Chapter 202: 2 Million Units! Apple: You Want Me to Learn From It?

The next morning, the top trending topic on Weibo: Sister Chengzi's phone sold a whopping 1.36 million units!

The second was Qiandu HR Liu Dong, who went viral over a set of photos and was dubbed "Du Niang" by netizens.

The third was the 12306 ticketing system crashing. Eager-to-get-home workers and college students all took to the comments section to vent passionately, cordially greeting the 12306 engineers' ancestors going back eighteen generations.

Chen Yansen sat at his desk, glanced out the window—the sky was overcast, snowflakes drifting down sparsely.

He opened Liao Wei's work report: yesterday, 64,000 units of the Chengzi C2 phone and 193,000 units of the Chengzi D1 phone completed delivery before 10 PM.

In addition, Yunsu had also reached a forward-warehouse cooperation plan with Pinsheng and Yubo.

Before the Spring Festival, these two companies would pre-stock their best-selling power banks, phone cases, tempered glass films, phone stands, and other accessory products into Yunsu Express's central warehouses and terminal outlets.

Once a user placed an order on Pinbei, the courier could deliver the goods to the user within 12 hours.

Of course, this was only an initial attempt—combining food delivery with forward warehousing was Chen Yansen's ideal business model.

But Kuaipao had just started and was in a phase of rapid expansion, with no spare capacity to handle on-demand delivery.

"Knock knock knock—!"

Just then, a knock came at the door.

"Come in!" Chen Yansen answered casually.

The door was pushed open from outside. He Shuang, the Administrative Director of Chengzi Tech, walked in holding a document.

"Boss, this is the annual gala's agenda and prize budget list—it needs your approval."

After sitting down, He Shuang pushed the document in front of Chen Yansen.

She used to be NetEase's Administrative Director, and had jumped ship to Chengzi Tech for the high salary and benefits.

Chen Yansen nodded slightly and casually flipped it open.

The venue remained the Sky Garden, divided into opening, performances, awards, lucky draw, and dinner segments.

He scanned the gift list: three Grand Prizes, 100,000 cash each; eighty-eight First Prizes, 30,000 cash each; one hundred eighty-eight Second Prizes, 10,000 cash each; three hundred eighty-eight Third Prizes, 6,666 cash each;

Sunshine Prize: one Chengzi C2 phone (64GB).

Simple and blunt—basically all cash.

"Shhh shhh shhh—"

Chen Yansen picked up a pen and began revising the amounts: the Grand Prize became 200,000, First Prize 50,000, Second Prize 30,000, Third Prize 10,000.

"Go with this version."

Chen Yansen handed the document to He Shuang and instructed casually.

Chengzi Tech and Pinbei only had quarterly bonuses four times a year, with no year-end bonus, so he bumped up the lucky draw amounts at the gala by quite a margin.

"Got it, boss." He Shuang took the document and turned to find the finance team.

As the companies under his name kept growing and the Spring Festival drew near, Cao Dahua, Pei Yi, Liao Wei, and others had all messaged him asking whether he would attend their galas.

Chen Yansen agreed to all of them!

Only authority and reputation cannot be lent to others.

Chen Yansen knew this principle well—even if it was tiring, he had to show up at the company galas, otherwise after too long, the people below might even forget who the boss was.

Thinking of this, he sent Song Yuncheng a message: "Come with me to Shanghai on a business trip tomorrow."

"Visiting partner platforms or merchants?" Song Yuncheng replied quickly.

"Attending Yunsu Express's annual gala." Chen Yansen said truthfully.

"Boss, I'm a Pinbei employee."

"Then I'll dock your pay."

"Chen the Exploiter!"

Song Yuncheng's pretty face drooped, she smiled helplessly, and finally agreed.

Meanwhile.

Huang Zhang stood in the conference room and coldly questioned the assembled Meizu executives: "I don't care what methods you use—if the MX monthly sales don't hit 500,000 units, all of you are fired!"

The Meizu MX had been on the market for half a month, with cumulative sales of 237,000 units—not bad on the surface, but compared to the Chengzi C2, it was crushed into dust.

How could Huang Zhang save face?

"Boss, the marketing department's analysis is that the online channel share of the smartphone industry keeps growing. Take Chengzi Tech, for example—no distributors, no offline stores, yet they sell over 100,000 units a day…"

Marketing Director Li Nan spoke up slowly.

"Get to the point! Stop rambling on and on without ever getting to the main topic!" Huang Zhang snapped irritably.

"Add online sales channels—open stores simultaneously on Taobao, JD, Pinbei, Suning, and Gome."

Li Nan flinched and quickly cut to the chase.

"Then do it—get it online ASAP!" Huang Zhang waved his hand, signaling the meeting was over.

Ever since Chengzi and Xiaomi joined the domestic phone scene, money had become harder and harder to make.

In the past, everyone at new product launches would hype up the functions of core components like chips, screens, and cameras, while being evasive about material costs and gross margins. But Chengzi's last phone launch opened his eyes.

That bastard Wang Teng stood on stage, right in front of users, media, and competitors, and brazenly laid out the R&D, materials, production, transportation, sales, and after-sales costs of the Chengzi phone.

He even shared what equipment and instruments needed to be purchased for a single SMT production line.

In Huang Zhang's view, there was plenty of water in those numbers, but in users' eyes, Wang Teng's sincerity was overflowing.

Buying a Chengzi phone, at least you knew where your money went.

Now with the Chengzi D1 and Chengzi C2 selling like hotcakes, sales at Meizu, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Ku Sect naturally slid.

After all, the market was only so big—every extra bite Chengzi Tech took was one less for them.

In no time, domestic second-tier phone manufacturers all kicked off online channel expansion plans.

Manufacturers like Huawei and ZTE, with strong capabilities and abundant channels, were still playing coy, believing they should keep online sales channels firmly in their own hands and not planning to join third-party platforms.

Meanwhile, at Apple's headquarters across the Pacific.

Tim was in a meeting with the executives; his idea was to remove the home button from the next generation of products.

Behind the success of Sister Chengzi's phone, he saw the overall trend toward gesture-based operation.

Riccio, as Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, firmly opposed Tim's proposal.

Are you kidding me?

As the leader of the phone industry, learn from a regional Asian phone brand?

Riccio was disdainful in his heart. On one hand, he felt Tim's unauthorized modification of Apple's core design was disrespectful to Jobs; on the other, he believed the home button was one of Apple's product signatures and could not be changed lightly.

Tim was refused face-to-face by Riccio. He sneered inwardly, while his mind raced, thinking how to push the other man out of Apple's core team.

The next morning, one o'clock.

Sister Chengzi Phone's official Weibo account announced publicly: the sales of the Chengzi D1 on its second day online were 480,000 units, and the Chengzi D2 sold 170,000 units.

Compared with the first-day launch, the drop was fairly noticeable.

Cumulative sales over the first two days surpassed 2.01 million units, with revenue reaching as high as 3.01 billion.

The reason the drop was so large was that Sister Chengzi phones across all channels had been switched to a presale model, so users' enthusiasm to buy naturally fell.

Shencheng Factory No. 3 had not yet been put into use, but just yesterday's sales already accounted for half the factory's monthly capacity.

Cao Dahua hadn't expected the Chengzi C2 and Chengzi D1 to sell so explosively either, but there was nothing he could do. He could only urge Zuo Hongyu and Zhang Jing every day to speed up equipment debugging and the recruitment and training of new employees as much as possible.

"Brother Zhu, are you going home for New Year?"

In a workers' dormitory at the Sister Chengzi phone factory, a coworker who couldn't fall asleep asked Li Yunzhu across from him.

"Not going! Judging by our factory's production schedule, the overtime shifts during New Year are bound to be packed full. Only a fool would go back."

The thought of triple wages made Li Yunzhu especially excited.

Seven days guaranteed at least 3,000 yuan. The factory provided food and housing anyway; he wasn't afraid of being alone, only of having no money.

"Actually I want to stay and work overtime too, it's just that I haven't seen my kid in a whole year. Last time I went home the little one had just learned to walk; my mom said last time he can already run. I have to go back for a visit anyway…"

The coworker rambled on.

Li Yunzhu drifted off into a daze and fell asleep. In his dream he saw Cao Dahua standing on the speaking platform in the center of the factory, waving his big hand and saying that starting tomorrow, the hourly wage would rise to 25 yuan.

The thought of the 3,000 yuan overtime pay suddenly turning into nearly 4,000 yuan made Li Yunzhu so happy he giggled in his sleep.

……

……

The next morning.

Chen Yansen picked a young man from the company's security detail who could drive and keep his mouth shut, and took Song Yuncheng heading toward Hucheng.

At half past three in the afternoon, the car stopped in front of the Yunjin Villa District gate.

Chen Yansen and Song Yuncheng got out of the car and walked straight into the compound.

Xiao Li, who was in charge of driving, turned the car around and went to a nearby hotel to check in and rest.

Chen Yansen had lived here for over three years in his previous life, so naturally he knew the place like the back of his hand. He arrived in front of door number 116 and opened the copper-sheathed pinewood gate.

A courtyard lush with greenery came into view.

In the garden of over two hundred square meters, there was not only an octagonal pavilion, a pool, a yew pine, sofas, and lounge chairs, but even a barbecue area and a dining area.

"Huh? Last time I came, the yard was still empty." Song Yuncheng looked curious.

"I hired a design firm and had it renovated a bit. Let's go inside and take a look."

Chen Yansen pointed at the living room and suggested with a smile.

Song Yuncheng stepped inside. The living room had a ceiling height of a full seven or eight meters, and the area was absurdly large—playing badminton inside would be more than enough room.

"Ah!"

Suddenly!

Song Yuncheng cried out in surprise, her whole body collapsed onto the sofa, flailing about wildly.

After finally scrambling up, she asked indignantly: "What kind of sofa is this? You simply can't sit on it."

"This sofa set is 260,000 yuan. It's filled with water inside, and once you press the switch, the water flows around inside, so sitting on it feels like being in the ocean."

Chen Yansen grinned mischievously, found the remote, and pressed the start button.

The soft sofa rose and fell like ocean waves.

"260,000 yuan?" Song Yuncheng opened and closed her mouth, not knowing what to say. She now earned over a hundred thousand a month, with nearly two million in savings in her card.

But she still felt that spending 260,000 yuan on this thing was simply insane.

"You'll know soon enough that this 260,000 is absolutely worth every penny."

Chen Yansen took Song Yuncheng's little hand and said with a light laugh.

"Stop it, we still have to attend the annual gala tonight." Song Yuncheng's cheeks flushed slightly.

"No effect, we have plenty of time."

After Chen Yansen finished speaking, he and Song Yuncheng sat down at the edge of the sofa.

The gurgling water inside the sofa slowly pushed forward, so even without Chen Yansen exerting any force, they could rise and fall along with it.

Two hours later, the two unhurriedly sat up, then walked together into the bathroom. After a quick wash, they changed into a set of new clothes and headed out the door.

Meanwhile, Xiao Li received Chen Yansen's message and immediately drove to the entrance of the villa district.

(End of chapter)