Chapter 184: 157.5 Billion, Fourth in the Country, A Narrow Win Over Apple! (Begging for)

Hucheng, the Rockefeller Mansion.

As a representative of the Three Tongs and One Da, Chen Dejun called Chen Yansen for the first time, only to be met with the opening line:

"Who is this?"

Chen Yansen hadn't saved Chen Dejun's number in his contacts. Though he guessed the caller was one of the Tongda-system courier bosses, he wasn't a fortune-teller—he couldn't tell exactly who.

"Shentong Courier, Chen Dejun."

Chen Dejun's face stiffened, the momentum he had built up instantly deflating.

He turned his gaze to Lai Haisong, Yu Weijiao, and Nie Tengyu, as if asking: Did I not just introduce myself?

"Oh, so it's Chen Zong. Pleased to meet you! Yun Su wants to grab market share, Shentong wants to hold it. Price wars have always been the most effective way to seize market share. You're the veteran—I can respect you, but you can't block my path. Understand?"

Chen Yansen sat back in his seat, leaned back, and replied casually.

The market was only so big—everyone wanted a bite. Yun Su had entered late, so naturally it had to play hardball to crush the competition.

Force the Three Tongs and One Da out of the market, and only then could Yun Su raise its market share.

In the future, Yun Su would definitely raise its prices back up—but only after it had carved out half the courier industry first.

"Young man, don't be so hot-headed. If we fight a price war, only the customers benefit. Why can't we sit down, negotiate terms, and make money together?"

Chen Dejun let out a long breath, forcibly suppressing his anger, and offered earnest counsel.

"How do we negotiate? I want half the market of the Three Tongs and One Da. Can you make that call?"

Chen Yansen asked with a smile, blunt as could be.

"No room for discussion at all?" Chen Dejun asked again.

"Sell me Shentong as a package for 1.5 billion, and nobody has to fight a price war anymore. What do you think, Chen Zong?"

Chen Yansen was actually sincere this time.

Competing against the Tongda system meant Yun Su wouldn't turn a profit for at least the next three years. Better to spend the money and buy Shentong outright.

It would save capital and time, and swallow up Shentong's 80,000-plus delivery workers in one gulp. By then, the monthly humanitarian merit flame alone would amount to at least fifty or sixty thousand wisps.

"You little punk! Bring it on then—let's see who dies first!"

Chen Dejun's eyes went red. He could hold back no longer and roared at the top of his lungs.

Shentong's assets and valuation premium were at least around 3 billion.

Even though he had no intention of selling, Chen Yansen's contemptuous tone instantly broke through his defenses.

Chen Dejun's sudden shout startled Yuantong Courier's Yu Weijiao, who was standing nearby.

Shentong was the big brother of the Tonglu Tongda system—its strength was above his own. And in 2011, Yunda and Zhongtong were only slightly bigger than Quanfeng.

*Smack! *

Chen Dejun slammed his phone hard onto the table. The screen shattered instantly—a testament to his fury.

"Looks like this fierce dragon from Hui'an Province never took us Tonglu people seriously at all." Nie Tengyu of Yunda Courier said with a cold snort.

"That idiot Chen Feilei—back then he should've found someone to run Chen Yansen down and kill him! Instead he got himself locked up, and didn't even take out a single Liao Wei." Yu Weijiao cursed.

Since Chen Yansen refused to negotiate, everyone could only fight Yun Su for real.

These past two years, the Three Tongs and One Da had secured financing one after another. They'd barely had two good days before Yun Su popped up—leaving them no way to survive.

"Enough said! Let's see who can outlast the other." Chen Dejun sighed, his face ashen.

Lai Haisong of Zhongtong Courier and Nie Tengyu of Yunda Courier exchanged a glance, and immediately couldn't sit still.

In a price war, the first to drop out would definitely be the two of them.

But there was no use being anxious. With Chen Yansen and Liao Wei, negotiation wouldn't work, and fighting wasn't an option either.

The moment Liao Wei's incident happened, Zheng Shengyu of the Postal Association had called to warn all four of them: any more underhanded moves, and whoever stuck their neck out would be crushed.

After all, Zheng Shengyu held the courier business operating permit in his hands. Taking out a courier company was nothing more than a casual move for him.

Meanwhile.

Liao Wei, freshly discharged from the hospital, had also received Zheng Shengyu's warning. But he couldn't swallow this grievance. Chen Feilei was behind bars, but Sufeng Courier wasn't dead yet.

He was determined to destroy Sufeng!

Why should he take a punch and not be allowed to hit back?

How the hell was that fair?

Before making his move, Liao Wei specifically called Chen Yansen for instructions. A moment later, Chen Yansen gave an ambiguous reply: "You're the CEO of Yun Su Courier. Handle it as you see fit."

The very next day.

Sufeng Courier's three stations in Hucheng, Jin Ling, and Yiwu were torn down overnight.

Torn down in the physical sense!

Scanners, billboards, sorting equipment, and transport vehicles were all smashed to pieces and dumped at the station entrance.

Tires and rims were stacked neatly—no actual property damage was done. It was pure harassment.

The delivery workers who took part in the operation were taken to the inspection station the next day, then bailed out.

Liao Wei gave each of them a 10,000-yuan "non-compete payout" bonus, and issued a company-wide commendation.

Arrogance taken to the extreme!

He had nearly lost his life. If he didn't crush Sufeng, anyone would dare to trample on Yun Su in the future.

Intermediaries, headhunters, and Yun Su's HR department all mobilized at once, offering generous packages and aggressively poaching Sufeng Courier's station managers and delivery workers.

During this period, thanks to Yun Su's targeting and suppression, Sufeng Courier's business had bled away in large volumes.

Seeing this, the delivery workers below didn't hesitate at all. They stripped off their Sufeng uniforms and cheerfully switched into Yun Su Courier's work gear.

A base salary of 3,000 yuan a month, plus a housing subsidy equal to 20% of monthly wages—whether you actually rented a place or not, everyone got it.

Add to that the five social insurances and one housing fund, overtime pay, and bad-weather subsidies, and these people switched jobs with zero psychological burden—even bringing Sufeng's customers over to Yun Su along the way.

"Fuck! I should've rammed that bastard Liao Wei and killed him when I had the chance!"

At the headquarters of Sufeng Express in Tang Cheng, Chen Feikang was so furious he burst into curses; he had never imagined that, after taking the seat of the big boss, life would not be easy at all.

In the span of a single day, four franchise outlets had been completely poached clean by Yunsu, leaving behind only the franchise station owners with dumbfounded faces.

Worse still, there were franchise outlets whose contracts had expired that were directly absorbed into Yunsu's ranks.

At this rate, Sufeng wouldn't last a few months before having to shut down and go bankrupt.

The franchisees below said that if headquarters couldn't solve the problem, they would sue Sufeng Express, demand contract termination, and a refund of the franchise fees, giving Chen Feikang no end of headaches.

"No, I have to think of something." Chen Feikang suddenly stood up, pacing back and forth in his luxuriously decorated office, yet still unable to make up his mind.

Meanwhile.

Chen Yansen drove to the tech park, first entering Building 8 and arriving at the multimedia conference hall on the second floor.

When he pushed the door and walked in, the heads of every department were already seated at their places, each with a laptop, waiting for him to arrive.

"Boss!" A dozen or so greetings rang out.

Chen Yansen walked to the seat at the very front and sat down, glancing at Yan Peng and saying lightly, "Let's start with the e-commerce department."

This was Sister Chengzi Tech's first quarterly summary meeting; first hearing the sales results would also give the other departments a boost.

"Alright, boss. Q4 sales of the Chengzi phone were 7.18 million units, a 76.4% increase over Q3. The growth mainly came from the production capacity boost, which shifted pre-orders to in-stock sales, raising users' purchase enthusiasm. In addition, four new external sales channels were added—Taobao, Pinbei, Jingdong, and Suning. The cumulative sales of the Chengzi C1 now stand at 11.25 million units."

Yan Peng nodded, set up the screen projection, opened the PPT, and began speaking slowly.

"Total hardware sales revenue was 21.84 billion yuan, with a gross profit of 1.26 billion yuan, a gross margin of 5.8%. Software profit points include app store commissions, ad placements, game joint operations, and app pre-installation factory fees, bringing in 315 million yuan in profit."

"The four most successful Q4 marketing campaigns by the e-commerce department were, respectively, Taobao's Double Eleven promotion, the Chengzi Mall fan festival, Pinbei's Ten-Thousand-Person Group, and Jingdong's Double Twelve promotion, contributing a cumulative 860,000 units in sales."

"Additionally, in Q4 we refined member benefits, launching services such as member-exclusive discounts, priority purchase rights, and double points; we also organized three training sessions for the customer service team, greatly improving response speed and service quality."

"However, the e-commerce department also has some shortcomings. First, the targeting precision of some marketing campaigns was insufficient, leading to wasted marketing resources…"

Yan Peng truly lived up to being a senior operator who came from Mama Ali's supplier side—he had a very systematic way of reporting work, with tight logic and clear structure.

He started from sales performance, moved to marketing campaigns, then to channel expansion, user operations and service upgrades, even market dynamics and competitive analysis, and only at the end touched lightly on a few areas that hadn't been done well.

Since the Chengzi phone launched, total gross profit has only been 1.575 billion yuan; if management costs, taxes, and technology licensing fees are deducted, it probably wouldn't even reach 1 billion.

No wonder phone makers like Ku Sect, Meizu, and OPPO, in an era of falling hardware costs, still refuse to lower their prices—relying on hardware profit alone, selling phones is worse than running an e-commerce business.

Still, the 11.25 million Chengzi phones sold will, over the next three years, contribute at least around 2 billion yuan in additional profit on the software side, bit by bit.

This is also the main reason Lei Yijun has set his sights on the phone market!

Each phone's pre-installed apps, app store, and the like are like little printing presses, creating a steady stream of revenue for the company.

"Next, the branding department."

Chen Yansen called out directly.

"With 11.25 million units sold, the Chengzi phone has firmly established itself in the domestic mid-range market. According to iResearch data, total domestic smartphone shipments in 2011 were 84.6 million units, and Chengzi ranked fourth, 1 million units ahead of Apple."

Ye Qiuping reported unhurriedly.

Although it was only the domestic market, the weight of a fourth-place finish was still considerable, lifting everyone's spirits.

The top three were, respectively, Sanxing, Nokia, and Huawei; after Apple came ZTE, Lenovo, Ku Sect, OPPO, and Jin Li.

Xiaomi, naturally, didn't even make the top ten.

It has to be said that before the 2016 explosion incident, Sanxing phones—whether in Asia or the global market—were a force to be reckoned with.

Nokia was still holding strong this year, but as global smartphone makers mostly chose the Android system—

Nokia, which stuck to Symbian, Meego, and Windows Phone systems, would within two years go from industry titan to a minor player, and ultimately be acquired by Microsoft.

Once you fall behind the times, defeat takes only two or three years.

2011 was the last moment of Nokia's fading glory; the N9 also became the last influential work it produced.

"In Q4, the branding department's work focused on product marketing and promotion, user interaction, and community building. Through new product launches, hot-topic marketing, official communities, customer service hotlines, and built-in product feedback channels, we coordinated with the design department to optimize product features."

"Additionally, given the spread of 4G networks overseas and the popularity of smart AI voice assistants, I suggest that in 2012 the company needs to devote more energy to AI."

Ye Qiuping spoke at length; from her tone it wasn't hard to tell she was bullish on AI technology.

In fact, Sister Chengzi Tech had already begun investing in AI—for example, the camera imaging optimization on the Chengzi F1 and Chengzi F2 used AI image processing algorithms.

Chen Yansen nodded slightly; before computing power improved, he did not plan to invest too much money or manpower in the AI field.

Sometimes, the timing of entering the market is extremely important.

Take Ele. me and Meituan, for example—the former spent over six years and burned through more than a billion yuan to nurture the market to scale, and before it could even enjoy the fruits, Wang Xin came in and stole its home.

In Chen Yansen's view, at the earliest it would take until 2015, after cloud computing lowered AI training costs, before it would be the best time to bet on AI chips and large language models.

After Ye Qiuping finished, Wang Teng took over the report, introducing the R&D department and marketing department's Q4 outputs, as well as the rough plans for 2012.

Next was Wang Xueting from the HR department: Sister Chengzi Tech currently had 673 employees in total, and in the first quarter of 2012 they would initially complete the hiring plan, by which time the total project headcount would reach around 1,000.

Zhang Cong and Zhou Ze, as heads of the design department, gave a detailed introduction of the design plans for the Chengzi D1 and Chengzi C2, as well as recent hardware and software test results.

"On the day of the new product launch, first release a batch of engineering units and see the user feedback. Ye Qiuping, Wang Teng, Yan Peng—the three of you need to coordinate well."

Chen Yansen instructed in a serious tone.

He wasn't worried about sales of the Chengzi D1; the main concern was the Chengzi C2, positioned as a flagship model with a price no lower than 3,000 yuan—whether it could break into the high-end market was still an unknown.

"Understood, boss." The three replied hurriedly.

"I'll finish approving all the Q4 performance reviews this afternoon. I hope each team will keep up the effort in the new quarter. Let me reiterate: Sister Chengzi Tech's quarterly bonuses have no cap on the ratio. Personally, I hope everyone can get the maximum 3-month bonus."

Chen Yansen said with a smile.

Sister Chengzi Tech's quarterly bonus follows the Fox Taobao mechanism, with a maximum of 3 months and a minimum of 1 month.

Hearing him say this, Gao Weilin, who was tucked away in a corner, lit up, thinking: I helped the boss close the DST and Penguin financing deals, and took down Yunsu and Kuaipao—I should be able to get the 3-month bonus, right?

Gao Weilin's base salary was 80,000 yuan, so 3 months would be 240,000 yuan.

Thinking of this, Old Gao's grin grew wider and wider, and the expressions of the others were not far off.

At this moment, far away in Yanjing, Lei Yijun stared at the business report and let out a long sigh.

By Xiaomi's standards, it actually wasn't bad—after all, with just one product, it sold nearly 1.5 million units, which could be called a yearly hot-selling phone.

But compared to Sister Chengzi's phone, Lei Yi's army couldn't help but feel deflated—its sales were only a fraction of hers, truly embarrassing.

(End of chapter)