Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 261 Passive Release, a Successful Event
To be honest, when a huge crowd of people holding guns and cannons suddenly appeared, Ethan was really frightened. That scene really gave people the feeling that their enemies came to teach them a lesson.

But when the reporters called out Philips' name, Ethan, who was sitting in the car, breathed a sigh of relief. As long as they were not here to kill him, there would be no problem. But before he could rest for two seconds, his nerves were instantly tense again, because the words "new product" and "threat" made him smell something unusual.

"Ignore them and just go."

Ethan gave an order, signaling the security guard and the driver to go through the checkpoint.

The bodyguard who received the order stepped on the accelerator in neutral. With a loud bang, the reporters who were not afraid of death but did not want to die instinctively fled. In this gap, the driver who seized the opportunity immediately re-shifted the gear, stepped on the accelerator, and rushed out of the encirclement with Ethan at an extremely fast speed.

Looking at the figure walking away, the reporters present felt a little regretful.

As for Ethan Jones who returned to the company...

As soon as he stepped into the company's door, he saw Steve Ballmer standing there.

At this moment, he was sweating profusely. Just when he wanted to speak urgently and report to Ethan, Ethan had already raised his hand to refuse, took a step forward, and went upstairs decisively.

"I know you're in a hurry, but don't worry yet."

"If you have anything to say, go to the office."

Under his leadership, the two entered the office. As the door closed, Ballmer, who was already anxious, shouted, "Boss! This is bad! Philips is holding a new product launch conference!"

The news Steve Ballmer brought was exactly the same as the questions asked by the media.

The incident happened yesterday, March 9, 1979, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The Philips Group demonstrated its latest technology, the CD, to the international media at its legendary incandescent lamp factory.

And the player that carries the optical disc - the compact disc audio player.

During the demonstration, Philips technicians used their players to show the journalists present an audio signal with excellent stereo quality. When Beethoven's Ninth Symphony appeared in front of people in a plug-and-play manner, the journalists present were immediately shocked.

Because the sound quality of CDs is several times better than that of tapes!
What’s more, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony lasts a total of seventy-four minutes!
At present, the laser disc players sold by American Music and Philips can only hold 60 minutes of content! It takes two discs to record a full movie of "Jaws"!
When Philips displayed products that significantly outperformed existing products at every level, everyone present understood that what they were witnessing was the future!
The CEO of Philips who was in charge of convening the press conference also stated on the spot that the optical disc and optical disc audio player technology they possessed would definitely open up a new era, and it would definitely eliminate all similar products on the market, including but not limited to the videotapes launched by Philips that have already gained a massive market, and the analog laser discs also launched by Philips in cooperation with American Music.

They also promised that the technology they are demonstrating now will be fully commercialized within three to five years.

Yes.

Philips told everyone at its global launch conference that they wanted to revolutionize themselves.

When this fact came out, the reporters at the scene were all shocked! Because this is not something a company can do. As a company, its core purpose is to grab huge profits. When the life cycle of tapes is still long, when analog laser discs have just been commercialized and officially put on the market, a company said that it would eliminate those products by itself?

For scientific researchers, this decisive iteration may be a high respect for scientific research.

But for investors, this special code is simply a crazy behavior!

Just when the reporters were confused about why Philips did this, as the interview session began, the reporters who asked what they were thinking received a surprising answer.

Philips' CEO smiled and explained to the camera, "Self-innovation is the core secret of Philips' growth and development. Only by daring to challenge ourselves and eliminate stable cash cows can we maintain strong competitiveness in the fast-developing world."

"Of course, we also admit that Philips's self-innovation this time is also related to the rapid development of electronic games. You should all know that we acquired an American company called MILOVA a few years ago. We acquired it for three reasons: one is to enter the TV business, one is to sell players through MILOVA, and the other is that we are optimistic about the electronic game industry."

"Because our goal at Philips is to create a home entertainment machine that can integrate a myriad of entertainment. Before, entertainment was music, movies and TV, and now there are games. Since games have joined the big family of entertainment, we have to welcome it and embrace it."

"We think we have already achieved the first three, because we have all the products, whether it's audio tapes, TV videos, or movie discs, but as for video games..."

"Our ideas are different from those of Destiny, the current dominant game in the gaming industry."

"Destiny is using existing technology to make games, but we believe that the development rules of home consoles and personal computers should be the same. When the carrying capacity of home entertainment consoles becomes larger, people will be able to turn some things from inspiration into reality."

"For example, Apple's external hard disk and Microsoft's spreadsheet are typical examples, so we firmly believe that large capacity will bring a new world."

"Since large capacity and high quality represent a new world, we at Philips will certainly embrace it in advance. But the reality is... we are very lucky. We made the product we wanted. The emergence of large-capacity optical disc technology will change the development of music, movies, television and games!"

“And our next step is to bring them to market!”

Before the Philips CEO finished speaking, there was an uproar at the scene.

Although on the surface it seemed that Philips had seen the commercial prospects of CDs and had taken the initiative to seek change, the words between the lines of the speech were filled with Ethan Jones' achievements.

Everyone can smell the sour smell in the air!
Or rather——

Philips almost said by name that Destiny Game has defeated them too many times, and since they cannot compete with it in content production, they decided to overtake it and use their technology to win!

When this fact came to light, related press releases were transmitted from Eindhoven to all parts of the world. Due to the time difference, the American media did not receive these contents until the evening of March 9th.

However, when the reporters with a keen sense of smell got the first-hand reports from their colleagues, they rushed to the outskirts of Ethan Jones's residence, trying to obtain first-hand resources through some simple means.

As for the fact that the place where Ethan lives has long been tightly guarded by his personal bodyguards?
If they just rushed forward, they would probably be mercilessly shot at?
Ah--

Everything in this world can be underestimated.

But you can’t underestimate the desire of those reporters to make a big news!
When Ethan finished reading the reports published in the newspaper, his brows immediately relaxed.

For the general public, Philips CDs may be a new thing.

But to him, it was all just old news.

His memories from his previous life told him that Philips had indeed developed the CD, and his contact with Steven Spielberg a few years ago made him even more aware that the CD was originally developed by Universal's parent company American Music and the patent was still in their hands, but it was reaped the benefits by Philips, which had just changed its business.

Not only that, in order to avoid paying patent fees, Philips also slowed down the development of CDs and launched the cassette first, which was a product that it wanted to dominate. This behavior really made the American music industry very angry.

This also caused Universal to stand on Ethan's side many times in various wars.

Because Ethan can help them get revenge.

This vengeance will not only cause Ethan to cause Philips to lose a large sum of money.

It will also allow the management of American Music to give an explanation to its shareholders.

When these facts were laid out before Ethan, the press conference that Philips had specially held to introduce the CD was not worth mentioning at all.

Especially when he had already invested heavily in the optical storage project and even saw some results, the audio player displayed by Philips could not pose a threat to him.

As long as Philips doesn't bring out a salable CD player at the press conference...

Then we are still on the same track!

"So - why did Philips release this stuff yesterday?"

"Is there something wrong with them?"

Although Ethan knew what was going on and was not panicking, he still wanted to find out the purpose of Philips' visit, because judging from the product display at their press conference, their optical disc technology was not mature.

When a technology has the potential to be commercialized but cannot be commercialized immediately, generally speaking, a company will not rush to release it, unless -

There was something wrong within the company.

Management must release all kinds of good news to maintain the current harmony.

Of course, this is not an industry standard, but just the personal intuitive judgment of a financial practitioner.

Philips never releases good news in this way.

Ethan's question also made Ballmer stunned and shook his head.

This morning, when he was reading the newspaper as usual, performing his secretary duties and collecting the latest information for his boss, the news about Philips caught his eye. Then he rushed to the company as soon as possible to report the matter to his boss who was working overtime today. During this process, he did not stop for a moment, so he naturally did not know anything about other related news.

But it doesn’t matter, the direction Ethan pointed to is what he is looking for.

Ballmer left after receiving the task. About an hour later, he came back with a magazine. It was Fortune, which had previously reported on the game of fate. In this year's opening column, they analyzed the operating conditions of Philips in the Netherlands for the whole year last year, and came to a surprising conclusion -

'As one of the world's top 500 companies and one of the pillars of the Dutch economy, Philips Group is likely to report a huge loss in the 1978 fiscal year. 'The reason is very simple, that is, their core businesses are all in trouble.

Although on the surface, their home appliance business is growing steadily, that is all new profits driven by old products. The core business of razors is selling well, and home lighting equipment is also maintaining a stable trend and rising. However, due to usage habits, the original radio business has been squeezed out by the new TV business. The market share of their radio products is gradually decreasing, and TV...

They did enter the television industry, but the results were not obvious.

Because Philips' investment in the TV industry is the acquisition of MILO.

According to Philips' idea, MILOVA, a well-known American brand, will definitely take their TV business to a higher level, but this is not the case. Under the impact of Sony Trinitron, MILOVA's TVs have no competitiveness at all. If the world's first home game console MILOVA Odyssey, which came with the acquisition, sells well, then this investment may be profitable for Philips, but now... the whole world knows that there is only one king in the field of electronic games.

Not only that, Milova, which holds the video game patent, cannot collect patent fees from the industry leader!
This is the most deadly!
More importantly, Philips has repeatedly claimed that the MIRO brand will allow their tape drive business to gain more global market share, but so far, the competition between this subsidiary and them has become more intense, and Philips has not gained enough brand advantages in this regard.

When these facts emerged, Philips' acquisition of Miracle was a failure.

According to Fortune magazine, the acquisition caused Philips to lose more than 300 million yuan. Dutch Philips even wanted to merge the three major companies in North America, namely Philips North America headquarters, MILO and Osram, which sells lighting equipment, so that they can close some factories and lay off some employees to save unnecessary expenses. This is also a common method used by listed companies to beautify their financial reports.

In addition, Philips' record business is not doing well at the moment. Even though they cooperated with Siemens to establish PolyGram Group, and successively reached cooperation with a bunch of music companies such as MGM Records, American Music, and 20th Century Fox Records, obtained their music copyrights, sold their own tape products, and once became the world's largest music company, but...

The company has always been loss-making.

Because of disorderly expansion, they paid far more in royalties than profits. At the same time, in order to establish their name in America, the world's largest market, they spent more on luxury advertising than all their peers. Currently, the entire company has a net loss of more than 100 million.

What is most troublesome is that under such circumstances, PolyGram also entered the film and television industry, following the trend of "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease" to shoot a disco movie called "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", and launched it on the market last year.

To be honest, if this movie was successful, PolyGram might have made a profit. Before it was released, this movie was hailed as the "Gone with the Wind" of the 1970s, because this movie encompassed half of the world's pop music scene and countless famous music figures had starred in it.

But after the release, they earned only 20.4 million at the box office with a cost of 13 million, which was a total flop. Not to mention making back their investment, they didn't even make back a fraction of the money they spent on publicity and promotion!
As a result, PolyGram's already unhealthy financial report became even worse.

If nothing unexpected happens……

Last year alone, they lost 200 million!
You have to know that this was 200 million US dollars in 1978!
If you put enough together, you can build an aircraft carrier!

When the news that Philips had a guaranteed loss of 500 million was ruthlessly revealed by Fortune, Ethan knew why Philips suddenly used its killer move at this point. Because if it did not release good news, the losses in the financial report would be magnified by the media, and once the media started to make trouble, Philips would explode.

This is actually the helplessness of listed companies.

The market is ruthless.

If the management dares to incur losses, investors will dare to dump the stock.

When these facts were laid out in front of Ethan, he was certain that Philips had held a press conference in a hurry and mentioned himself only as a self-protection measure by the management. They wanted to tell shareholders that Philips' next target was electronic games and that they already had a complete countermeasure.

When Ethan Jones could earn hundreds of millions of cash from games every year...

They, Philips, will definitely take a bite of this tempting and delicious cake!
This little thought made Ethan laugh. He closed the magazine and said, "Go make a public statement and say that we at Destiny Games welcome any company to enter the game market."

"We are not afraid of any challenge. At the same time, we also hope that those who leave the market in disgrace will suffer less loss."

“No need to polish! Just post it!”

"Oh yeah! List the annual losses that Warner has incurred since the fight with us!"

"They are all enemies anyway. It doesn't matter if you hit one or two!"

"Okay!" Steve Ballmer nodded excitedly and turned away.

The hurried movement made Ethan cross his legs.

He thought Philips was so awesome!

We have been fighting each other since 1975, and I won't let go even if you keep throwing money at me!

The results of it?
Can’t hold on any longer!
You want to save yourself!

What’s even funnier is that this way of self-rescue is to continue to ride on the popularity of their Game of Destiny?

Ah!
You guys can rub it! I can fight too!
You want to kill me?

You’re dreaming!
Just as Ethan was shaking his legs, estimating how long Philips would last and how long it would take for this old rival to leave the field, the sound of hurried footsteps suddenly came into his ears.

Looking up, the half-closed door was pushed open by Evelin.

"Ethan, did you see the news report today?"

the girl asked anxiously as she entered the room.

"Look, the matter has been resolved."

Ethan shrugged.

"What?"

This answer made Evelin's eyes widen and she made a sound of disbelief.

"You've already sorted it out? How is that possible?"

"Why is that impossible?" Ethan said with a smile, "Philips is just trying to cover up its poor financial report by showing off its new technology, and then it wants to take advantage of our popularity and paint a beautiful future for its shareholders in order to keep its position."

"When faced with such boring things, the way to deal with it is simple. Exposing our competitors' losses will make them extremely painful, so... I let Steve do it."

Ethan’s light words made Evelin open her mouth.

The next second, she slapped the newspaper in her hand in front of Ethan.

"Oh—Ethan—we're not talking about the same thing!"

"This is the IEEE's announcement today! Look what they say about Philips' CD!"

"It says here that they witnessed a miracle on the spot yesterday, because Philips' CD does not use continuous analog signals, but discrete digital storage!"

"Binary!!"

“0 and 1!!!”

"Do you understand???"

"Boom boom boom!"

Evelyn banged the table loudly.

Ethan, who had a relaxed look on his face, frowned instantly.

"WTF?"

"Binary?"

“Our research methods are the same?”

Ethan's eyes widened and he stood up.

When he turned his eyes to the newspaper his sister pointed to, the bold black headline made his eyes go dark.

'Oh Sxxt!'

'How could this happen?'

Note: ① Philips did release the CD on March 1979, 3, and it was not a perfect product at that time. There are many different reasons. Some say Philips concealed its financial report, and some say Philips was unable to develop it. The article is just one of them. ② Although Philips of the Netherlands suffered a huge loss of 9 billion in 1990, the collapse of the empire has never happened overnight. They were already on the decline in the late s. In reality, they did merge the North American companies Milova, Osram and Philips of North America in late and early , which was to create good-looking revenue in the way described in the article. As for why the North American company affected Philips of the Netherlands, it was because their annual reports had to be consolidated. ③ PolyGram expanded very quickly, but those markets were fake and made with money. In , they lost million. For a company, it is indeed important to seize market share, but more importantly, it must find a profit point in the end, otherwise it will definitely fail. ④ "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" has two things. One is the Beatles' music album, which was ranked first in the top classic albums of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. The other is a movie directed by Michael Schulz, which was released in and and was very bad. The translated title in China is "Ray of Light".

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(End of this chapter)