Due to financial and capacity limitations, small businesses themselves lack the ability to upgrade cable technology and innovate products. The vast majority of production enterprises often only focus on short-term gains, resulting in market failure. In addition, the cable industry belongs to the heavy material light industry. With the significant increase in copper prices and various raw material prices in the market, the bidding prices for wires and cables are both transparent and relatively low. Enterprises producing according to industry standards and national standards, strictly implementing processes, are bound to suffer significant losses. Therefore, the current domestic cable industry is deeply mired in low price competition, and product quality is worrying.

Driven by profit, small cable companies have begun to neglect the quality control of raw materials entering the factory in order to save costs. Some even intentionally use inferior raw materials, and some manufacturers and producers even use copper-clad steel or copper-clad aluminum to make cables. Poor quality cables and wires are difficult for ordinary people to identify, and even professionals cannot distinguish them without instruments. For insulation and sheath materials, manufacturers also try their best to cut corners, such as buying discarded medical waste such as hanging needle bottles and hanging needle tubes at low prices, or importing waste plastics. Qualified products have no problem with the outer skin after 20-30 years, while inferior materials will age and fall off after 2-3 years. In addition, waste plastics also contain impurities such as iron filings and copper filings. If used as buried cables, they are prone to water seepage and electrical continuity, causing serious safety hazards. So now, it is quite common to cut corners or use recycled materials for sheaths, such as product line diameter not meeting standards and exceeding negative tolerances.

Many institutions have tested the quality of wires and cables in the market, but the results have not been ideal. Some wire and cable products meet less than 50% of the national standard, while others are even lower. Whether it is due to the lack of power in the large market, insufficient research and development efforts of domestic cable production enterprises, fierce competition at low prices, or low product quality and high production costs, single fiber cables directly cause cable enterprises to face difficulties and even find it difficult to maintain the status quo, and choose to close down.

In the 1970s and 1980s, China's wire and cable industry vigorously promoted the "double innovation and four new" and "small reform and small innovation", and a large number of new products, new processes, new materials, and new equipment emerged successively, greatly promoting the technological progress of the industry. After the reform and opening up, the large-scale introduction of foreign equipment and technology has become a thinking trend of technological progress, and "take it for yourself" has emerged. As a result, although the equipment and technology level of China's wire and cable industry has reached a new level, there is very little formation of independent technological property rights. Nowadays, in the face of product innovation proposed by the country, it is necessary to once again propose the "double innovation and four new" and "small reform and small innovation" based on existing advanced equipment, so as to elevate the product to a higher level and create the enterprise's own independent intellectual property brand.

Whether a company can survive or not does not depend on its size. We have seen many large enterprises collapse overnight, seeing them build high-rise buildings, hosting guests, and seeing their buildings collapse. The same goes for enterprises, 'The temple is not big, there is a spirit.'. In the "small temple" of small and medium-sized enterprises, if there are really one or two "gods" of new products that can be called effective and save the enterprise, such enterprises are the ones with vitality. Of course, when companies invite a "god" into a "small temple" and make him shine, they also need to be effective and lawful. Based on domestic and international experience, there are generally several approaches as follows.

Small businesses should have small products. Products are not about size, having a market is a good product. The popular ultra-high voltage land cables and submarine cables in the industry are very large, but their market capacity is limited, and they are not easy to manufacture. Small products with simple structure, simple performance, and large market capacity should be the main entry point for technological innovation. Careful analysis reveals that almost every small product has room for continued innovation. Fiber optic composite cables are no longer just medium to high voltage power cables and submarine cables, and low voltage power cables are also beginning to incorporate fiber optic cables. Building electrical wiring is no longer just copper aluminum conductors, it is now using aluminum alloys. Electrical equipment cables are no longer just insulated and sheathed with PVC and rubber, but have started to use thermoplastic elastomers, and so on. From the perspective of product volume, small products are almost all products, which pose greater innovation difficulties and provide opportunities for enterprises to innovate. For example, headphone cables used for radios, mobile phones, and computers are products with high technological content. As early as more than 20 years ago, a cable expert once said, "Despite the large scale of China's wire and cable industry, why can't we produce headphone cables like Japan?" This statement is worth pondering.

Small businesses without financial support should not compete with large enterprises for investment, but should try to find products for small investments. For general small and medium-sized cable enterprises, the investment scale for product innovation should not be too large. There used to be a popular slogan in the industry: 'I have what others don't have, and I excel when others have me'. The meaning is to make the product variety of the enterprise as complete as possible and to "refresh" the existing product structure as much as possible. This idea is not bad, but it requires a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources. Small and medium-sized cable enterprises should not engage in this, but should start by simplifying product structure, improving product performance, and facilitating installation and use.