Chapter 342: Lost First Place? Zhou Hongyi: Chen Yansen Is My Close Friend of Many Years!

November 29: Mao Chaorong, having drawn a team of key personnel from Jinri Technology, departed from Pudong International Airport for the Los Angeles branch.

He never expected that, intending to return home to start a business, half a year had passed in the blink of an eye, and after all his twists and turns, he had returned to the Land of the Lighthouse.

Additionally, with the support of Senlian Capital, Qu Fang established a company named Xingyin Technology in Hucheng.

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

Upon learning this, Ma Wenteng reacted indifferently; after all, behind the scenes, WeChat was furiously copying the product functions and business logic of Sister Chengzi Pay.

Little Ma, aware of his own guilt and citing the good cooperative relationship between the two sides, did not believe that losing Mao Chaorong and Qu Fang would have any negative impact on Penguin.

Moreover, Liu Zhiping recommending talent to Chen Yansen had originally been tacitly approved by him.

Talent?

The domestic market lacks nothing more than talent!

With seven or eight million university graduates every year, even selecting one in ten thousand would easily yield seven or eight hundred people.

In the last two days, what pleased Little Ma most was that the lawsuit result between Penguin and 360 had come down: Zhou Hongyi would have to pay him five million.

In a sense, Penguin ultimately won the 3Q War.

On the other side.

At the 360 headquarters in Yanjing, Zhou Hongyi, though furious, was helpless; the big shots above had spoken, forcibly bringing the 3Q War to a close.

360 had no choice but to pay this sum!

"Damn Ma Wenteng!" Zhou Hongyi shouted in a rage, cursing loudly.

Fortunately, the best-selling 360 phones provided him with the greatest comfort: over the past six months, they had sold a cumulative 7.1 million units, far exceeding the market performance of Xiaomi phones.

"I said long ago that making phones has no technical content; a certain coarse-grain brand holds press conferences for two or three hours each time, yet users don't buy it, and sales slap their faces! This proves that domestic phone buyers are all wise and intelligent!"

Having taken his anger on Little Ma, Zhou Hongyi turned and vented it on Lei Yi.

Although he did not name names, who didn't know he was cursing Xiaomi?

Some trouble-seeking netizens, fearing Lei Yi would not respond in time, rushed to screenshot Zhou Hongyi's Weibo posts and post them in the comment sections of Lei Yi, Li Wanqiang, and Lin Bing.

Just as Lei Yi was about to fire back, Li Wanqiang immediately stopped him: "Boss, I'll do it!"

"Zhou Jiaozhu, since you claim making phones has no technical content, do you dare to develop your own operating system? A phone brand that lacks both its own operating system and supply chain—what difference is there from a special-ordered phone?"

Three minutes later, Li Wanqiang passionately took the mic and scolded him back without hesitation.

"If I were Mr. Chen of Senlian Capital, I would immediately terminate the cooperation with 360 phones; let's see if you still dare to arrogantly claim that making phones requires no technology." Lin Bing followed closely, opening fire on Zhou Hongyi.

"As everyone knows, I am a close friend of Mr. Chen of Sister Chengzi Technology. Sister Chengzi Technology possesses core patents in mobile operating systems, battery management systems, photography algorithms, and fast-charging technology. How dare an assembly brand like Xiaomi try to scam? Let me ask you: where does Xiaomi's voice interaction engine technology come from?"

Zhou Hongyi hurriedly clarified, boasting proudly about his close personal friendship with Chen Yansen, and incidentally revealed the background of Xiao Ai Tongxue.

Three days prior, Lei Yi had announced on Weibo that a free smart voice interaction software would be launched on December 10, with tentative functions and a tentative product name, instantly attracting a massive wave of traffic.

Seeing this, Lei Yi grew furious and finally could not hold back: "I hold great respect for Chen Yansen and Sister Chengzi Technology, and I always believe that one day in the future, Sister Chengzi Technology will become the Huaxing of Huaguo! Do what you are good at, take things to the extreme, pay tribute to competitors, and walk alongside competitors!"

Lei Yi's reply was ambiguous, containing only praise for Sister Chengzi Technology.

In his words, there was no response at all to Zhou Hongyi's doubts.

"Mr. Lei, I am a Mi Fan; tell me secretly, where exactly did Xiaomi's voice interaction engine technology come from?"

"Why even ask! You can figure it out with your toes; it is highly likely that Sister Chengzi Technology provided the technical solution."

"Mr. Zhou, when will 360 phones be equipped with a smart voice assistant? Since you have such a good relationship with Mr. Chen, can you not even obtain a technology license?"

"Who can explain whether Xiaomi's smart voice assistant is truly independently developed?"

For a moment, netizens began discussing in the comment sections of Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yi.

Seeing this, Lei Yi knew that if he did not clarify immediately, the negative online sentiment would impact the launch of Xiao Ai Tongxue.

Thus, with the assistance of the Technology Department and the Public Relations Department, Lei Yi carefully drafted and published a post, which could be simply summarized as: voice recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis technologies are provided by Sister Chengzi Technology, while the semantic core technology is independently developed by Xiaomi.

In other words, this amounted to admitting that what Zhou Hongyi said was true.

Furthermore, Lei Yi announced the product name for the first time; the search term "Xiao Ai Tongxue" quickly surged to the top of the trending list.

"Did Lei Yi really manage to build a smart voice assistant?" Yu Chendong of Huawei said with a noncommittal expression.

In his view, even if Sister Chengzi Technology provided development tools, given Xiaomi's technical foundation, it was impossible for them to complete the development work within a few months. Unless...

Sister Chengzi Technology's Yuxi Development Kit was far more powerful than he had imagined.

"Regardless of whether the smart voice assistant brings any positive help to Huawei's sales, I should not ignore this trend."

Yu Chendong frowned slightly and quickly made a decision: he would go to Xucheng tomorrow, no matter what, to secure the patent license.

The heads of brands such as OPPO, Meizu, and Lenovo were completely unmoved by this.

In their eyes, equipping phones with smart voice assistants was "neglecting one's duty"; what users currently valued most were performance and cost-effectiveness, as well as whether the screen was large enough, the photos clear enough, and gaming smooth enough.

To run a smart voice assistant perfectly, additional memory configuration would be required.

And the material cost of mobile phone operating memory was not low; depending on the brand, procurement scale, and supply-demand relationship, the price of a 1GB RAM module ranged from 60 to 150 Huayuan.

To raise the product price for a dispensable smart voice assistant was entirely an act of gaining nothing and losing much.

Xucheng, Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park.

In the gaps between working on the instruction set, Chen Yansen quickly read through the feud between Xiaomi and 360, muttering to himself: Their phone sales haven't declined; why are they stirring up trouble again?

Since the Sister Chengzi phone factory undertook all OEM orders for Xiaomi and 360 phones, Chen Yansen could roughly estimate their total and monthly sales volumes.

Chen Yansen did not think much of it; after a brief rest, he continued working.

Meanwhile.

Microsoft announced that MSN would "retire" within a few months, with its subsequent business merged into Skype, marking the end of the MSN era.

Sina Weibo, having partnered with Mama Ali, initiated negotiations for investment and shareholding, aiming to open up new profit growth points in commercialization and monetization.

That afternoon, employees of the Hucheng branch of Laoshou Wang clashed violently with Meitou's ground promotion staff, and many ended up in the hospital.

Actually, the first people to have verbal clashes with Lashou employees were several business BDs from Kuai Pao; before Lashou staff could even lay a hand on them, they were surrounded by Yunsu couriers, Kuai Pao food delivery riders, and Kuai De ride-hailing market staff.

Terrified, the Lashou people didn't dare breathe loudly and kept apologizing, thereby avoiding a beating.

Afterwards, they encountered Meituan staff at the next intersection.

Lashou's group-buying commission was 5%; Meituan's business staff grabbed merchants and repeatedly declared, "We only want 4%, 1% lower than Lashou."

Openly snatching food from their bowls!

One must know that the income of ground-pushing business staff is closely tied to merchants' group-buying output.

Therefore, relying on their numbers, the Lashou people chased Meituan business staff down several streets.

The Kuai Pao people watched the whole spectacle!

Although the November 2012 group-buying industry report had not yet been released, many practitioners believed that with traffic support from Pinba and Gao De Maps, Kuai Pao's group-buying business was growing extremely fast, and its monthly transaction volume had likely surged to first place in the industry.

The former "number one" in group-buying websites, under pressure from Kuai Pao and Lashou, and having lost Dan Jiawei, saw Meituan's market share almost stagnate.

The current "number one" in group-buying websites, although subsidy campaigns never stopped, saw its market share continue to decline due to a lack of ecosystem complementarity from navigation and ride-hailing products.

Zhang Tao knew clearly in his heart that Dianping's throne as the market leader was in danger of being lost.

Before Senlian Capital and Qiandu Network entered the field, he and Wang Xin could still fight evenly, but in front of capital giants, neither Meituan nor Dianping was sufficient in terms of funding and technology.

Furthermore, the customer acquisition costs for Meituan and Dianping remained high; the longer they fought Kuai Pao and Lashou, the greater the losses.

Only at this moment did Zhang Tao, for the first time, take seriously the proposal from Sequoia Capital's Shen Nanpeng; perhaps merging with Meituan was the only way for everyone to persist.

After the merger, who would be in charge between him and Wang Xin?

Thinking of this question, Zhang Tao became hesitant again.

He knew Wang Xin; the other party would absolutely not submit to being under someone else!

Meituan and Dianping had comparable valuations; once merged, both sides would inevitably face numerous conflicts.

But if they did not merge, they would easily be defeated one by one by Kuai Pao and Lashou Wang, ending up in the same fate as Wowo Tuan.

After weighing the options repeatedly, Zhang Tao dialed Shen Nanpeng's number and immediately stated his stance.

"No problem, I will communicate with Wang Xin," Shen Nanpeng readily agreed.

He did not want Sequoia Capital's initial investment to go to waste!

(End of this chapter)