I can become stronger by paying salaries. I have one billion employees!

Chapter 347 Losing First Place? Zhou Hongyi: Chen Yansen is my best friend of many years!

On November 29, Mao Chaorong selected a group of key personnel from Today Technology and departed from Pudong International Airport for the Los Angeles branch.

He never expected that, after intending to return to China to start a business, half a year would pass in the blink of an eye, and he would end up back in the United States.

In addition, with the support of Senlian Capital, Qu Fang established a company called Xingyin Technology in Shanghai.

Xiaohongshu, modeled after Instagram, has officially entered the research and development stage.

Ma Wenteng's reaction was indifferent upon learning this, after all, WeChat was secretly copying Orange Pay's product functions and business logic.

Knowing he had done something wrong, and given the good working relationship between the two parties, he didn't think losing Mao Chaorong and Qu Fang would have any negative impact on Tencent.

Moreover, Liu Zhiping's recommendation of talent to Chen Yansen was already with Chen Yansen's tacit approval.

Talent?

What China has in abundance is talent!
There are seven or eight million college graduates every year. Even if you only select one out of ten thousand, you can easily find seven or eight hundred people.

What made Pony Ma happiest in the past two days was the outcome of the lawsuit between Tencent and 360, with Zhou Hongyi having to pay him 500 million yuan.

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

the other side.

At 360's headquarters in Beijing, Zhou Hongyi was furious but helpless. The bigwigs above had spoken, forcibly putting an end to the 3Q War.

360 has no choice but to pay this amount!

"That son of a bitch Ma Wenteng!" Zhou Hongyi cursed angrily.

Fortunately, the success of 360 phones provided him with the greatest comfort. In the six months that followed, a total of 710 million units were sold, far exceeding the market performance of Xiaomi phones.

"I've said it before, making mobile phones doesn't require much technology. A certain Xiaomi brand holds two or three-hour press conferences every time, but users don't buy it, and sales figures are a slap in the face! This shows that our domestic mobile phone buyers are smart and discerning!"

Zhou Hongyi, having been humiliated by Xiao Ma, turned around and took it out on Lei Yijun.

Although he didn't name names, everyone knows he was criticizing Xiaomi.
Some troublemakers, fearing that Lei Yijun's response would be delayed, took screenshots of Zhou Hongyi's Weibo post and sent them to the comment sections of Lei Yijun, Li Wanqiang, and Lin Bing.

Lei Yijun was about to retort when Li Wanqiang stopped him immediately: "Boss, I'll handle it!"

"Master Zhou, since you say that making mobile phones requires no technical expertise, do you dare to develop your own operating system? A mobile phone brand that doesn't even have its own operating system and supply chain, what's the difference between that and a special edition phone?"

Three minutes later, Li Wanqiang passionately opened his mouth and launched into a tirade of insults.

"If I were Mr. Chen from Senlian Capital, I would immediately terminate the cooperation with 360 Mobile, and see if you still dare to shamelessly say that making mobile phones doesn't require technology." Lin Bing followed up, launching an attack on Zhou Hongyi.

"As everyone knows, Mr. Chen of Orange Technology and I have been close friends for many years. Orange Technology has core patents in mobile operating systems, battery management systems, camera algorithms, and fast charging technology. How dare Xiaomi, an assembly brand, try to compete with us? Let me ask you, where does Xiaomi's voice interaction engine technology come from?"

Zhou Hongyi quickly clarified, boasting smugly that he had a close personal relationship with Chen Yansen, and also revealed the details of Xiao Ai (Xiaomi's AI assistant).

Three days ago, Lei Yijun announced on Weibo that he would launch a free intelligent voice interaction software on December 10. The functions and product name are tentative, which immediately attracted a lot of attention.

Seeing this, Lei Yijun became furious and finally couldn't hold back any longer: "I have great respect for Chen Yansen and Orange Technology, and I firmly believe that one day Orange Technology will become the Shanxing of China! Do what you are good at, do it to the extreme, pay tribute to our competitors, and walk alongside them!"

Lei Yijun's reply was ambiguous, only praising Orange Technology.

His words made no response to Zhou Hongyi's questions.

"Mr. Lei, I'm a Mi Fan. Tell me secretly, where does Xiaomi's voice interaction engine technology come from?"

"Is that even a question? Anyone with a toe can figure it out. It's highly likely that Orange Technology provided the technical solution."

"Mr. Zhou, when will 360 phones be equipped with a smart voice assistant? You have such a good relationship with Mr. Chen, surely you can get the technology license?"

"Can someone explain whether Xiaomi's smart voice assistant is actually developed in-house?"

Immediately, netizens began discussing Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun in their comment sections.

Seeing this, Lei Yijun knew that if he didn't clarify the situation, the negative comments online would impact the launch of Xiao Ai.

Therefore, with the assistance of the technology department and the public relations department, Lei Yijun carefully crafted a blog post, which can be summarized as follows: the speech recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis technologies were provided by Orange Technology, while the semantic core technology was independently developed by Xiaomi.

In other words, it's tantamount to admitting that what Zhou Hongyi said was true.

Furthermore, Lei Yijun revealed the product name for the first time, and the search term "Xiao Ai Tongxue" quickly rose to the top of the trending search list.

"Lei Yijun actually created an intelligent voice assistant?" Huawei's Yu Chendong asked incredulously.

In his view, even if Orange Technology provided the development tools, given Xiaomi's technological foundation, it would be impossible to complete the development work in just a few months. Unless…

Orange Technology's speech analysis development kit is more powerful than he imagined.

"Regardless of whether intelligent voice assistants positively contribute to Huawei's sales, I should not ignore this opportunity."

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

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

In their eyes, equipping a phone with a smart voice assistant is a "neglect of their duties." What users value most right now is performance and cost-effectiveness, as well as whether the screen is big enough, whether the photos are clear enough, and whether the games run smoothly enough.

To ensure the perfect operation of the smart voice assistant, additional memory is required.

The material cost of mobile phone RAM is not low. Depending on the brand, the scale of procurement, and the supply and demand relationship, the price of a 1GB RAM module ranges from 60 to 150 yuan.

Raising the price of a product just for a smart voice assistant that is essentially useless is a completely counterproductive move.

……

……

Xucheng, Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park.

During a break from developing the instruction set, Chen Yansen quickly read through the war of words between Xiaomi and 360 and muttered to himself: Their phone sales haven't slowed down, so why are they starting to hype things up again?
Because Orange Mobile's factory handles all the OEM orders for Xiaomi and 360 Mobile, Chen Yansen can roughly guess their total sales and monthly sales.

Chen Yansen didn't think much of it and continued working after a short rest.

at the same time.

Microsoft announced that MSN will be 'retired' within months, and its business will be merged into Skype, marking the end of the MSN era.

Sina Weibo has partnered with Ali the Fox, initiating investment and equity negotiations in hopes of opening up new profit growth points in commercialization.

That afternoon, a violent conflict broke out between employees of Lashou.com's Shanghai branch and Meituan's ground sales staff, resulting in several people being hospitalized.

In fact, the people who initially had a verbal altercation with the Lashou employees were several business development staff from Kuaipao. However, before the Lashou staff could even make a move, they were surrounded by Yunsu Express couriers, Kuaipao deliverymen, and Kuaidi Dache marketing staff.

The person who was holding hands was so frightened that they didn't dare to breathe and apologized repeatedly to avoid a beating.

Then, they encountered Meituan staff at the next intersection.

Lashou's commission rate for group buying is 5%, while Meituan's business representatives, pulling merchants along, repeatedly said, "We only charge 4%, which is 1% lower than Lashou's."

They were blatantly taking food from their bowls!
It's important to understand that the revenue from on-the-ground sales is closely related to the group-buying output of merchants.

Therefore, the group of people who joined hands, relying on their superior numbers, chased Meituan's business team for several blocks.

The people running the chopsticks were just watching the show the whole time!

Although the November 2012 group-buying industry report has not yet been released, many industry insiders believe that with the traffic support from Pinduoduo and Gaode Maps, Kuaipao's group-buying business is growing extremely fast, and its monthly transaction volume has most likely already jumped to the top of the industry.

Meituan, the former leader in group-buying websites, has seen its market share stagnate due to pressure from KuaiPao and Lashou, as well as the loss of Shan Jiawei.

The current leader in group-buying websites, despite its continuous subsidy campaigns, has seen its market share decline due to the lack of complementary ecosystems with navigation and ride-hailing products.

Zhang Tao knew very well that Dianping's position as the market leader was likely in jeopardy.

Before Senlian Capital and Qiandu.com entered the scene, he and Wang Xin could go toe-to-toe, but in the face of capital giants, Meituan and Dianping were simply no match for them in terms of funding and technology.

In addition, Meituan and Dianping's customer acquisition costs remain high, and the longer they compete with KuaiPao and Lashou, the greater their losses will be.

It was only at this point that Zhang Tao took Sequoia Capital's Shen Nanpeng's suggestion seriously for the first time, believing that a merger with Meituan might be the only way for everyone to persevere.

After the merger, who will be in charge, him or Wang Xin?
The thought of this problem made Zhang Tao hesitate again.

He knew Wang Xin; the other party would never submit to anyone!
Meituan and Dianping are valued at roughly the same level, so a merger would inevitably lead to numerous conflicts between the two companies.

However, if they do not merge, they are easily defeated one by one by KuaiPao and Lashou.com, and will end up in the same fate as WoWoTuan.

After careful consideration, Zhang Tao called Shen Nanpeng and immediately expressed his stance.

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

He didn't want Sequoia Capital's initial investment to go down the drain!

(End of this chapter)