The phone on paper looked brilliant, but Heifeng knew it would still be months before any unit reached a store shelf. The refresh cycle runs fast in this business, and models slide a rung every half year. Flagships sink to sub-flagships, mid-range becomes budget, and the market punishes anything that misses its window. Hammer Technology had already learned that lesson the hard way. Their last big launch created plenty of buzz, production slipped, prices landed high, quality wobbled, and the advantage was gone when units trickled out. Tens of thousands sold over a year counted as a failure, and the company bled real money.
Now, Mr. Luo had come to Huaxing's headquarters with hope and a bruised pride. His company still had taste and software elegance, that much no one denied, but those alone could not win in a field defined by silicon, supply chains, and yield. He sat across from Heifeng with a mix of stubbornness and fatigue, as if insisting that grit itself could bend the curve of a market.
"Honestly," Heifeng said, choosing plain words over polite fog, "the shape of the market is set. Last year was the fiercest I have seen. If there were a hundred-phone war, it ended by deciding who gets the oxygen. The old ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, and Lenovo blocks belong to yesterday. The present belongs to Huaxing, Huawei, Xiaomi, Blue and Green Factory, and Meizu. Where does Hammer fit?" He did not ask it to mock Mr. Luo. He asked it to make the next sentence matter.
He said that small factories could still be alive today, but the larger brands would squeeze the margins from every side. Mr. Luo absorbed that without flinching. He had always been the sort to say he did not believe in fate. He lifted his eyes and met Heifeng's, a little tired, still defiant. Hammer was his work. He would not abandon it until the very last path was closed.
"What do you actually need?" Heifeng asked. "Name it."
Mr. Luo did not hesitate. He had a list because he had rehearsed this trip in his head.
• A top mobile application processor, at least on the level of the Snapdragon 900, preferably Huaxing's next step above the Qinglong 810.
• True wireless charging he could take to mass production.
• A licensable 35 W fast-charging patent.
He fell silent and watched. If he could walk out carrying these three keys, he believed Hammer's next phone would not merely be elegant. It would be competitive.
"Fast charging is no problem," Heifeng said after a moment. "Wireless charging is not available for licensing yet." Mr. Luo's shoulders eased. One out of three was already something. Then Heifeng added, almost casually, "We also have a new processor that can match the Snapdragon 900. Interested?"
Shock flashed across Mr. Luo's face before he could hide it. He had flown here because Qualcomm would not put Hammer on the allocation sheet. The Snapdragon 900 was ramping up, and its initial capacity was spoken for by two giants, Xiaomi at home and Samsung abroad. Even Samsung, with its own Exynos line, leaned on Qualcomm for volume, which ate most of the early wafers. For Hammer, there had been no channel to knock on, no slot to wait for. If Huaxing truly had a rival to that chip and would actually sell it to him, the conversation would shift from charity to partnership.
"Can it really go head-to-head?" he asked. Scores told a simple story; phones sold on the simplified story when time was short.
Heifeng did not argue. He opened a drawer, laid a nondisclosure agreement on the table, and slid over a pen. Mr. Luo signed without reading. There are moments when trust is simply a form of speed.
With the paper done, Heifeng produced a thin booklet. Product brief on the Qinglong 820, he said. Mr. Luo skimmed, then slowed, then read again more carefully. The pitch was not flowery. It was precise.
• Fabrication at 10 nanometers, a full node ahead of the 810 generation.
• Composite performance near the three-hundred-thousand mark in mainstream benchmarks, a healthy lift over the 810.
• Power consumption reduced by about twenty percent generation over generation, with thermal headroom to sustain the clock under continuous load.
Numbers mattered, but so did what they implied. Ten nanometers was not only about speed. It was about density, the area budget for bigger GPU clusters and additional signal blocks, and the yield math that could make or break a mid-year launch. A sustained score near three hundred thousand told him the CPU cores and GPU were not peaking briefly to headline a chart, and the twenty percent power cut promised design freedom for a thinner chassis or a bigger battery.
Mr. Luo looked up, cautious hope hardening into intent. "If I can secure this chip and your fast charging, I can build a phone that stands in the front row. I do not need to win every category. I need to be within a whisker where I trail and clearly ahead somewhere people can feel."
"That is the right way to think," Heifeng said. "But chips are not enough. Hammer's schedule has to be real this time. The last launch missed its moment. If you lock a design and then wait months for volume, the market will move past you again. We can allocate you capacity, but you must align your line, camera modules, displays, everything. No delays."
"I understand." Mr. Luo regained the straight-backed posture of a man who can already see the product in his hands. "Give me a target for engineering samples and a volume ramp I can plan to."
"We can discuss exact numbers with the semiconductor team," Heifeng replied. "Broadly speaking, samples in the second half, a production ramp immediately after, as long as your validation does not slide. And Mr. Luo, if you want more than a supply contract, there is another path. Join us. Lead a series at Huaxing. You have taste and presence. We can give you resources and a stage."
Mr. Luo held the booklet a little tighter. It would have been a neat ending to a difficult year to say yes on the spot. But he shook his head. Hammer was not just a brand. It was his stubbornness made real. "I cannot abandon it. Not yet." He smiled, apologetic and unyielding at the same time. "Let us do this as partners. If I fail, I will come back and we will talk again."
"Then we do it as partners," Heifeng said. He stood, and they shook hands across the table, not as a benefactor and a petitioner, but as two founders who understood what it costs to keep a dream moving forward by one more step.
Outside the window the city pulsed, indifferent to any individual bet, but inside the room the path had at least become visible. Hammer would take the Qinglong 820 and fast charging, tune it into a phone that could ship on time, and try to slip back into a market that rarely forgives. Huaxing would sell its first batches of high-end processors to an outsider, prove its fab and design at scale, and deepen a reputation that already made competitors uneasy. Whether that would be enough could only be answered by the quarter that measures what people actually buy. For now, the paperwork was signed, and the future, for both of them, felt one notch less impossible.