Chapter 259: Reject the Plague God! Zhou Hongyi: Oh No, This Is Aimed at Me

Yanjing, 798 Art Center.

Chen Yansen sized up the fat black man before him, his heart full of disdain. The two great will-o'-the-wisps of the business world were Zhang Jindong, and the other could only be Luo Yonghao.

What difference was there between an entrepreneur who couldn't make money and a loser?

This guy did blogs—bankrupt; sold phones—went under; invested in e-cigarettes—killed by policy; ran livestream commerce—over a dozen top streamers banned, over a thousand streamers lining up to pay back taxes.

Simply a plague god!

Chen Yansen took the initiative to step back, afraid bad luck would cling to him.

He wouldn't shallowly assume Luo Yonghao had no eye for opportunity—an entrepreneur who could spot the winds of change in blogs, phones, and e-cigarettes clearly had a keen sense for industry trends.

But apart from a little success in livestream commerce, everything else had failed without exception.

It was obvious—Luo Yonghao was simply incompetent, simply lacking in ability.

"What do you want?"

Chen Yansen asked coolly.

"Mr. Chen, I'd like to establish a partnership with your company and purchase the patent license for the memory-cleaning algorithm."

Luo Yonghao paused slightly, catching the hint of impatience on Chen Yansen's face, and hurriedly made his request.

In 2012, for Android phones to solve the problems of cache fragmentation and laggy, stuttering performance, the best solution was to run the auroraos operating system, or to obtain the patent license for Sister Chengzi Tech's memory-cleaning algorithm.

Luo Yonghao hadn't failed to consider developing it himself, but he'd asked around in the industry—even Huawei and ZTE were using Sister Chengzi Tech's technology patents.

He knew perfectly well that with only his own R&D team, there was no way they could crack this "black technology."

"You can contact Sister Chengzi Tech's intellectual property department. As for patent licensing cooperation, I generally don't get involved."

Chen Yansen declined directly.

As for whether the IP department would agree to cooperate—wasn't that still his call to make?

"Understood, Mr. Chen." Luo Yonghao forced a smile, his face full of awkwardness.

When someone rejected you "outright," pressing further would make him seem tactless, so he could only silently step aside and clear the way.

At that moment, Li Wanqiang received the message and jogged over, grasping Chen Yansen's right hand and saying warmly: "Mr. Chen, apologies for keeping you waiting, please come inside."

In just one short year, Chen Yansen's standing in the industry had skyrocketed.

Facing Chen Yansen, Li Wanqiang unconsciously lowered his posture, leading him to the front row of the conference hall to sit down.

"Mr. Chen, congratulations on Sister Chengzi Phone's cumulative global sales exceeding 20 million units."

Yu Chendong sat on the left, greeting him with a smile.

The look he gave Chen Yansen held no malice toward rival companies.

That was because Yu Chendong had long wanted to expand online sales channels, but internal resistance was too great—especially senior management in the terminal sales department, who felt e-channels were unworkable, could never scale up, and would even damage Huawei's existing sales network.

Put plainly, his strategy of building an e-commerce platform and entering third-party channels had cut into too many people's cake.

But ever since Sister Chengzi Phone had burst onto the scene with an online-primary, offline-secondary sales strategy, it had sold 20 million units in less than a year.

A hard slap across those people's faces!

With Yu Chendong's pressure suddenly reduced, and with the big boss backing him behind the scenes, he was finally able to launch Huawei Shangcheng in March, opening up an online sales channel for the company.

In his view, without Sister Chengzi Tech's tremendous success using internet direct-sales channels, the Huawei Shangcheng project would have been very hard to land.

Therefore, he felt both gratitude and admiration toward Chen Yansen.

"Thank you, and congratulations on Huawei's domestic phone shipments surpassing Nokia for the first time." Chen Yansen replied with a smile.

"Striving for first place—that's what makes it interesting." Yu Chendong grinned, saying it with considerable swagger.

"I think so too." Chen Yansen narrowed his eyes and smiled faintly.

Gao Tong's Hua country-region president Wang Xiang, seated to his right, couldn't help but smirk at this.

Huawei's Q1 smartphone shipments were only 4 million units; adding feature phones, they barely cracked 5 million—still a big gap behind first-place Mountain Star.

Sister Chengzi Tech, on the other hand, had shipped 9 million units in Q1, trailing Mountain Star's sales figures by less than 1 million—truly capable of competing with Mountain Star.

Of course, this was limited to the domestic market. Expand the scope globally, and Samsung remained the undisputed industry hegemon; Nokia, Apple, and HTC included, none were its match.

Wang Xiang knew full well that in the short term, Huawei overtaking Samsung in shipments was simply impossible, but the other party was after all a major Qualcomm client, so he still smiled and flattered: "I believe in President Yu's ability."

Yu Chendong was taken aback—each family knew its own affairs; he had only been blowing hot air.

As Wang Xiang joined the conversation, the three of them moved from Xiaomi new products to changes in the international market, and over ten minutes slipped away in an instant.

Suddenly, the venue's lights went out instantly, plunging everything into darkness.

The big screen lit up, displaying a cool countdown reminder!

Immediately after, the screen played a video of Xiaomi users using Xiaomi phones to control remote-control cars, remote-control planes, take photos of the moon through a telescope, and play online games with friends.

Three minutes later, the video ended, the lights came back on, and the big screen showed only Xiaomi's orange logo, along with that classic brand slogan: "Born for the enthusiasts."

Seeing this, quite a few media reporters smiled knowingly.

Over the past half-year or more, Xiaomi phones had been roasted by users plenty for overheating issues.

Lei Yi wore a black polo shirt on top, paired with gray jeans, waving as he strode onto the stage.

The bewilderment in his eyes flashed and vanished!

His mood at this moment was far more complicated than at the Mi 1 launch—Sister Chengzi Phone blocking the road ahead, 360 Phone chasing from behind.

If Mi 2 and Mi 1s sales fell short of expectations, the project could very well slide into decline.

The cheers of Mi fans in the audience brought Lei Yi back to his senses quickly, and he thought: Xiaomi has its supporters.

"Thank you, everyone!"

Lei Yi's Voice is heavy, and after saying that he froze, instinctively licking his lips—clearly too nervous.

"Thank you all for taking the time to attend our Mi's new products launch event—especially the 1,000 Mi fans here today, Xiaomi's supply chain partners, and media friends from across the country…"

Lei Yi took a deep breath and continued speaking.

"Today I'll introduce two new products to you: the second-generation Xiaomi smartphone, and an upgraded version of the first-generation Xiaomi phone.

"Xiaomi Mi 2, using the Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8064 quad-core processor, with a 4.3-inch high-PPI touchscreen. First, let me show everyone a full-body shot, then we'll run a benchmark live on-site!"

Lei Yi said slowly.

A benchmark?

Yu Chendong's mouth quirked up, and he shot a glance at Chen Yansen, as if to say: "Chen Zong, this guy copied your launch event routine."

Running AnTuTu benchmarks at a launch event and using the score to prove one's own product's performance — the original creator was Wang Teng of Sister Chengzi Tech.

Now that Lei Yi is copying the move, it shows he has great confidence in the Xiaomi processor's performance, memory specs, and operating system.

A high-definition CG render of the Xiaomi Mi 2 appeared on the big screen, showcasing the phone's exterior design, bezel width, and thickness from multiple angles.

Notably, this time Xiaomi scrapped the three Android navigation buttons and, following Sister Chengzi Tech's lead, switched to full-screen gesture controls.

The upside is that the phone is smaller and lighter, with a more comfortable grip.

The downside is that if the hardware and system aren't well adapted, it's easy to end up with laggy phones and unresponsive performance.

Copied Sister Chengzi's design again!

Quite a few people grumbled to themselves.

But for users, as long as it's good and cheap, that's enough — they can't be bothered to care who copied whose homework.

Then, the real-time AnTuTu benchmark score scrolled across the big screen, finally stopping at 13,742 points.

This is neck and neck with the Sister Chengzi C2's 13,891 points.

Chen Yansen gave a cold laugh. In terms of processor performance, the Xiaomi Mi 2 does edge out the Sister Chengzi C2 slightly — one is a new product, the other an old one.

If it weren't for AuroraOS having an advantage over MIUI, it's not certain the Sister Chengzi C2's benchmark would even be lower than the Xiaomi Mi 2's.

But he didn't pay it much mind. Whether a phone becomes a best-seller depends not only on hardware but also crucially on software.

"2GB of RAM + 16GB of storage, a 2-megapixel front camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera, equipped with an electronic compass, gravity sensor, gyroscope…"

Lei Yi added.

For every core module, he'd walk through the design, production, and application stages — so detailed it made you want to doze off.

But the effect was also obvious: 2012 users really ate this up. Perhaps because they'd watched Sister Chengzi Tech's launch event, Lei Yi carried a faint hint of Wang Teng's style and shadow as he spoke.

To highlight the Xiaomi Mi 2's incredible value-for-money, Lei Yi pressed the remote and switched the big screen.

A table listed the comparison specs of the Xiaomi Mi 2, HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S3, and Apple 4S — including CPU, memory, battery, screen, camera, and pricing.

With nearly identical specs, the others were all priced above 4,500 yuan, while Xiaomi's price was a question mark.

"How much does the Xiaomi Mi 2 cost?"

Lei Yi paused deliberately when he got to this point.

"1,999 yuan. Awesome, right? In reality, the Xiaomi Mi 2's production cost is 2,350 yuan."

After Lei Yi's loud announcement, he listened to the cheers of the Xiaomi fans below and the corner of his mouth curved up slightly.

Chen Yansen burst out laughing, turned to glance at the wildly excited fan section, and thought to himself: "These people actually believe it?"

As the contract manufacturer and a supplier of some components, no one knew the Xiaomi Mi 2's bill of materials cost better than he did — at most around 1,600-something yuan.

Moreover, by the time the Xiaomi Mi 2 shipped in large volumes, at least half a year would have passed, and the BOM cost would keep dropping.

After all, the prices of electronic components drop significantly over time.

Just like the Sister Chengzi C2's BOM cost was 1,800 yuan, but after just three months, it dropped to 1,640 yuan.

On one hand, it's because Senlian Capital invested in battery and screen companies, and with large purchase volumes, they could get lower supply prices; on the other hand, intensified competition among suppliers and overcapacity drove prices down.

A phone launched at 1,999 yuan can be sold for 1,399 yuan a year later without losing money. What you think is a clearance sale is just the maker riding the wave of outdated specs to drop the price.

As for losing money?

What businessman would run a money-losing operation?

The cheers lasted five or six minutes, and only after Lei Yi's strenuous efforts to calm the crowd did things barely settle down.

"The next product is an optimized design our Xiaomi R&D team made for the Xiaomi 1. We've named it the Xiaomi 1S — Xiaomi 1 Super."

"Qualcomm S3 MSM8260 dual-core processor, 4-inch touchscreen, 1GB of RAM + 4GB of storage, 2-megapixel front camera, 8-megapixel rear camera."

"Because the Xiaomi 1S uses a 1.7GHz main-frequency version, its performance is improved by 20% over the Xiaomi 1; we've added a graphite heat-dissipation film to effectively reduce the heat generated by high-performance phones…"

Lei Yi introduced them one by one.

The name alone makes it clear: the Xiaomi 1S is just the original Xiaomi 1, only with the heat issue improved and the Sharp IPS screen downgraded to a 4-inch BOE TFT screen.

The price also dropped from 1,999 yuan to 1,299 yuan!

Lei Yi's thinking was simple: he wanted to use the Xiaomi 1S to take on the 360 Phone. With identical specs, he refused to believe users would keep buying the 360 Phone.

"Looks like it's time to cut the Sister Chengzi C1's price."

Chen Yansen muttered to himself.

After Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, and Ku Sect all had new phone launch plans, which would inevitably impact Sister Chengzi C1's sales.

But he didn't mind either. Sister Chengzi Tech's current Mainly promoted products are the Sister Chengzi D1 and Sister Chengzi C2. Besides, the Sister Chengzi C1's upgraded version, the Sister Chengzi F2, is very popular in the East African market. When sell-through gets too low, he can just dump the leftover stock into Africa — it won't affect Chen Zong's profits one bit.

The two-hour launch event finally ended.

After seeing Pacific's photo report, Zhou Hongyi immediately realized: Oh no, this is aimed at me!

(End of chapter)