Chapter 489: Takeoff (Part 2)

Although the performance and optimization of the 【UIMI Mobile Operating System】 drew high praise from the people at Panda Security, it was clearly impossible for Panda to abandon Panda Weiyun just by being offered a deep-optimized, localized version of Google's Android operating system.

At the beginning, Wang Zilong and his team held firm on shares of 【Cybertron Technology】, eventually even raising the chips to 3 billion USD, but Sun Cheng was simply not interested in this.

In the end, Panda made concessions; another important reason they agreed to let 【Cybertron Technology】 take over Panda Weiyun was the acquisition price put forward by 【Cybertron Technology】.

172 million USD, which is approximately equivalent to 1 billion in national currency—at this price, 【Cybertron Technology】 acquired all of Panda Weiyun's personal-facing business and agreed to accept all of Weiyun's staff working in the Shenzhen and Hong Kong region.

This sum of money could definitely not be considered low.

After all, aside from the number of registered users, Panda Weiyun had nothing to show for itself to date, and it had been beaten by One Hundred Cloud Drive, a subsidiary of a search engine giant, to a market share of less than 10%.

In a sense, Panda Weiyun was an unmitigated failure and was constantly depreciating; Panda likely only kept it to maintain the integrity of their product chain, otherwise they probably would have abandoned this product, which required monthly subsidies to maintain, long ago.

In Sun Cheng's view, spending one billion to acquire Panda Weiyun was an absolute steal.

Although the only profitable part of Weiyun—its enterprise business—had been stripped away, he had not acquired Weiyun to make money in the first place, but rather for the hundreds of millions of registered users that Weiyun relied on via the Panda OO social software.

Of these hundreds of millions of registered users in the past, more than 90% had likely abandoned the product in the end because Panda Weiyun was too poor and the user experience was terrible.

However, 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】 was undoubtedly far superior to Panda Weiyun, and for a cloud drive company, the bulk of operating expenses were bandwidth costs and server requirements, especially for large servers with greater data storage capacity.

And 【Cybertron Technology】 itself was a company that mastered new storage technologies; in other words, their operating costs were naturally much lower than other cloud drive companies.

One billion was not a small sum, and although Sun Cheng could afford to pay it himself, he clearly had better options.

【Cybertron Technology】 did not actually need to shell out such a huge sum; after negotiating with Panda Communications, the other party agreed that they could provide server RAM storage equipment equivalent to 1 billion in national currency at a price 15% lower than the market procurement price, provided that the quality was no lower than brand-name products and that they provided a three-year warranty service.

Regarding this first contact with 【Cybertron Technology】, Panda ultimately showed considerable sincerity; after the acquired Panda Weiyun was renamed 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】, its affiliated social software Panda OO continued to leave an access port for it in the software and allowed Panda OO users to visit directly.

Although at the beginning, they had tried to use this as a bargaining chip, holding firm on wanting to exchange it for a portion of 【Cybertron Technology】's shares—after all, many companies that Panda had invested in had not been able to enjoy this treatment.

But 【Cybertron Technology】's attitude toward this access port was also very clear: take it or leave it.

After more than half a month of crazy promotion and word-of-mouth accumulation, their cloud drive, despite having only been online for a short time, had already set a new record for downloads nationwide.

On both PC and mobile, following a wave of crazy promotion that spread like a virus, 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】's PC downloads had already exceeded 50 million, and mobile downloads had reached nearly 10 million.

Although some users would certainly leave after trying it out for a period of time, the domestic market share for cloud drives had already reached 3.2% and 1.72% respectively.

What truly made the outside world begin to realize the infinite potential contained within 【Cybertron Technology】 was the user growth rate of 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】 and its number of members, especially the latter.

During the negotiations, 【Cybertron Technology】 was full of confidence; the total number of paid users for their 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】 had already exceeded the two million mark, among whom nearly 90% chose to pay to become permanent members, and over 500,000 users had purchased other expansion services at the same time they bought permanent cloud drive memberships.

Sun Cheng and his team were not clear on the number of Panda Weiyun members, but as the leader of the domestic cloud drive industry, One Hundred Cloud Drive was watched by countless domestic media outlets and had also announced specific data to the outside world during its financing last year.

The number of annual paid users for One Hundred Cloud Drive was around 14 million; while it seemed to be several times the scale of 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】, in reality, this included a significant portion of enterprise users, and because the data was released during financing, it was somewhat inflated.

By comparison, the time from 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】's first upload to the internet for small-scale testing to the start of large-scale promotion and launch was not even a month.

In such a short time, it had rapidly developed a foothold in the country; even compared to the growth speed of some hit mobile apps from the last two years, it was not a bit inferior.

The confidence brought by this speed of expansion ultimately allowed Wang Lu, who was in charge of the negotiations, to have the last laugh in the confrontation with the giant Panda Communications, successfully securing the best conditions for 【Cybertron Technology】.

The cooperation reached between Panda Communications Group and 【Cybertron Technology】 was only kept secret for two or three days before it began to flood the screens of some domestic media, especially the technology sections of IT-related media platforms.

The leaker was a programmer who had recently joined Panda Weiyun; because they were not management and had not signed a non-disclosure agreement, they posted a complaint on their social feed: "Tragedy, I just joined Panda Weiyun less than five months ago and was told Weiyun was sold to 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】. The day before yesterday, the supervisor just notified us to coordinate with Nandu to ensure the transfer of servers and user data... Today, HR came to count how many people want to go to work in Nandu... The new headquarters after the acquisition will move to Nandu. It is said that 【Cybertron Cloud Drive】 is willing to take on all of Weiyun's staff. For those who do not want to go to Nandu due to family or personal reasons, those who have been employed for more than half a year can receive a severance package equivalent to six months' salary... I've only been here for less than five months, I can only get a severance package of three months' salary, lol, lol, lol..."

This complaint posted on the social feed was somehow discovered by the media, leading to a massive flooding of screens on domestic IT-related forums, media platforms, and technology sections.

"... Is it true that Weiyun was sold by Panda? Is it real..."

"It's real, a senior of mine works at Weiyun, I heard it was sold for one billion..."

"Pfft, that cloud drive with no presence can actually scam one billion?"

"... Didn't expect there would really be a fool willing to offer that price. I used Weiyun a few years ago, it was as trashy as it gets. I've always wondered if anyone uses it!"

Because neither side responded directly, for the next few days, most of the messages flooding the screens were false reports.

It was not until more and more media outlets kept visiting that Panda, which had originally wanted to wait until the servers and all user data were safely handed over before making an announcement, finally posted a large 'Letter to All Users' on the homepage of their official website on the last day of June, after obtaining the consent of 【Cybertron Technology】.