Chapter 196 A Small Piece of the Future
In 2011, Li Yan, wearing a short-sleeved shirt, sat in the classroom of Lincheng No. Middle School, watching with interest as the student in front of him showed him a smartphone.

There were several classmates gathered around, and the topic of their discussion was a game - Fruit Ninja.

This game requires you to swipe the touch screen, using your fingertips as blades to cut off the pop-up fruits to score points.

For the students at that time, it was really novel and interesting.

A classmate who was watching also showed his mobile phone. The brand was different. It was a brand that Li Yan had never seen before in 09...

"Your Fruit Ninja is much smoother than mine."

The memory stopped abruptly.

Li Yan quickly recorded all the details in silence.

Then I started playing with the Chuangzu W8. To be honest, it does look a lot like the Pineapple 3. I wonder if there will be any chance if the Pineapple company on the other side of the ocean chooses to sue the Chuangzu for infringement.

Chuangzu has made a great success with this phone, and it is also very popular abroad. Pineapple is also in the stage of conquering the world. It is really hard to say...

Li Yan was most interested in Chuangzu's system. After flipping through it, he found that it was based on an open source kernel of the Windows system.

The computer system has been integrated into the mobile phone and it works quite smoothly, which is really amazing.

But Li Yan still feels unhappy about the experience of some menu bars getting smaller the more you click.

Compared with the current Nokian's resistive screen single-point touch "touch screen" mobile phones, the main shocking point of Pineapple 3 is the capacitive screen multi-touch, which maximizes the operating experience.

Chuangzu W8 has also achieved this, with a research and development cycle of up to three years and a struggle process that started almost from scratch. It seems that Chuangzu can bring more to Li Yan than he imagined.

As a company that originally made MP3 players, the technology it has accumulated related to music playback should be extraordinary. Is its application to mobile phones really as brilliant as the introduction says?

Li Yan clicked on the music and played the default song. The effect was eye-opening.

The conclusion we can draw is very simple and direct: MP3 is dead.

As long as smartphones become more popular, the demand for music playback will be overwhelming and filled.

Suddenly, another fragment of memory belonging to the future became clear.

In 2012, Li Yan sat in the classroom of Jinshi Middle School wearing long sleeves, plugging the headphone cable into his smartphone, which looked flatter and had a larger screen than the Chuangzu W8 - this was the third brand he had never seen before, and began his night study time while listening to music.

...No wonder I couldn’t study well in my first and second year of high school.

The memory flashed through his mind so quickly that it took Li Yan less than a minute to record it carefully.

The experience is quite magical, a future that belongs to the past, wonderful.

Just like dreaming, Li Yan likes dreaming very much. He always feels that even weird and absurd dreams can give the dreamer an extremely real feeling - like living a little longer in some bizarre world.

I can’t remember more for the moment, these fragments are indeed quite fragmented.

But it's still enough.

Li Yan took a deep breath. In the summer of 11, it was only the second semester of the third year of junior high school, and middle school students in small cities were already able to own smartphones.

The days of wearing long sleeves in 12, I don’t know whether it was the winter and spring of the first year of high school or the autumn and winter of the second year of high school. By that time, even Li Yan herself had a smartphone, and she openly used it to listen to music during night study.

So, what about outside the student population?

I'm afraid that since 11, smartphones have become quite popular, and in more than a year, they will become so popular that almost every high school student in a small city will have one.

What does this mean? The market has been eaten!

Li Yan was right in his judgment that smartphones were the future, but he didn’t expect it to come so soon.

In 11, unfamiliar mobile phone brands will appear in the hands of junior high school students. It seems that there will be a fierce battle, and it is unknown whether someone will become the king or everyone will flourish.

But it is impossible that everyone is developing their own system and software manufacturers are too lazy to adapt.

Even the current Chuangzu W8 mobile QQ is a special version specially obtained from Penguin.

So by the time smartphones became popular, the competition for systems was a foregone conclusion.

The brands of these three mobile phones are not Nokia. It seems that Nokia, which insisted on its own system and resistive screen, failed to survive into the new era.

Pineapple didn't appear either - but that might be because of its high price. Robert... Has the open source Robert system become the universal solution for many mobile phone manufacturers?
Li Yan felt a sense of urgency. If there was a chaotic war in the future, it would actually be a good thing for him.

Times make heroes, and chaos means that everyone has a chance. If Li Yan can launch a concept or even a product with strong competitiveness at this time, he may be favored by all parties.

But now we have to add a premise - before a system such as Robert gets the preference of mobile phone manufacturers.

Because the key to whether you can take over this market is actually the software ecosystem.

Once a system becomes mainstream and has built its own software ecosystem, software vendors will have no reason to adapt to a "better" system.

Businessmen only talk about profits.

So, be quick!
But how the hell could it be fast? With his and Chen Fan's level, even if they could come up with a concept and create a simple system, what reason would they have for others to buy into it?
Chen Fan arrived and he was the first one to open the door and enter the room. He immediately saw Li Yan, who was frowning in front of the computer.

This guy was actually excited, "Li Yan! Are you thinking of some super difficult questions?"

"It is indeed difficult. How can we make a system that is recognized by domestic mobile phone manufacturers and that major software manufacturers are willing to adapt within one or two years, so as to take over this piece of cake?"

My roommates were stunned when they heard these words as soon as they entered the room.

"Ah Heng, does Ah Yan's words still count as pretentious?" Li Ruofei pushed Lin Heng.

"This should be a kind of imagination." Lin Heng nodded seriously.

Chen Fan didn't think this could be considered a serious discussion, so he turned around and started chatting with his roommate about other things.

Li Yan was talking to herself, "You're being too picky... It's wrong to only focus on the system. Many things are still immature, and Robert hasn't gotten anything yet... Why can't I make a system that's born with an ecosystem? Plan the ecosystem before developing the system?"

The roommates looked at each other, and no one understood except Chen Fan.

“Software ecosystem?”

"Yes, Chen Fan, the era of everyone having a smartphone will soon come. We can continue the previous topic and clarify how smartphones will change our lives. It is not just an all-around machine for listening to music, watching movies and playing games. As I said, everyone has a smart terminal in their hands, which can connect to the Internet, use GPS positioning, and make calls through software... There are so many things that can be done."

Chen Fan smacked his lips for a long time, "How did you know that the era of everyone having a smartphone would come?"

"Do you believe me?"

Suddenly I became idealistic!
"letter."

"That's fine." Li Yan typed on the computer. "We'll take this future as reality and stay ahead of everyone else. We can use systems, algorithms, and software to adapt hardware and directly have a conceptual sample. We can be the leader!"

Li Yan thought Chen Fan would look at him as if he were a god, but in the end Chen Fan looked at him as if he were a ghost.

"System, algorithm, software..." Chen Fan glanced at the Chuangzu W8 on Li Yan's desk, "Li Yan, do you know what you are talking about? Chuangzu W8 is a product developed by a company in three years. He didn't develop the system directly by himself, but used other people's adaptation software. How...how did we come up with all this in one or two years?

We are just two freshmen students!"

"We don't need to handle the huge amount of engineering work at the commercial level. We only need to come up with some special interaction methods related to the subsequent software ecosystem, that is, to innovate the interaction methods of smartphones. I will strive for the support of some teams. We only need to realize the core ideas!"

"only need to……"

"It's the same with software. It's not difficult to make a simple version. The key is whether our concept is amazing and whether we can prove its feasibility. In this process, some algorithmic support is indispensable. As for algorithms, we can meet a lot of great people in the Informatics Olympiad..."

"Can it be compared with the R&D teams of those famous technology companies? Li Yan, when you say that, you are actually comparing yourself with them."

Everyone looked at Li Yan expectantly, wanting to hear how he would show off.

"Of course we should compare with them. This is the field of geniuses, and many geniuses only know how to solve problems but not raise them." Li Yan smiled, "In this era, we don't lack the ability to move ahead, but we lack the direction to move ahead. If we can really form a small development team, our efforts will never be to compare with the big guys in terms of stability and perfection. We certainly can't compare with the accumulation of the Pineapple system, and we can't compare with the open source Robert Future's resources, but we have foresight. We are not just making mobile phones, but changing a lifestyle. We drive far more than just mobile phones, but countless business opportunities and industrial chains!"

Shit, I didn't understand! From Liang Tiancheng to Zhu Qinglun clockwise, the four of them looked at each other, all with subtle expressions.

"In the final analysis, we are just making products. We are no longer the first to create a smartphone from scratch. We actually have all the necessary technical support. We can solve the core problems ourselves and rely on others for the unsolvable ones. This is not important." Li Yan paced on the spot. "Advanced ideas are the most valuable resources."

"But..." Chen Fan couldn't say that he was a little unconfident, he had no confidence at all.

"I'm here. If you can't handle it, leave it to me."

Now that they understood, the other roommates all showed relieved expressions.

(End of this chapter)