Wang Yanhong was born in the 1950s on Taiwan Island, and her father was the famous "God of Management."
She herself was not to be underestimated, once called the most successful second-generation rich.
This was mainly because she single-handedly founded VIA and HTC, which are the famous VIA and HTC.
One was a once renowned chip design company, the other a once dominant mobile phone company.
These past few days, Wang Yanhong has been very uncomfortable, with many employees not daring to breathe.
Yesterday, a manager from the design department was severely reprimanded and nearly fired.
As for the reason, everyone knew it.
It was all because of Orange Phone.
Wang Yanhong's husband currently manages VIA's business, and she was aware of VIA's previous sale of CDMA patents to Orange Phone.
When she heard that Orange was going to make phones, she just smiled.
In Wang Yanhong's view, current domestic phone manufacturers were all assembly and OEM, with no technology whatsoever.
The only decent one, Meizu M8, was just mediocre.
In contrast, she didn't think Orange's first phone could be that good.
She initially didn't pay much attention on the day of the product launch, busy with the lawsuit against Apple.
Later, her secretary rushed into the office to make her watch the live broadcast.
When she saw Orange Phone's original beauty camera, she had a bad feeling.
Hearing Chen Pingjiang constantly dissing her own brand, she became even more furious.
Even through Wang Yanhong's rather critical eyes, Orange S1 was a good phone.
When the price was announced, her heart skipped a beat.
Orange S1 was sold too cheaply.
After the launch, Wang Yanhong did not choose to lower prices immediately but decided to wait and see for a few days.
If Orange S1 didn't sell well and she voluntarily lowered prices, it would be equivalent to giving up her own profits.
Unexpectedly, she couldn't sit still on the third day.
Just three days.
Two million units pre-sold.
This was a number Wang Yanhong couldn't even dream of.
One must know that HTC, which had been making phones for so many years, relying on a sea of devices strategy, had only accumulated a total shipment of 30 million units over all these years, and that was globally.
But Orange S1, with only the mainland market, secured two million orders in just three days, leaving Wang Yanhong long lost in thought.
It also greatly shocked HTC, which originally did not think highly of the domestic market.
Today's meeting was specifically to discuss the pricing strategy for HTC HD2 in mainland China.
Wang Yanhong was decisive and known as the "Iron Lady" by the outside world:
"According to the current feedback, Orange S1 has been on pre-sale for three days, with total pre-orders reaching two million units. My friends at the three major carriers also revealed that they are negotiating contract phone deals with Orange.
Due to Orange S1's low-price strategy, our sales have seen a cliff-like decline in these three days. Now the question before us is, should we follow suit and lower prices?"
A vice president below thought for a moment and said:
"We have always paid less attention to the mainland market, focusing more on North America and Europe, but the success of Orange S1 this time proves the market's potential. I think we should lower prices, otherwise, it will be troublesome once the market is fully occupied."
Immediately expressed disagreement:
"I heard Orange S1 is only sold domestically, while our HTC is a multinational company with a global strategy. If we lower prices in the domestic market, should North America and Europe follow? Lowering prices means losses, not lowering them will give others an excuse."
"I also support Old Li's opinion. We currently don't have our own sales channels in the mainland, only gray market imports. How can we lower prices?"
Ultimately, Wang Yanhong made the decision: no price reduction.
Chen Pingjiang would probably laugh out loud if he heard this news.
History gave her another chance to choose, yet she still couldn't see the situation clearly.
HTC was indeed very strong overseas back then, claiming to be able to rival Samsung and Apple.
But later, it was constantly obstructed by patent issues, with continuous lawsuits, until it lost a patent infringement case to Apple and was banned from selling in the US.
HTC officially announced its entry into the mainland market only in July of 2010.
But unfortunately, subsequent phones failed to leave much impression on consumers, drifting further and further from Samsung and Apple, with inaccurate positioning and failure to gain traction.
It couldn't compete with Apple in the high-end market, nor with thousand-yuan smartphones in the low-end, and lacked distinctive features.
Without patents, weak R&D, and poor software capabilities, by the time domestic brands like Huawei, Xiaomi, and VIVO rose, HTC was almost at a dead end.
The reason HTC could initially succeed was simply because it started early; Wang Yanhong completely lacked strategic vision.
In contrast, Samsung was much more pragmatic.
On the third day of Orange S1's launch, Samsung announced price reductions across its entire Galaxy S series.
The 8G version for 3599 yuan.
The 16G version for 3999 yuan.
Unlike HTC, Samsung had tasted success in the domestic market.
But this time, it was also put through the wringer.
The Galaxy S had just been released a few days ago, not even officially on sale, yet it was forced to lower prices.
Li Jae-yong's heart was broken.
But if they didn't lower prices, they truly wouldn't have any chance at all.
They hated that price butcher to death.
Wouldn't it be better for everyone to happily reap profits together?
Why be so cutthroat?
Couldn't everyone make money together?
This kind of argument is remarkably similar to the so-called "overcapacity" of later generations.
Even some colonialists shouted on platforms,
"Why do we compete? What good does it do us to beat others to death?"
To this, Chen Pingjiang only wanted to say one thing:
"Fuck you."
When we made toys, clothes, and furniture, you didn't talk about overcapacity.
Now that I'm making new energy, chips, and photovoltaics, it's overcapacity?
Do you think the whole world has to be like your companies, deliberately limiting production just to maintain high profits, just to exploit ordinary people worldwide?
Making it so people can't afford to use them?
With so many people demanding products globally, where does overcapacity come from? Ultimately, it's just touching your interests.
...
After WeChat launched, Chen Pingjiang's only request to Li Xi was one word: fast.
No need to think twice; Tencent and other manufacturers would surely accelerate R&D to compete with WeChat in the instant messaging field.
The group attached extraordinary importance to WeChat.
Chen Pingjiang publicly stated that this might be the first boarding pass for the mobile internet.
Renren was not short on money.
The first thing Li Xi did was to have Renren, Weibo, Zhihu, and many other affiliated products drive traffic to WeChat.
Especially Renren, which already had a social software built-in.
Next, almost all offline advertisements in first and second-tier cities nationwide were contracted by WeChat.
Any normal person going out would surely see WeChat ads.
While Renren's past promotions required strategy, WeChat's promotion was about brute force creating miracles.
By inviting celebrities, media personalities, and internet celebrities to become WeChat's first users, and encouraging them to invite their friends, this word-of-mouth strategy quickly made WeChat popular among users.
And as long as one person in a circle of friends used WeChat, they could send invitation messages to all friends in their phone contacts by connecting to the phone's address book.
"I've been using it for about two hours, and I feel WeChat is so much simpler and more convenient than QQ. Plus, voice chat saves me a lot of money, and sending messages also saves on SMS fees."
"I feel the same way. The only minor drawback is that the app just came out, so not many friends have downloaded it, and many of them don't even have smartphones."
"It will gradually get better over time; switching to smartphones is the general trend."
"Hehehe, this 'people nearby' feature is especially useful, brothers, try it out. I just chatted with a girlfriend on it yesterday, and today I'm planning to meet her offline and treat her to malatang."
"Brother, are you planning to treat the girl to 13 yuan malatang?"
Currently, there are no strong competitors in the market.
Fetion still can't interoperate, QQ can only dominate on PC, and Miliao and Weiliao are still under development.
The only factors limiting WeChat's installation speed are smartphone penetration and mobile network data fees.
Text messages use the least data; 1MB can send about 500,000 Chinese characters.
Voice messages are next; 1MB of data can send 1000 seconds of voice messages.
Image messages, after adjustment, are automatically compressed when receiving and sending, which saves a lot of data.
Video consumes the most data, using 1MB per minute.
WeChat needs to run in the background.
Miao Bingwei also put effort into this area, almost achieving the ability to send thousands of voice messages with 30MB of data.
Chen Pingjiang couldn't do anything about smartphone penetration; he had done everything he could, even actively driving down the prices of high-end phones.
In fact, Tencent's user base didn't truly explode until 2012.
"After the first wave of promotion, we can pause. All that's left is to wait for smartphones to become widespread."
(End of chapter)