I was initially attracted to Lianchuang because of its luxurious customer lineup, including Mobileye, Nvidia, Huawei, Tesla, FaceBook, and later Weilai.
A little-known small company in a corner of Jiangxi that has not performed well in history said that it has a string of trillion-level customers. My first reaction was the same as that of many people. Is this company? Bragging? Looking back at the management's operating statements in recent years' financial reports, Che Zhuluo's words were repeated over and over again. The list of luxury customers is getting longer and longer, but the operating data is showing no improvement.
To believe or not to believe has become a question.
After repeatedly reviewing Lianchuang’s external announcements and communication minutes, judging the nature of cooperation between Lianchuang and these manufacturers, and the credibility of Lianchuang’s technical path, we slowly came to such a conclusion—— Lianchuang's technology in high-end automotive lenses is indeed very good, so good that these trillion-dollar manufacturers are willing to lend an olive branch to him.
However, there is a question that has been bothering me: There are so many companies with technology, capital and production capacity in the world, why does the spotlight of history fall on Lianchuang?
You must know that lenses are an industry with a long history and are leftover from developed countries. The lens production technology of German and Japanese manufacturers is still ahead of China.
We have been making lenses for smartphones and cars for two decades and have cultivated many heavyweight suppliers. Why would Tesla and Huawei look for Lianchuang, which has almost no production capacity?
Recently, I probably figured this out.
For lenses, the biggest market was originally film cameras and later digital cameras.
The best players are of course German manufacturers. Carl Zeiss and Leica are still synonymous with high-end camera lenses.
Japanese companies caught up from behind, and Canon, Nikon, and Fuji lens manufacturers once occupied the vast majority of the global camera market.
The digitization of cameras has allowed German manufacturers to gradually shift from production and processing to areas with greater added value such as medical care, microscopes, and industrial testing.
The mobile phoneization of digital cameras has allowed Japanese manufacturers to gradually turn to optical inspection, equipment manufacturing, new materials and other fields.
The job of lens processing and manufacturing has gradually been taken over by Chinese companies.
In this way, Chinese companies have captured most of the market share of mobile phone cameras, surveillance cameras, and car cameras.
So far, nothing has happened with Lianchuang.
There are two turning points in the fate of Lianchuang, one is the glass plastic lens for mobile phones, and the other is the ADAS lens.
Both of these lenses require aspherical glass lenses, especially car-mounted ADAS lenses, which have higher requirements. ADAS lenses are different from ordinary car-mounted lenses. They not only require clear vision, low phase difference, but also high temperature resistance. , long service life.
Aspheric glass lenses cannot be processed by grinding and must be molded in one go. There are very few manufacturers that can produce such lenses.
In the past few years, Lianchuang has been making sports lenses. In this niche market, Lianchuang has a large market share. Sports lenses have higher requirements on lens durability and mainly use glass lenses. This has allowed Lianchuang to accumulate technology in this area, so it has been favored by these major manufacturers.
Huawei found Lianchuang precisely because of the glass-plastic lens, and said from the beginning: "The production capacity is too small." It should have been expanded a long time ago, but due to well-known reasons, the mobile phone lens cooperation with Huawei failed to be carried out on a large scale.
OEMs, solution companies, and tier 1 companies have also found Lianchuang.
This all makes sense - in the past, molded glass lenses were not controlled by giants because the market capacity was too small, and there was a lack of continuous accumulation and strategic planning in this area.
By chance, a strong wind suddenly blew Lianchuang to the center of the stage of history.
It can be said that what lies before Lianchuang is a historic opportunity, an opportunity to change destiny.
Just like the stupid Guo Jing met Hong Qigong, why? Mainly because of good fortune.