Chapter 342: Lost #1? Zhou Hongyi: Chen Yansen Is My Longtime Best Friend!

On November 29, Mao Chaorong pulled a group of key staff from Today Tech and departed from Pudong International Airport for the Los Angeles branch.

He never imagined that after returning home to start a business, half a year had passed and he had circled back to the Land of the Free.

Meanwhile, with support from Senlian Capital, Qu Fang founded a company in Shanghai named Xingyin Tech.

Xiaohongshu, modeled after Instagram, officially entered its development phase.

Ma Wenteng reacted indifferently upon hearing this, since behind the scenes, WeChat was wildly copying the product features and business logic of Orange Pay.

Little Ma knew he owed them, and given their strong cooperative relationship, he didn’t believe losing Mao Chaorong and Qu Fang would harm Tencent in any way.

Moreover, Liu Zhiping had recommended talent to Chen Yansen with his prior approval.

Talent?

The country has no shortage of talent!

Every year, seven to eight million university graduates emerge; even if you pick one in ten thousand, you can easily find seven or eight hundred.

In the past two days, what pleased Little Ma most was the verdict in the lawsuit between Tencent and 360: Zhou Hongyi had to pay him five million.

To some extent, Tencent ultimately won the 3Q war.

On the other side.

At 360’s Beijing headquarters, Zhou Hongyi was furious but powerless; the top bosses had intervened and forcibly ended the 3Q war.

“Damn Ma Wenteng!” Zhou Hongyi cursed loudly.

Fortunately, the booming sales of 360 phones gave him the greatest comfort: over the past half year, they had sold a cumulative 7.1 million units, far outperforming Xiaomi’s market performance.

“I’ve always said making phones requires no technical skill—some grain brand opens its product launch for two or three hours, but users don’t buy it, and sales slap them in the face! This proves our domestic phone buyers are smart and discerning!”

Having been humiliated by Little Ma, Zhou Hongyi turned his anger toward Lei Yijun.

Though he didn’t name names, everyone knew he was insulting Xiaomi.

Some trouble-seeking netizens, fearing Lei Yijun wouldn’t respond fast enough, screenshotted Zhou Hongyi’s Weibo and posted them in the comment sections of Lei Yijun, Li Wanqiang, and Lin Bing.

Lei Yijun was about to fire back when Li Wanqiang stopped him: “Boss, let me handle it!”

“Lord Zhou, if you say making phones requires no technical skill, then dare you develop your own operating system? A phone brand without its own OS and supply chain is no different from a custom device!”

Three minutes later, Li Wanqiang launched a fiery rebuttal without mercy.

“If I were Chen Zong of Senlian Capital, I’d immediately terminate cooperation with 360 phones—see how bold you’d still be claiming phones don’t need technology,” Lin Bing followed up, attacking Zhou Hongyi.

“As everyone knows, I’ve been a longtime close friend of Chen Zong of Orange Tech. Orange Tech holds core patents in mobile OS, battery management, camera algorithms, and fast-charging technology. How dare this assembly brand like Xiaomi try to piggyback on us? Let me ask you—where did Xiaomi’s voice interaction engine come from?”

Zhou Hongyi quickly clarified, proudly boasting of his close personal ties with Chen Yansen and casually revealing the origins of Xiao Ai Tongxue.

Three days earlier, Lei Yijun had announced on Weibo that he would launch a free intelligent voice interaction software on December 10, with features and product name still tentative—immediately drawing massive traffic.

Seeing this, Lei Yijun grew furious and finally stepped in: “I deeply respect Chen Yansen and Orange Tech, and I firmly believe that one day, Orange Tech will become China’s Starlight. Do what you’re good at, push it to the extreme, honor your competitors, and walk alongside them!”

Lei Yijun’s reply was ambiguous, offering only praise for Orange Tech.

In his statement, he never addressed Zhou Hongyi’s accusations.

“Lei Zong, I’m a Mi Fan—tell me secretly, where did Xiaomi’s voice interaction engine come from?”

“No need to ask! Even your toes can figure it out—it’s almost certainly Orange Tech that provided the tech solution.”

“Zhou Zong, when will 360 phones integrate an intelligent voice assistant? With your close ties to Chen Zong, can’t you even get a tech license?”

“Can anyone explain whether Xiaomi’s intelligent voice assistant is truly self-developed?”

Suddenly, netizens began debating in the comment sections of both Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun.

Seeing this, Lei Yijun realized that unless he clarified immediately, the negative online discourse would damage the launch of Xiao Ai Tongxue.

Thus, with assistance from the tech and PR departments, Lei Yijun carefully posted a blog post, which could be summarized as: voice recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis technologies were provided by Orange Tech; semantic core technologies were developed in-house by Xiaomi.

In other words, he effectively admitted that Zhou Hongyi’s claims were true.

Moreover, Lei Yijun revealed the product name for the first time—searches for “Xiao Ai Tongxue” quickly surged to the trending list.

“Lei Yijun actually built an intelligent voice assistant?” Yu Chendong of Huawei couldn’t believe it.

In his view, even if Orange Tech provided development tools, Xiaomi’s technical foundation couldn’t possibly complete development in just a few months—unless…

Orange Tech’s speech analysis development kit was far more powerful than he’d imagined.

“Regardless of whether the intelligent voice assistant helps Huawei’s sales, I can’t ignore this trend.”

Yu Chendong frowned and made a swift decision: tomorrow he’d go to Xu City and secure the patent license at all costs.

The heads of OPPO, Meizu, Lenovo, and other brands remained unmoved.

In their eyes, integrating an intelligent voice assistant was “unrelated to core business”—users cared most about performance, cost-effectiveness, screen size, camera clarity, and gaming smoothness.

To run an intelligent voice assistant smoothly, additional memory would be required.

But mobile RAM modules weren’t cheap; depending on brand, procurement scale, and supply-demand, a 1GB RAM module cost between 60 and 150 Huayuan.

Raising product prices just for a superfluous intelligent voice assistant was plainly a losing proposition.

…

…

In Xu City, Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park.

During a break from developing instruction sets, Chen Yansen quickly read through the feud between Xiaomi and 360, muttering to himself: Their phone sales haven’t slowed—why are they stirring up hype again?

Since Orange Phone Factory handled all OEM orders for both Xiaomi and 360 phones, Chen Yansen could roughly estimate their total and monthly sales.

Chen Yansen didn’t dwell on it; after a short rest, he returned to work.

Meanwhile.

Microsoft announced that MSN would be retired within months, with its services merged into Skype, marking the end of the MSN era.

Sina Weibo partnered with A Li, initiating talks on investment and equity to open new revenue streams.

That afternoon, employees from Lashou’s Shanghai branch clashed violently with Meituan’s field sales staff, leaving several hospitalized.

Actually, the initial verbal conflict had started between Lashou’s staff and a few KuaiPao business development reps, but before Lashou could react, they were surrounded by YunSu couriers, KuaiPao food delivery staff, and Kuaide Taxi market personnel.

Terrified, Lashou’s team apologized repeatedly and barely escaped a beating.

Shortly after, they encountered Meituan’s team at the next intersection.

Lashou’s group-buy commission was 5%; Meituan’s sales reps pulled merchants aside, insisting: “We only take 4%—1% lower than Lashou.”

They were openly stealing from their plates!

Remember, field sales reps’ income depended directly on merchants’ group-buy output.

So Lashou’s team, relying on their numbers, chased Meituan’s reps down several streets, beating them.

KuaiPao’s people watched the whole thing with amusement!

Although the November 2012 group-buy industry report hadn’t been released yet, many insiders believed that with traffic support from Pinbei and Gaode Map, KuaiPao’s group-buy business was growing rapidly and had likely already become the industry’s top in monthly transaction volume.

The former “number one” group-buy site, under pressure from KuaiPao and Lashou, and having lost Shan Jiawei, Meituan’s market share had nearly stalled.

The current “number one” group-buy site, despite never stopping subsidies, saw its market share steadily decline due to the lack of ecosystem synergy with navigation and ride-hailing products.

Zhang Tao knew clearly that Dazhong Dianping’s position as market leader was in jeopardy.

Before Senlian Capital and Baidu entered, he and Wang Xin could still hold their own—but against capital giants, neither Meituan nor Dazhong Dianping had enough funding or technology to compete.

Moreover, customer acquisition costs for Meituan and Dazhong Dianping remained high; the longer they fought KuaiPao and Lashou, the greater their losses.

Only now did Zhang Tao begin to seriously consider Shen Nanpeng’s proposal from Sequoia Capital: perhaps merging with Meituan was the only way to survive.

After the merger, who would lead?

Thinking of this, Zhang Tao hesitated again.

He knew Wang Xin—his counterpart would never submit to anyone.

Meituan and Dazhong Dianping had similar valuations; once merged, conflicts were inevitable.

But if they didn’t merge, they’d be picked off one by one by KuaiPao and Lashou, ending up just like WoWoTuan.

After careful consideration, Zhang Tao called Shen Nanpeng and made his position clear.

“No problem—I’ll talk to Wang Xin,” Shen Nanpeng agreed readily.

He didn’t want Sequoia’s early investment to go down the drain!

(End of chapter)