Editor View
In February 2018, I saw Mr. Yang Xiangyang, Four Seasons Hotel, the wind outside the window is beautiful, the whole world, I am afraid that the only winter in Shenzhen is as warm as spring. Brother Dayang was an early investor in Royole. During the conversation, he mentioned this technology company and its founder Liu Zihong time and time, and also posted Dr. Liu’s WeChat account to me. He proudly said that he is a person with a story, More worth writing than me. Hahaha. The next series of iconic laughter knows that his people make up for themselves.
In 2019, at the Shenzhen IT Summit Press Center, Liu Zihong was surrounded by media and staff after his speech. The topic of his speech today is “Perception, Computing, Interconnection”. The topic is serious, full of black technology, big data and methodology, but the audience, especially female audiences, have no way to control their laughing eyes throughout the process. Before he took the stage, the crowds in the originally crowded lounge and smoking area formed a wave of small peaks for the return journey, which was a bit of an empty alley. As expected, Liu Zihong did not disappoint everyone. He was still garnering his will, but every word he said was a long-planned and talented person. The content contained principles, theorems, and axioms, as well as reasonableness, ethics, and psychology. In an instant, the reason was on the table. Liu Zihong was not only good-looking, but also witty and humorous.
As the most popular company in the Greater Bay Area and even in the country, the news about Royole has been very lively. The media is divided into several channels. Rumors, speculations, criticisms and heated discussions are endless. This is not surprising. Someone knows right from wrong, and some people tell right from wrong. In this case, ordinary people just want to fill themselves with fat and house water. As a founder, they can only give themselves a booster, regardless of whether they are serious or coercive. It’s all good, you have to avoid, look away, unfold, crawl and then stand on its own, from mystery to dignity, desperately trying to get a new look.
On June 26, 2018, Southern Metropolis Shenzhen held the “Hub-Southern Metropolis Shenzhen Eighteenth Anniversary Theme Event”. That day, I was very close to the rostrum, and I was almost at the same distance as Liu Zihong. In the speech, he was touched by the government’s sensitivity and love for science and technology, and it was Liu Zihong’s flexibility and responsibility that moved the high-levels.
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HI
The following is the full text of the link forwarded by Royole Technology’s official account. The original title is “8 years of business, the mysterious Royole is becoming more and more transparent”. The article comes from “New Material Online”, “CEO Search Engine” Executive Editor Long Yu Xuan reposted this article with the approval and authorization of Dr. Liu Zihong himself, and welcomes the founders to pay attention to the new materials and the Royole power faction.
“Flexible display is not a single material innovation.”
“Fully flexible screens are completely different concepts from fixed curved screens called’flexible screens’ on the market.”
Before the “Materials of the Great Power” interviewed Liu Zihong, Royole repeatedly expressed the hope that we would popularize science in detail about the difference between a fully flexible screen and a fixed curved screen, and justify the name of “flexible display technology”.
On May 18, 2020, Shenzhen Royole International Flexible Display Base opened a factory tour to the media. Dozens of media reporters witnessed the mass production line of Royole’s full flexible screen and the third-generation Cicada Wing full flexible screen products. The whole process of production.
On the same day, Dr. Liu Zihong, the founder, chairman and CEO of Royole Technology, had an in-depth exchange with the guests on Royole Technology’s strategy, technology and products. From the previous “ignorance” to the outside world, to the “increasing openness” in the past two years, this change has given people a better understanding of the “mysterious” Royole. What does this mean to Royole?
I
“It’s always those brave lunatics who change the world with results. They are scolded by liars before they succeed, and they are praised as geniuses after success. In fact, for these lunatics, they just follow the principles of inner and first physics. Just do something you like, no matter how long or difficult the process is, nothing is impossible.”
On May 31, “SpaceX’s manned rocket successfully launched, Musk is one step closer to Mars.” At noon that day, Liu Zihong reposted the news in the circle of friends, and sent out the above emotion. Perhaps he is paying tribute to the entrepreneurial idol, but to him and those familiar with Royole, Liu Zihong seems to have said his own words.
The dream of “flexible display” began as early as when Liu Zihong was studying for a doctorate at Stanford University. Recalling that “leisure” time, he said that at that time, he had enough time to do a lot of cutting-edge exploration. When he realized that almost 70% of the information that humans perceive every day comes from vision, and that “display” is vital to human life, the dream of “flexible display” came into his mind. At the same time, he believes that flexible display can solve the portability problem of traditional display screens.
In 2012, Liu Zihong, who worked for IBM in the United States for several years, realized that the time was ripe to return to China to start a business, and resigned and returned to China. This year, Royole Technology was established simultaneously in Silicon Valley, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. “Our idea at the time was to use flexible technology to change the world, so it was called’Royole’.” Obviously, the name of Royole Technology fully expressed the dream of the founding team to change the world. But this dream is destined to be regarded as a kind of “crazy” by most people in the era when feature phones are still popular in the world and smart phones are not yet popular. This “crazy” view first comes from the investment community.
“When we met with investors in the early days, some investors came back and told us,’We asked some experts, and they said it might take 30 to 50 years to make it, and it’s not possible at the moment’.” According to Liu Zihong, recalled, When the company was first established in 2012, almost no one in the whole society mentioned the term “flexible display”, and they didn’t even know what it was, and not many people believed that the things that appeared in such science fiction films could actually be made. But Royole, a group of “brave lunatics”, soon handed over an epoch-making product.
“When the 0.01mm fully flexible display screen came out in the laboratory at the time, several of our engineers took the mobile phone and a light shield on the ground to directly block the light above, and then put the screen on a carton box, and I used it With that light wave of the hand, the screen floated.” Liu Zihong has always remembered this scene. Even years later, when Liu Zihong made public speeches around the world, he would release this original video without any shooting skills.
II
With the advent of this 0.01mm fully flexible display that is as light as a feather and thin as a cicada wing in 2014, Royole’s explosion and public opinion’s attention followed.
“After the video was released, many people came to our company to look at them. At first they thought whether it was just a PPT, just a small video. Then they came to the company to see that it was really made and can be touched. From then on , We clearly feel that more and more people in the industry are beginning to discuss flexible displays.”
At the same time, capital has also begun to flock to this start-up company that had been struggling for the first two years. From 2015 to 2017, Royole received 1.1 billion, 500 million and 800 million US dollars of investment, and was named “one of the fastest growing unicorns in the world” after the D round of financing in 2017. Within five months from March to August 2018, Royole completed three rounds of financing, and the amount of financing was not disclosed to the outside world. At this time, Royole has grown into a giant unicorn with a valuation of more than $6 billion.
If you want to wear a crown, you must bear its weight. Royole, who won the industry’s most enthusiastic applause, also encountered the sharpest doubts. There is a lot of financing and high valuation, but no mature products are seen on the market. This has directly caused doubts and a lot of malicious comments from the outside world. At that time, Liu Zihong and his team, who were working hard and almost isolated from the outside world, were busy building production lines and mass production of full flexible screens, and had no time to take care of the outside world.
Since the first fully flexible screen was produced in 2014, Royole has been committed to mass production of this product. At this time, Liu Zihong faced two choices: one was to sell the technology and take the money to do other things; the other was to build his own factory to achieve mass production of full flexible screens. The second road is obviously much harder than the first.
“In the beginning, we considered to be a technology-oriented and asset-light company, but after the technology came out, the series of problems faced by the production line, equipment, and products were unprecedented and had no experience to learn from, and we could not find a very suitable one. Partner, so we finally decided to do it ourselves.”
In 2015, Royole’s first ultra-thin flexible module and flexible touch mass production line in Shenzhen started operation. In the same year, Royole prepared the world’s first mass production line of fully flexible displays with independent intellectual property rights in Shenzhen. In June 2018, this production line with a total investment of more than 11 billion yuan was officially lighted up and put into production, taking the lead in mass production of fully flexible displays in the world. In the following October, Royole took the lead in releasing and mass-produced the world’s first folding screen mobile phone “Rupai”.
But the doubts and disputes about Royole have never stopped. One of the focuses is whether it can be mass-produced. As for the “world’s first fully flexible display mass production line” proposed by Royole, its mass production scale and yield have always been a “mystery”. At this time, Liu Zihong was more calm. “I think it’s normal to be questioned. Choosing a new direction will inevitably face various challenges and doubts. The value of a team and an enterprise is to solve problems. When you see these challenges and problems , That means you see the direction of value, which should be very happy.”
III
Just after the Spring Festival in 2019, Liu Zihong made up his mind to grow his beard. At the end of September 2019, Liu Zihong wrote in the circle of friends: “The 200th day of the beard is to be remembered, a story of time, engraved in my heart. Looking back, I am grateful.” Perhaps the smooth production line and the release of the world’s first folding screen mobile phone , Allowing the company’s fully flexible display technology to enter a relatively stable development stage, Liu Zihong can finally give the public a relatively visible “explain”, and more people begin to understand and believe in Royole.
On May 30, 2019, Royole officially opened the large-scale mass production line of Royole’s full flexible screen to the outside world, showing the production links of flexible OLED screen coating, cutting and adding touch module lighting. Later, when Liu Zihong accepted a media interview, he publicly responded to all queries for the first time. It was from this time that Royole began to make great efforts to explain to all walks of life that Royole’s “full flexible screen” and the fixed curved screen also called “flexible screen” on the market are two fundamentally different technologies.
In 2015, a new form of smartphone screen appeared-a curved screen phone with curved sides on both sides. In the publicity at the time, curved screen mobile phones were intentionally or unintentionally called “flexible screen mobile phones.” As a result, by 2018, Royole’s foldable flexible screen had to be prefixed with the word “full” before the “flexible screen” after mass production. Then, from 2015 to 2018, why didn’t Royole actively promote the difference between “full flexible folding screen” and “curved screen” as it is now? Perhaps this is the consistent style of Liu Zihong and Royole-“change the world with results”.
Today, Royole, which has launched two generations of fully flexible folding screen mobile phones, can directly use the product to effectively interpret the difference between the “curved screen” mistakenly called the “flexible screen” and the real “full flexible screen”.
It is understood that the current strategic cooperation between Royole and LV, Airbus, Toyota, ZTE and other international companies is progressing smoothly. Even in Gree’s JD store, there have been bladeless fans equipped with Royole flexible sensor modules. Quantity product. Of course, Liu Zihong also hopes that everyone will give Royole more time and understanding. “Folding screen mobile phone is a new thing, its interactive mode has produced revolutionary changes, and the corresponding hardware, software, operating system, and business model have all changed. It is a subversive rather than a gradual one in the previous decade. Change, we can look at this thing in 10 years.”
Many materials experts and entrepreneurs have mentioned that it takes at least 8-10 years from birth to maturity for any new technology or new material. Not only do you need to be patient in scientific research, you also need to be a technologically innovative enterprise. patient. Liu Zihong also has a deep understanding of this, “All new industries and new technologies entering the market are actually like pouring a glass of water into a piece of soil. Its penetration requires a process. For example, electric cars, a decade ago, everyone It may feel very far away, and today we have seen its penetration more and more.”
There may be such a law behind the rise and fall of history: pessimists are often right, but successful people are often optimists. I hope that the optimistic Liu Zihong and Royole can make the world-changing dream of “flexible display” a reality in the coming era of the Internet of Everything.
