Chapter 134: Download Volume Breaks 10 Million, Factory Benefits (Request Monthly Votes)

On the day after the Dragon Boat Festival, Lashou.com submitted its IPO prospectus to the Lantern State Securities Exchange Association, planning to raise $100 million.

Ali announced that Yitao.com would operate independently, adding price-comparison search features; unable to compete with FoxTao in branded sales, it strengthened its utility attributes instead.

Subsequently, Leiyi Army revealed for the first time the progress of Xiaomi phone development, stating the first model would be released in August.

Zhang Xuhao, far away in Hucheng, quickly expanded his team after securing $1 million in funding from Jinsha Venture Capital, extending his business from the Jiaotong University campus to surrounding areas.

The intensifying competition in the group-buying industry made Zhang Xuhao realize one truth: he must seize a larger share of the food delivery market before other internet giants entered.

However, at this time, mainstream domestic venture capital firms did not believe in the profitability of food delivery.

Market promotion, rider recruitment, technical development, and merchant management all required massive capital investment, while revenue from merchants and users struggled to cover costs.

It was destined to remain in loss for the long term!

After spending $1 million, Jinsha Venture Capital soon regretted it—this money only sufficed for Zhang Xuhao to upgrade his website to version 2.0 and make a preliminary entry into the white-collar market.

By early June, the website had only 30,000 registered users and fewer than 4,000 daily orders.

This was why Chen Yan didn’t rush into food delivery: first, the cost of cultivating the market and users was too high; second, smartphone penetration was low and 4G networks hadn’t launched yet.

Although 3G networks showed a trend of increased speed and lower prices, data costs remained high.

In the future, Zhang Xuhao spent over a billion yuan to cultivate the market, only to face his lifelong rival—Meituan Food Delivery.

Wang Xin, with his tens of thousands of ground-pushing troops, pushed Ele.me into retreat after retreat, forcibly knocking the market leader down to second place.

But in this life, whether Wang Xin could emerge victorious from the Thousand Group-Buying War remained uncertain.

After all, the first half of the year was nearly over, and Meituan’s market share hadn’t even cracked the top three, being tightly suppressed by Juhuasuan, Lashou, Gaopeng, and Nuomi.

Behind them were WoWoTuan, 58 Group-Buying, F-Tuan, Dazhong Dianping chasing closely, and FoxTao disrupting the scene.

Even when Meituan promptly launched its thoughtful “expired refund” service, it failed to create a major splash in the industry.

Because Lashou, Gaopeng, and Nuomi immediately copied it, turning Meituan’s unique feature into an industry standard.

On June 8, Chen Yan moved Orange Tech to Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park; the AuroraOS R&D team occupied the second floor, while the third floor housed the office area for over a dozen hardware and industrial design engineers.

Only a few flower baskets delivered by property management stood at the entrance; no firecrackers were set off, and the move was extremely low-key.

But online, Chen Yan was far more conspicuous—he added a pop-up ad on FoxTao’s homepage, announcing the launch of the AuroraOS beta.

Simultaneously, on Orange Tech’s official website, Orange Community, the Third-Party App Store, and developer forums, he either pinned posters or spent heavily on advertising.

FoxTao users who downloaded and installed AuroraOS received a random red envelope worth 3–88 yuan.

If they discovered any system flaws and reported them on the feedback section of Orange Community, and if the report was adopted, they received rewards ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 yuan.

This differed from FoxTao’s launch, when Chen Yan had only 500,000–600,000 yuan and could only play tricks.

Now, with ample funds, he directly launched a money-spraying campaign.

With 3.2 million daily active users, FoxTao added 280,000 new downloads that day.

For Chen Yan, this cost was only a few hundred thousand yuan—less than the price of resource slots on Wandoujia, App Treasure, and 360 Mobile Assistant.

On the day AuroraOS launched, total downloads across all channels reached 890,000!

Chen Yan announced on Weibo that the number was 1 million!

This caused a sensation in the industry—those who, like Chen Yan, were willing to invest heavily and had their own platform driving strong traffic held an extremely obvious advantage during product launch.

The next day, total downloads across all channels reached 1.41 million!

The third day, total downloads across all channels reached 1.17 million!

The fourth day, total downloads across all channels reached 930,000!

The fifth day, total downloads across all channels reached 840,000!

The sixth day, total downloads across all channels reached 730,000!

The seventh day, total downloads across all channels reached 520,000!

In just one week, the total downloads of AuroraOS reached 6.49 million; according to heavy data metrics like launch frequency, page views, and user dwell time, actual usage reached 7.8 million.

This was because many users received their installation packages from classmates, friends, or relatives—outside the scope of channel statistics.

As usage increased, so did the number of bugs exposed.

For example, clicking a phone number from a text message would cause the function to crash; playing music would fail to display song information on the lock screen; the confirmation button would become unresponsive when modifying permissions.

Various minor glitches kept appearing, forcing Wang Teng to spend his days immersed in Orange Community collecting user feedback.

A week later, AuroraOS updated to version 1.01, fixing dozens of minor bugs at once.

Users who had flashed their phones with AuroraOS discovered its memory cleanup function was exceptionally powerful.

Users could manually clear cache with one click, or authorize the system to classify cache and app junk files into three categories—new generation, old generation, and metaspace data—based on time and usage frequency, cleaning them every 30 minutes.

This was the generational garbage collection algorithm Chen Yan had previously mentioned to Wang Teng!

It greatly alleviated users’ problems of insufficient memory and sluggish performance!

Upon hearing this news, Lei Zong immediately ordered his R&D center to use reverse-engineering tools to convert AuroraOS’s binary code into pseudocode and analyze the memory management module’s calling logic.

But soon, feedback came back: AuroraOS’s code had obfuscated critical class and method names, greatly increasing reverse-engineering difficulty; the core memory partition ratios, cleanup trigger conditions, and concurrency handling methods were nearly impossible to replicate.

“Is this kid really that good?”

Lei Zong sat in his office and asked Lin Bing.

Although he had over twenty years of programming experience, in recent years his work had shifted to management—he found AuroraOS’s garbage cleanup function very useful but couldn’t judge the coding difficulty.

“It’s amazing! Our MIUI system has also optimized memory management and garbage cleanup, but the actual effect is far worse than AuroraOS.”

Lin Bing frowned and sighed.

“Don’t waste effort reverse-engineering AuroraOS’s original algorithm—I just checked the intellectual property association’s website; they’ve applied for patent protection.”

Li Wanqiang suddenly spoke up to remind him.

“Generational garbage collection is a general technology; as long as we clarify their generational strategy and algorithm logic and develop a similar feature set, they can’t prove we copied them.”

Lin Bing instinctively rebutted.

“They’ve proposed entirely new optimizations in adaptive thresholds and hybrid GC strategies—I can find them, which means the intellectual property association recognizes Orange Tech’s innovation.”

Li Wanqiang shook his head, dispelling Lin Bing’s idea.

“Can we try further optimizing to develop a cleanup algorithm similar to AuroraOS?”

After listening to their discussion, Lei Zong asked.

Li Wanqiang and Lin Bing exchanged glances, then nodded firmly, deciding to give it a try.

The AuroraOS R&D team, they had investigated, mostly consisted of engineers from OPPO, Huawei, and Meizu—even two engineers poached from Xiaomi.

If they could do it, there was no reason we couldn’t!

At this moment, Chen Yongming of OPPO and Huang Zhang of Meizu were thinking the same thing.

One was developing ColorOS, the other FlymeOS; both had felt confident until they compared their systems with AuroraOS—the gap became immediately obvious.

In 2011, smartphone memory was small and garbage fragmentation severe, making sluggishness a fatal flaw for young users—a criticism that would persist for over a decade.

Even after later Android smartphones improved both system and hardware to eliminate lag, most people still held a stereotype: that an Android phone would become sluggish after two years.

As domestic smartphone manufacturers scrambled to catch up with AuroraOS’s cleanup algorithm, this flashing trend spread from online to offline.

Whether in first- or second-tier cities or fourth- or fifth-tier towns, many digital accessory shops recently added a new service: flashing phone systems.

Charging 10 yuan per phone, unscrupulous shop owners charged 20 yuan.

Some even set prices as high as 50 yuan.

Although Orange Tech’s official website and Orange Community both offered flashing tutorials, many users still faced information gaps and technical barriers, giving rise to a large number of flashers.

After AuroraOS’s downloads surpassed 10 million, Chen Yan stopped paying attention.

In mid-June, he spent his days on the third floor of the new office, deeply involved in the external appearance and structural design of the Orange Phone.

Cao Dahua had been away directing operations and had not yet returned.

He and Zuo Hongyu had been long-term partners; after more than twenty days of traveling around, they had largely acquired all the necessary production equipment, including assembly, packaging, and testing machines.

With eight production lines running at full capacity, the annual output reached 4.8 to 6 million phones.

The two were busy assembling the production line while Zhou Jinling brought in the former HR manager from Ohan Phone to join Orange Tech’s phone factory, preparing for the next round of hiring.

After all, this woman was well-connected in Huaqiangbei and had a large network of recruitment intermediaries; while others took two or three months to hire 500 workers, she could do it in a week.

Chen Yan didn’t question Zhou Jinling’s joining Orange Tech after hearing Zuo Hongyu’s report—it was just an ordinary worker position.

But the new HR manager planned to hire through intermediaries, which he immediately rejected.

Since the Orange Phone’s hardware design wasn’t finished yet, they could easily hire directly—there was no need to go through intermediaries.

These days, some intermediaries signed agreements with factories, paying wages into the intermediary’s account first, then distributing them.

Chen Yan wondered: if the intermediary and outsourced workers’ contracts weren’t under his company’s name, how could there be any humanistic goodwill?

Almost certainly not!

This was his main reason for disagreeing!

After hearing Chen Yan’s instructions, Zuo Hongyu, though finding it troublesome, nodded in agreement.

“By the way, the factory’s daily working hours must align with ours—implement an 8-hour workday, and calculate overtime pay strictly according to labor law.”

Before hanging up, Chen Yan added.

“Huh!?” Zuo Hongyu paused—he’d spent over ten years in Shencheng and had never encountered a boss like this.

The base salary for workers was 1,980 yuan per month, with an 8-hour workday (including two hours for lunch and breaks); weekday overtime pay was 1.5 times the hourly rate, weekend pay was double, and holiday pay triple.

“Boss, if you do this, some workers might prefer to work until they drop dead rather than clock out.”

Zuo Hongyu cautiously reminded him.

“Just set daily, weekly, and monthly overtime limits—good policies still depend on execution.”

Chen Yan said simply, then hung up.

For a smartphone priced at 2,000 yuan, labor costs accounted for only 6–10 yuan; even if wages doubled, it wouldn’t affect Orange Tech’s profitability.

But an annual human resource expenditure of tens of millions could generate thousands of threads of humanistic goodwill—and once Orange Phone sales stabilized, tens of thousands of such threads per year wouldn’t be difficult.

(End of chapter)