Chapter 497: Ecosystem Layout

March 18, 2003, Shenzhen.

The day marking the second anniversary of Fenghuang Phone's launch.

On the roof of Building No. 3 at the Nanshan R&D Center, the Wanxiang Group flag fluttered in the spring breeze. Below, in the window of the Fenghuang Phone flagship store, the third‑generation Fenghuang prototype had just been placed on the counter, its colorful screen gleaming temptingly in the sunlight.

Li Yaozong stood in his office on the thirty‑eighth floor, watching the line of people queuing below.

In two years, Fenghuang Phone sold 87 million units.

Eighty‑seven million.

From zero to 87 million, it took two years.

From being besieged to counter‑attacking Europe and America, it took two years.

He should be pleased.

But he couldn't feel happy.

Because the latest market analysis report on his desk had numbers circled in red ink that stared like needles.

Motorola's new model sales showed a month‑over‑month increase of 17 %.

Nokia, up 14 %.

Samsung, up 21 %.

While Fenghuang, up 6 %.

"Mr. Li," Xu Jiaming pushed the door open, clutching the report in his hand, "have you looked at the figures?"

Li Yaozong nodded.

"What do you think?"

Xu Jiaming sat opposite him and placed the worn‑out Hero fountain pen on the desk.

"Our hardware doesn't lag behind theirs. The color screen, camera, memory, processor—all are in the same tier. Some are even a bit better."

He paused.

"Do you know where the gap is?"

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"The ecosystem."

Xu Jiaming pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase and spread it on the desk.

It was a hand‑drawn diagram, dense with circles and arrows, resembling a battle map.

"Why does Motorola sell well?" he pointed the tip of his pen at the first circle, "it's not because the phone itself is good, but because it can run many things: games, tools, ringtones, wallpapers… Users buy the phone and can also buy other stuff."

He then tapped the second circle.

"Nokia is the same. They have their own app store, and developers are willing to write apps for them. The more apps, the more users can't do without them."

The third circle.

"Our Fenghuang ecosystem has been online for a year, with 2,300 developers and 900 apps. That sounds decent, but Motorola has 8,000 apps, and Nokia has 12,000."

He looked up.

"Mr. Li, this isn't just a slight difference. It's a difference of an entire era."

Li Yaozong said nothing.

He stared at the diagram for a long time.

"What's missing?"

"People," Xu Jiaming said bluntly, "system developers, app developers, game developers, tool developers, network developers… Our current staff can barely maintain what we have, let alone open new battlefields."

He paused.

"Mr. Li, we need to hire people."

That afternoon, an emergency meeting.

The conference room was packed. Zhang Wei, Xu Jiaming, He Xiao, Zhou Wenbin, Chen Anbang… and a few new faces—HR's Liu Hong, Finance's Lao Sun, Administrative Department's Zhao Gang.

Li Yaozong got straight to the point.

"Today we'll discuss only one thing—hiring."

He pushed the market report to the center of the table.

"Fenghuang Phone's hardware isn't inferior, but the ecosystem lags far behind."

He looked at HR's Liu Hong.

"Sister Liu, how many people are currently in the R&D Center?"

Liu Hong opened her notebook.

"1,237 people. Among them, the system team has 210, the application team 180, the chip team 320, the hardware team…"

"Not enough," Li Yaozong interrupted her. "I want to double it."

The conference room fell silent for a second.

Liu Hong was startled for a moment.

"Mr. Li, doubling means adding another 1,200 people. The talent market is fiercely competitive now; good candidates have been poached by foreign firms…"

"Then we'll poach them back," Li Yaozong said. "Price isn't an issue."

He looked at Finance's Lao Sun.

"Uncle Sun, what's our talent budget for this year?"

Lao Sun flipped through the ledger.

"It was originally 37 million."

"Double it," Li Yaozong said. "74 million."

Lao Sun opened his mouth to speak, then swallowed his words.

"Also," Li Yaozong looked at the administrator Zhao Gang, "the benefits package is fully upgraded. Housing allowance, children's education, family medical care, annual leave, cafeteria, gym… everything we can think of, add it."

He paused.

"I want everyone to know that coming to Fenghuang is not just a job; it's a way of life."

In April 2003, an unprecedented talent recruitment rolled out nationwide.

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan… ten cities, twenty special recruitment fairs. Ads were placed in the best newspapers, on the most prominent pages.

The headline was a single line:

"Fenghuang is hiring. Salary, you set."

Xu Jiaming led the team himself, traveling to six cities. At each location, he first treated the best local headhunter to a meal, then invited university professors for tea, and finally offered coffee to those who had already sent in résumés.

After a month, he had lost eight jin, worn out two pairs of leather shoes, and handed out over three thousand business cards.

But the gains were also tangible.

On April 30, Liu Hong from the HR department delivered the first report.

"Mr. Li, this month we received 13,000 résumés. 1,023 passed the interview. 786 have already joined."

Li Yaozong looked at the list.

System division, 157 new hires.

Application division, 183 new hires.

Game division, 97 new hires.

Network division, 68 new hires.

And… the Video division.

That was a newly created department, dedicated to video software on phones. Its head, whom he personally recruited from Beijing, is Wang Lei, thirty‑four, who spent eight years at Microsoft Asia Research, worked on three video projects, and earned two patents.

When Wang Lei joined, Li Yaozong personally went to the airport to pick him up.

On the way, Wang Lei asked, "Mr. Li, what's our goal for the video software?"

Li Yaozong thought for a moment.

"Let users of the Fenghuang Phone watch videos, record videos, and share videos."

He paused.

"Make video another name for Fenghuang."

In June 2003, the chat software team was launched.

The head, whom Xu Jiaming personally recruited from Shanghai, is Chen Mo, thirty‑two, a Fudan computer science graduate who spent four years at Tencent and was one of the core members of the early QQ team.

On Chen Mo's first day, Xu Jiaming introduced him to Li Yaozong.

"Mr. Li, this is Chen Mo. One of QQ's first thirty employees."

Li Yaozong extended his hand.

"Welcome."

Chen Mo shook it and sat down.

"Mr. Li, I have a question."

"Go ahead."

"Are we making a chat app to be another QQ, or to be something different?"

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"What do you think?"

Chen Mo thought for a moment.

"If we make another QQ, we can't beat Tencent. They have first‑mover advantage and users are already accustomed. But if we do something different…"

He paused.

"Currently, chat apps on phones are text only. Can we send pictures? Voice messages? Can two people chat online simultaneously?"

Li Yaozong's eyes lit up.

"Is it possible?"

Chen Mo nodded.

"It can. But it needs time, it needs people."

"How long?"

"Give me fifty people, a year, and we can produce a usable version."

Li Yaozong didn't hesitate.

"I'll give you a hundred."

The web software team is the hardest to recruit.

Because there are so few people who do this.

Mobile internet was still a novelty then. Most users used phones just to call, send texts, and occasionally play games. Browsing the web? That was something only people with computers did.

But Li Yaozong knew this was the future.

He personally led a team, traveling to Beijing three times, Shanghai twice, visiting labs at seven universities, meeting twenty‑three professors and doctors conducting network research.

The last one to agree was Zhou Yuanhang, thirty‑seven, an associate professor in Tsinghua's computer department, who had done ten years of network protocol research and published seventeen papers.

When he arrived in Shenzhen, Li Yaozong treated him to a meal.

At the dinner table, Zhou Yuanhang asked, "Mr. Li, why are you so determined to pursue mobile internet? The market hasn't taken off yet."

Li Yaozong set down his chopsticks.

"Professor Zhou, when do you think it will take off?"

Zhou Yuanhang thought for a moment.

"Three to five years."

Li Yaozong said, "If we start after three to five years, we can begin now and be right on time; if we wait until then to start, it'll be too late."

Zhou Yuanhang looked at him and was silent for a few seconds.

Then he smiled.

"President Li, I'll start tomorrow."

September 2003, Nanshan R&D Center.

Over a thousand newly hired staff are already all in place.

The R&D Center, which originally occupied only three floors, has now expanded to six floors. The cafeteria requires a half‑hour line at noon, the gym is still overcrowded at nine p. m., and the parking lot added two hundred spaces, yet it's still insufficient.

Xu Jiaming is busy every day to the point his feet never touch the ground, but he always has a smile on his face.

"President Li," he said during a briefing, "I now have troops."

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"Is it enough?"

Xu Jiaming thought for a moment.

"It's sufficient for now. But next year, we'll still need to recruit."

Li Yaozong nodded.

"Then we'll recruit again next year."

He paused.

"Jiaming, do you know what I fear most?"

Xu Jiaming shook his head.

"What I fear most isn't that we can't hire people. It's that the people we hire won't stay."

He looked out the window.

In those newly built buildings, under the lit windows, the young people gathered from all over the country are pulling all‑nighters, working overtime, writing code, drawing blueprints.

They sacrifice their youth for Fenghuang.

Fenghuang, what should it give them?

"Increase the benefits and compensation," he said. "Double the cafeteria size. Purchase a new batch of equipment for the gym. Raise the housing subsidy by another twenty percent. Add five more days of annual leave."

He looked at Xu Jiaming.

"I want everyone to know that joining Fenghuang isn't just about working; it's about living a good life."

December 2003, Wanxiang Group annual meeting.

Twelve thousand people filled the Shenzhen Gym to capacity.

Li Yaozong stood on the stage wearing a plain gray shirt, without a tie.

In the audience were countless young faces: some who had joined three months ago, some who had followed him for ten years, some from Beijing, some from Shanghai, and some who had returned from the United States.

"Everyone," he began, his voice not loud but audible throughout the gym, "today marks the third year of Fenghuang Phone."

He paused.

"Three years ago, we had nothing. No chips, no operating system, no phone, no users."

"Three years later, we have them."

The audience erupted in applause.

"But that's still not enough."

The applause stopped.

"Motorola has eight thousand applications. Nokia has twelve thousand. We have nine hundred."

He looked at those young people in the audience.

"Nine hundred versus twelve thousand. This is not a difference; it's a gulf."

No one spoke.

"But we're not afraid," his voice rose slightly, "because we have you."

"You are the best engineers selected from across the country. In the lab you've pulled countless all‑nighters, written millions of lines of code, and drawn thousands of blueprints."

"Those nine hundred applications were written by you. Eight point seven million phones were built by you. The five hundred thousand users in the European and American markets were captured by you."

He paused.

"Next year, we will create two thousand applications. The year after, five thousand. The following year, we'll catch up with them."

He looked at those eyes in the audience.

"Can you do it?"

The audience was silent for a second.

Then, twelve thousand people shouted the two words in unison:

"We can!"

After the meeting ended, Li Yaozong sat alone in his office.

It was already late; traffic on Shen Nan Avenue below was sparse. In the distance, the lights of the Nanshan R&D Center were still on.

His phone vibrated.

It was a text message from his father.

It contained only five characters:

"Heard you're doing well."

He looked at those five words, his eyes a little warm.

He replied:

"Dad, it's still early."

After sending it, he stood up and walked to the window.

Outside the window, the city he had lived in for thirty‑six years was sleeping in the night.

But those lights were still on.

The people he had personally recruited, the young ones willing to give their youth to the Phoenix, were still shining.

He knew that tomorrow morning they would still come.

The day after tomorrow they would as well.

Three days from now they would also.

They would keep coming.

Because this road is still long.

He turned around, picked up the third‑generation Phoenix phone, and pressed the power button.

The screen lit up, and the star rose from the bottom, climbing higher until it hovered at the center.

He looked at the star and softly said:

"When at peace, rest is danger; always be one step ahead of the opponent."

This was taught to him by his father.

Now, he understands.