The content of this article comes from:
⚠️ Note: The content has been slightly modified/organized and is not a verbatim transcript of Luo Yonghao's live broadcast.
Platform Revolution#
The rulers of the new world have never been the rulers of the old world.
From a human perspective, it is very difficult to overthrow oneself. So when does it happen? For example, in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, a tech giant founder who is still on the front line and young, it is possible for him to drive internal revolution under these two conditions.
Time for AR Hardware Maturity#
Around 5 years (live broadcast in 2022), probably between 5 to 10 years. Currently, the estimated time frame in the industry is around five years, but I think it may be longer. That is, around "2027 to 2032" or so.
Evolution of Tools#
In my opinion, even if commercialization starts in about five years, it will definitely be a pair of glasses wirelessly connected to a phone or a box. This state can be maintained for several years without any problem. As long as the benefits brought to consumers by the glasses are significant enough. They won't mind wearing both.
In the past, when using "feature phones" (before smartphones), many young people carried an iPod along with their phone. It was common to carry both devices. It was only when the iPod evolved into the iPhone that we started to discard one or both and switched to a smartphone.
When glasses become commercialized, if they can bring significant benefits to consumers, people won't mind wearing glasses and carrying a phone at the same time. At this time, both can coexist. The key to the success or failure of glasses lies in how much screen time they can take away, in terms of the concept of Screen Time.
If I wear glasses and have a phone in my pocket, when I reach 60% to 70% or more of screen time, if I receive a call or message, I don't need to take out my phone. As long as the screen time exceeds 50%, you have taken the first step towards success.
When the same functions are satisfied, "wearable devices" will definitely surpass "portable devices." This is a major logic in the history of human tool evolution.
Two examples:
- The first one is early glasses that were handheld. Someone realized that the ears and nose were idle, so they made glasses that could be hung on the ears and nose.
- Originally, pocket watches were portable devices. Then someone realized that the wrist was idle, so they invented wristwatches.
Why didn't smartwatches defeat glasses?#
Smartwatches can easily have screens as large as smartphones, but that would be impractical. Our interaction with touch devices relies on screen size to achieve functionality and efficiency. If the screen is too small, many functions will be limited. When the iPhone was first released, it had a 3.5-inch screen, but now screens are around 6 or 7 inches.
Making phones larger is inconvenient to carry, but it solves the issues of efficiency and functionality. As a result, we all believe that glasses are the next direction.
Software Innovation at Hammer#
Hammer Technology releases an average of one phone per year, and each phone comes with three or four software features and functions. These software features are usually copied by competitors within an average of 6-12 months.
One year when we were in Shanghai for a launch event, we made the "Big Bang" and "onestep" open source.
What is open source?#
- Open source means that we make all the software code public. Normally, you can only get a software but not its source code, so you have to write it yourself. We make the source code public, and this is called open source. According to the Apache license for software, other companies can directly take my software;
- But according to the Apache license, they have to acknowledge that the software was originally developed by Hammer Technology. They give us recognition, and this is called Credit;
- However, our competitors are not short of people, money, or capital. Even if they use our open-source software freely, they would still rather hire a bunch of people to copy our features. They want to make sure they don't give us any formal recognition.
Why not sue?#
- This is something that people who have never started a company don't understand. Ignorance is bliss. Basically, suing in this kind of situation is not very useful.
- Firstly, for this type of lawsuit, if you look at historical precedents, although China is not a country with a precedent-based legal system, precedents still have a reference value. Most of these lawsuits take one to two years, or even two to three years, on average to win. The funny thing is, if the lawsuit takes two years and the other party has copied our product and sold it, the product's lifecycle would have already passed. When we win the lawsuit, the court would say that the product cannot be sold anymore, and then they would say sorry, we have already sold it;
- Secondly, if we look at how much money has been awarded in historical precedents, we would find that it is an insulting amount of money. It's not insulting to them, it's insulting to originality, it's insulting to the plaintiff. So even if we win the lawsuit, it doesn't have any meaning.
AR Software Innovation#
What if the AR innovations you develop are copied by others?
During the Hammer Technology era, we released a new phone with three or four software innovations every year, and these things were easy to copy.
But for the AR operating system and software that we want to develop, many things will take 3-5 years to complete, but we won't publish them because the hardware is not mature yet. When we do publish them, it will be a project that took "two thousand person-years" to complete.
One engineer working for one month is called one person-month, and working for one year is called one person-year. So "two thousand person-years" means that two thousand people worked on it for one year.
For example, we have a team of several hundred to a thousand people working on it. If a big company comes in with plenty of money and people, they can directly copy it with ten thousand people. If they can copy it in three or six months, they won't acquire or invest in us, they will just copy it themselves.
If several big players rush in to do it and find that one company has already completed it, it will take them more than a year to copy it. At that time, they will negotiate with you for strategic investment or acquisition. So this time, with 3-5 years of secret development, when the entire hardware industry matures, we will release it, and anyone who wants to copy it will need more than a year.
But in reality, they can't copy it in a year. Why? Because while they are copying, we won't stand still, we will keep moving forward. So when a big company competes with a small company, they will eventually catch up. But I will keep running ahead, and it will take them several years to catch up.
Many small startups have not done large-scale software development, so they don't know that the amount of code itself is a moat. All big companies know that the amount of code is a moat, but not many people in small and medium-sized enterprises know this. So we have also had teams of 1,200 people and have done large-scale software development. We made significant changes to the underlying system on Android to meet the requirements of the AR OS. After this is done, it will become a strong moat that cannot be copied in a day or two.
Today, think back to the iPhone released in 2007. What was the most difficult thing for competitors to copy? Was it the hardware? I don't think so. Think about it, when the first generation of the iPhone was released, the CPU was not their own, the LCD panel was from Samsung, the structural parts were from Foxconn, and the glass was from Corning. So there was no moat in terms of hardware technology. It was just that the engineering team did an extremely high-level integration, and that was the first generation of the iPhone.
If industry giants like Samsung and Nokia want to copy an iPhone, it's not that difficult. What is really difficult is iOS. At the iPhone's first launch event, Steve Jobs boasted that they were five years ahead of the smartphone industry. Even as a die-hard Apple fan at the time, I thought it was just boasting, but it turned out to be true. From that day on, Android started copying and imitating iOS on a large scale. It took them five years to get close to the user experience, to be roughly equivalent. Of course, some particularly sensitive people may still think there is a gap, but most ordinary people think the user experience is roughly the same, with their own pros and cons.
This process took five years. Why? Because many times, the amount of code is a huge moat. When you try to catch up by copying, the other party won't wait for you, they will keep moving forward. It took them five years to catch up.
So what I want to say is that what we are doing today, as long as we meet the requirements of "sufficiently large" engineering code and sufficient innovation, and keep the entire process confidential, there is a high probability of success (not an absolute guarantee).
How to maintain confidentiality?#
Confidentiality: We divide each project into project teams. The project teams do not know about each other, only the people within the team know. This way, even if there is a leak, it is impossible for everything to be leaked.
Patent application?
We will apply for some patents because once you apply for a patent, everyone will see what you are going to do.
There is a technique to patent applications. It has its own specialized language. Lawyers in the patent industry have their own language. Actually, everyone knows roughly what you are doing, but you can avoid revealing the details.