With a big brother in his hand and a BB machine pinned to his waist, such a dress was a successful person in the eighties and nineties of the last century, not a "10,000-yuan household" or a big boss could not afford to buy these two "equipment".
In that era when information exchange was not yet developed, many people still relied on traditional means of correspondence to maintain communication, even if landlines have begun to become popular, but no one will stay in front of the phone every day, and the price of installing a landline is not cheap.
So in that era, BB machines became an indispensable and coveted communication tool for many people.
I believe that friends who have watched the movie "Riding the Wind and Waves" will remember this scene, in the movie, Xu Zhengtai, played by Peng Yuyan, stockpiled a BB machine full of suitcases for his unborn son, and told his son Xu Tailang who crossed over that with these things, he would definitely make a lot of money in a few years.
It can be seen that the BB machine was definitely a valuable object at that time, otherwise Xu Zhengtai would not expect to achieve wealth freedom by reselling this thing.
Speaking of BB machines, although it has been 40 years since it entered the Chinese market, many post-60s, 70s, and 80s drawers must still treasure a BB machine that once accompanied them.
So, in this era of highly developed communication technology and still developing rapidly, can it still be used? When I was young, did the pager still get through?
Early BB machines were really expensive
In 1998, as a second-grade "communist successor", I heard a new term - pager, which is the BB machine we are talking about today.
At that time, I was so curious about the novelty that the other party could call back immediately after just making a few phone calls and saying a few words, so much so that I dialed the 126 pager over and over again with my friends for many afternoons, even if we didn't say anything, it still made us feel very happy.
It wasn't until my parents showed up in front of me the following month with their phone bills and rolling pins that I finally learned that the pager, which had made me happy countless times, wasn't free.
In 1983, Shanghai built the first pager in the history of New China, and BB machine, a communication product born in the United States in 1948, finally entered the Chinese market.
At that time, China was in the early stage of reform and opening up, and under the policy goal of vigorously developing the economy, communication became one of the important factors of development.
Although the BB machine is only a one-way communication tool, it has the three advantages of being more convenient than landlines, cheaper than big brothers, and two No. 5 batteries can be used for nearly a month, and it will immediately sweep the land of China as soon as it is released, and has become a must-have product for businessmen.
In the current view, the BB machine calls the pager from A to the pager, and then the pager operator sends A's message to B, and finally B calls back to contact A.
But 40 years ago, the big brother of tens of thousands was a luxury for China that had just begun to reform and open up, not many people could afford it, and human society was mobile, so the importance of BB machines in that era was self-evident.
With the rise of BB machines in the Chinese market, it also stimulated the sales of public phone booths and IC cards, and it can be said that BB made a lot of contributions to the Chinese telecom business in that era.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, Xu Zhengtai had expected to make a fortune by hoarding BB machines, and when he saw this scene for the first time, many people must think that this was a rotten terrier that was funny for funny, and only people who have used BB machines will understand that Xu Zhengtai had such thoughts in that era was not surprising.
In the 10 years from entering the Chinese market in 1983 to reaching its peak in 1993, the price of BB machines can be described as expensive, and the price of a Hanxian BB machine plus network access fees exceeded 2,000 yuan at its highest.
You must know that at that time, most of the country's monthly salary was only a few tens of yuan, better in the early 100s, a BB machine has been able to withstand people's wages for several years, even the latest iPhone mobile phone, in front of the BB machine at that time is just a younger brother.
Starting from the development process of BB machines, it has roughly experienced two historical transformations from digital machines to Han display machines, or has experienced a communication "intermediary" that must return calls to a communication tool that can receive "text messages" in one direction and then choose whether to call back according to the content.
This change gives people a higher autonomy when using BB machines, just as we can choose whether to reply according to the content or our mood when we use chat software now.
But its charge is really not cheap, so there may not be many people who dare not return the call after receiving the message, because there is not much that can withstand the high paging fee at that time.
Taking the Hanxian BB machine in the late 80s as an example, aside from the monthly rent of 50 yuan per month, every message received by the BB machine is charged, and it is charged according to the number of words.
This is somewhat similar to the telegraph at the time, but unlike the telegram, each message of the BB machine has a word limit, which means that if the number of words in a message exceeds the maximum number of words specified in a message, the message will be sent in 2 or more messages, and the same per-word fee will be charged.
If the pager owner willfully does not call the person who called him back, and it happens that the other party is also a wayward master, calling over and over again, non-stop, then who can stand this month's paging fee?
Therefore, even now, every time I hear the line "call me 30 times" in the old movie, I still can't help but sigh, you really have money!
Prosperity is bound to decline
When the gear of time entered the 90s, the development of BB machines in the Chinese market was out of control.
After many brands including Motorola entered the Chinese market, the price of BB machines began to be rapidly reduced from the initial 2,000 yuan to several hundred yuan a piece, and the paging fee was also greatly reduced, so that the sales of BB machines in the Chinese market increased by leaps and bounds.
From 1990 to 1998, China's BB machine user growth is in millions or even tens of millions of statistics, according to the market data at that time, in 1998, China with more than 65.46 million BB machine users proud results became the world's largest BB machine sales market.
At that time, almost every family would have at least one person using BB machines, which truly realized the popularity of BB machines, which was also the peak moment of BB machines in China.
However, BB machines still did not escape the natural law of prosperity and decline, and after standing at the top, BB inevitably began the road of decline, and it was the mobile phones we use that ended it, of course, the emergence of mobile phones also ended the era of phone booths.
In the fourth year after the BB machine entered China, the first cellular mobile base station in the history of New China appeared in Guangzhou, which also means that China's mobile communication industry officially started from that moment.
A year later, Big Brother officially entered the Chinese market, but at that time, although the big brother with tens of thousands of yuan was not enough to threaten the market position of BB machines.
However, in 4 years, the user growth from a few hundred units a year to more than 10,000 units has faintly had the taste of being a latecomer.
In the following years, with the development of mobile phone technology, the appearance of mobile phones gradually moved from "brick" big brother to small and thin, and by 1995, there was already a mobile phone like Ericsson GH337 that could be directly put into the pocket.
So from that moment on, the group of people who got rich first suddenly found that although the price of lightweight mobile phones is indeed more expensive than BB phones, in terms of use, it is indeed much more convenient than the combination of BB + landline.
As a result, the market leader status of BB machines has gradually shaken since then.
Although the number of BB users in China in 1998 still far exceeded that of mobile phones, this was due to its own disadvantages in the competition with mobile phones, and adopted the "false prosperity" of self-depreciation, and this "prosperity" was soon broken with the ringing of the bell in 2000.
Since 2000, there have been more and more mobile phone brands in the Chinese market, and many domestic companies have also begun to research and develop local brand mobile phones, the price of mobile phones has not been as expensive as before, and with the increase in the income of the people of the country, buying a mobile phone has begun to become less out of reach.
In order to save themselves, BB machine operators have used countless methods to turn over.
However, in the second year of the 21st century, the rapid development of a product launched by China Telecom in 1998 after entering the 21st century can be said to have completely cut off the road to the resurrection of BB machines.
That's right, this product is the "PHS" that allowed Gao Qisheng to earn the first pot of gold.
Speaking of PHS, this is simply an artifact, the mobile phone has the function he has, the BB machine does not have the function he has, more importantly, this guy one-way charge ah, and monthly business, who can refuse this at that time?
Of course, it also has a fatal weakness, that is, the signal is not good, and therefore it has gained a "Hey, lean!" ".
But it is undeniable that the appearance of PHS and the appearance of BB machine are almost the same, both are models of "debut is the peak"; But the difference is that when the BB machine debuted, it can be said that there is no opponent in the field of mobile communications, but PHS has to deal with two opponents at the same time when it debuts mobile phone and BB machine.
And the BB machine is obviously not an opponent, chased and beaten by this "little brother", coupled with the strategic harassment of mobile phones from time to time, the living space of the BB machine is becoming smaller and smaller.
In the next 6 years, the market share of BB machines was gradually eroded, and countless eliminated BB machines became decorations in the drawers of ordinary people.
I don't know how many people have had this experience, parents gave the eliminated BB machine to their children, parents at that time may have thought like this, "bring it when you go out to play, although you can't afford to buy a mobile phone, but after receiving a page, sneak back, don't let us look for you all over the world", which may become the last bit of value of the BB machine.
Around 2004, China's three major telecom operators successively launched the marketing method of "saving phone fees and sending mobile phones", and this BB machine in the Chinese market was completely overcome, and countless pagers closed down in just two years.
In 2007, Unicom announced that it would officially stop its paging business, marking the complete "death" of BB machines that had been operating in China for 24 years.
The inevitable result of the development of science and technology
Does the BB machine still work? The answer is obviously no, the pager is gone, how can communication be achieved?
Technology is always forward-looking, even if sometimes looking back, maybe just to see if something has been forgotten, but never to pick up something that has been lost.
The BB machine with single function and cumbersome means of use is irreversible to be replaced by mobile phones, even if there are still many people who still have a collection of BB machines at home, but I believe that no one will think about how to make him "live again".
Similarly, for today's smartphones, it may not be replaced by more advanced communication tools in the future, after all, from the development of mobile phone technology in recent years, technological development seems to have entered a bottleneck period.
With each new machine, it seems that there is nothing to do except the appearance, and sometimes it even goes backwards.
Of course, all scientific and technological development is actually inseparable from the market law of "user demand".
I once saw such a joke on the Internet, some young people because they can't stand the battery life function of mobile phone products on the current market, hoping that developers can launch mobile phones that can replace batteries;
After Apple proposed to cancel the charging port, many young users hope to have a product that specifically charges the battery;
Some people even suggested that the current mobile phone has too many functions to cause insufficient memory, and strongly hopes to launch different products according to the function...
After reading this, I can't help but sigh, technology is really a reincarnation, what they want, isn't it the mobile phone and "universal charge" we used more than ten or twenty years ago? Isn't their proposed product-per-function look like when we go out with mobile phones, MP3s, MP4s, cameras and electronic navigation devices in our backpacks?
Is it really possible for future technological development to change back to when we were young?
In fact, it is not difficult to find that in the wave of the development of the times, countless products have left us, listening to the song artifact MP3, DVD player, tape recorder, portable DVD player, rollover, and even PHS, which played a decisive role in the "death" of the BB machine, can not escape the end of being crushed by the wheel of history.
But they are not victims of scientific and technological development, but should be stepping stones and touchstones to promote scientific and technological development.
Perhaps it is not accurate to define these disappeared technology products in terms of obsolescence and "death", it should be said that they have only been updated, but become better than before. Isn't a smartphone a product that integrates MP3, BB player, DVD player and other product functions? Aren't so many electronic products on the market now the product of upgrading from previous products?
Therefore, they did not "die" and were not eliminated, but just a different way of "survival".