, of course, they buy our chips—which we would welcome!"

Just imagining Motorola being forced to buy Yuanxin's decoder chips made Su Yuanshan's heart swell with satisfaction.

But he quickly sighed. "However, if MOTO plays dirty from the source, there's not much we can do."

Xi Xiaoding was stunned for a moment, but quickly understood.

Currently, the paging station transmitters—the base stations—were almost entirely controlled by Motorola, with about 80% market share.

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