Millet TV Helmsman Chuan: between innovation and conservatism

Lead: How long does it take to launch a TV product? The traditional enterprise only three months, and millet spent at least a year's time. This also only calculates the hardware design and the production part, if calculates the software level the design and the verification, the entire cycle also needs to double. In this process, Chuan always plays the role of helmsman. His personality innovation and conservative side, his understanding of design and risk control, also gradually branded in the millet television.

Without Chuan, there would be no millet TV. Originally thought to do TV is Chuan, although he and he led to see the team has not officially joined Millet, but has long been a member of the Lei department. Chuan and Lei are friends for many years, two people in different occasions have repeated a word, lei once to Chuan said: "You do I support."

But Millet is determined to put on television, never based on personal friendship. Although Chuan does not come from the television industry, many of his startups are related to the interactive design, user experience, and he is not a hardware layman, in the past few years, Chuan also led the team to do a set-top box and even with the traditional television companies to cooperate with the precedent, Even rely on independent exploration for a variety of other manufacturers of hardware products to launch the corresponding Third-party operating system.

Often talk about their own design, Chuan's pride is always palpable, until the excitement, Chuan will pick up an oily pen, behind the whiteboard to draw the structure of the map.

As a billionaire serial entrepreneur, Chuan says he is still working hard, not for money but for a process of achieving the ideal. He described the team of millet, "we worship jobs, without him our life is a lot less fun and color, if there is a chance to do part of the apple, we are worth the rest of the life."

Cross-border design

Chuan is difficult to define simply. The second year after graduating from college, he started his career in business. Since then, Chuan has had four entrepreneurial experiences, starting with the design of the exhibition, followed by karaoke system lei, followed by more reading, and the most recent one is Millet TV.

In these seemingly disparate areas, design is a common part.

There was a time to do the exhibition, Chuan invited a lot of design companies, took more than 40 sets of booth program, still no satisfactory works. So Chuan decided to do it himself, but the designers of his work pleaded: "I studied graphic design, not decorating design." Hearing this sentence, Chuan replied: "Tomorrow morning we work together, I say what you do".

In this way, finally Chuan come up with a plan of their own. "On the day of the booth, the design brother jumped in our company like a morphine shot, I said you how, he said oops we that Booth is very good, all designers ran this to take a picture, asked us this is who designs", Chuan said that the second year even has the decoration company loses money the door to seek the cooperation.

For a programmer who has not studied design, this is a quite performance "ego" side of the past, and Chuan's summary is: In fact, everyone is a designer, you do not limit yourself.

From the booth to the distance of the millet TV, a person called Kranj, gave Chuan great inspiration. Kranj (Luigi Colani) is an excellent, maverick industrial designer who uses curves to sketch out unique ecological shapes that are widely used in ballpoint pens, fashion, automobiles, architecture and crafts design.

Lei had cooperated with Kranj, and Chuan also had in-depth exchanges with the master. Chuan Remember when someone asked Kranj why can become a cross-border designer, Kranj replied: "I have never thought to do cross-border designers, I just like the good things, life is everywhere is not beautiful things, I want to change them to beautiful."

So what exactly is the design? Chuan says it can be seen as a solution to a problem. Further, what is the applause of the design? The definition of Chuan is "the most concise and elegant scheme". For fruit powder Chuan, the iphone's thumb-slide view of the image is typical, and the mode of turning the buttons up and down is completely overturned.

"I think it is not good to use is a business opportunity", a few years ago Chuan began to look at Smart TV, the market, most of the smart TV does not work, users have pain point, the industry has prospects, "we have the opportunity to do more beautiful, why not do it?" "At first we didn't think of millet as a mobile phone company," Chuan said.

Two kinds of thinking

In the past, intelligent TV, usually based on traditional TV interactive system, grafted a new intelligent system. Command two different modes, need different "interactive language", so the TV system and intelligent system between the formation of a fragmented, the most intuitive feeling is that this intelligent TV remote control is very complex.

A new idea for the Millet TV: based on the Android system, traditional TV is just one application. The advantage is that the structure is reasonable, the interface is unified and simple, as if Apple had turned the phone function into an iphone application in the past, but the downside is that it is very difficult to achieve this design.

The original smart TV reference design, rely on a TV system to drive the screen, and then need to provide a separate set of processors, specifically running the Android system. Android is an input source for the TV system. In this design, the TV system is very stable, the rest of the work only need to adjust the Android system.

The millet approach is to use the High-pass MPQ8064 processor to drive the screen, while the TV system as a source, input to the same running on the MPQ8064 Android system. However, to achieve this interaction, there is no ready-made reference design to take advantage of, and all related to the hardware, software, etc. to be redevelopment.

"For traditional TV companies, the TV system is the chip manufacturers do a good job, you do not have to change." The original remote control, digital keys, channel Plus and minus are done, television development for 30 years, the code does not have to change, "Chuan explained that millet TV will need to" start from a pile of chips, to make circuit boards, re-write drive.

This increases the amount of work, and the feasibility is unknown. This is one of the reasons for the delay in the release time of Millet TV. Chuan stressed that if you do not do this millet TV can only be equipped with a traditional TV remote control, but also add complex digital keys, channel Plus and minus, up and down, and so on.

But Chuan will also worry that this change will be accepted by the user, after all, this mode of operation is different from the traditional. Whether it's a millet box or a millet TV, Chuan requires that the product be used by a 4-year-old-80-year-old user. "I use my daughter to test, she can use is a standard," Chuan said.

The conclusion is that millet, of course, insists on new ideas. For the remote design is not reasonable, the chuan of the standard is: first can be used quickly, the second use of traditional remote control will not feel awkward. Chuan still around to find the answer: "I took the millet TV home really used after the practical, I think it did."

Move cautiously

Chuan is a strong and confident person, when it comes to software design, he will not be polite to say that the millet box, look at the system, let peer sigh "Ah yo this scheme, in addition to 抄没 approach"; in hardware design, Chuan will also lead the team to try a new direction. On the other hand, he showed cautious caution.

Before the birth of millet TV, there are a lot of bedding.

For example, at the end of 2011, Chuan led the team to develop a more looking for Apple system, and then 2012 years to look at the development of Millet box, until 2013 launched the first generation of millet TV. The previous step is the basis for the next steps. In other words, the Millet box helps Chuan verify the feasibility of the interactive mode of the Millet TV system.

Compared to software systems, hardware manufacturing itself contains greater risks. Chuan said Millet for the first time to do TV, do not know how much to sell, so the beginning will be more conservative. In addition, increasing capacity is a very complicated matter. Whether TV or mobile phone, want to improve capacity to do first mold, open a mold will be three or four months time.

And do hardware to ensure that products can sell out, there is a backlog of inventory equals misfortune. Suppose a 2000-yuan mobile phone, the production of 1 million units per month, four-month value of the goods have been 8 billion yuan. and production of this product process, open mold to four months, the mass production still need to wait four months, the middle of the "minutes may be dead."

Yesterday, the first round of Millet TV opened for purchase, 3,000 units in 1 minutes and 58 seconds sold out. And the same day, the video Super TV S50 sold 150 Projects Commemorative edition, October 22 10,000 production machines open to purchase.

More cautious than that, Chuan said, "We don't do all the stunts." He cited examples of hand gestures recognition, speech recognition and other interactive methods are not mature enough, so the millet TV will not consider, "I do karaoke, many years ago, made a voice song and humming song, but put in the hall no one to use, and finally I understand these are gimmicks."

However, after all, TV and mobile phone, Chuan and team face the competitive pressure seems to be greater, whether from the direct squeeze from the opponent, or logistics and after-sale system quality requirements. "The first generation of millet TV, between passing and failing," Chuan said, "Our second generation of products need to be improved, if satisfied with no progress."