Those Years When I Was Forced to Top the Forbes List

Chapter 406 The Prelude to 3G

The phone hasn't hung up yet.

"By the way, Mr. Wang."

"Ok?"

"I have a website called Weibo, a social networking site, similar to a short blog. I want to develop an ultra-lightweight WAP page to be sent via MMS. Could you offer a one-time loading of the webpage via MMS with 'no data usage'?"

"What do you mean? No payment for the first load?"

"Yes, we will be making extensive use of MMS for sending pictures and URLs. China Mobile charges SPs 70 cents for each 30KB picture MMS message. As our customer base grows, we may send tens of millions of messages per month. This service will last for at least a year, involving hundreds of millions of yuan in cooperation. Will this save us the cost of users clicking on web pages?"

Weibo is scheduled to officially launch on April 20th.

No publicity or announcement has been made at this time.

Mr. Chen didn't think it was necessary to burn money; in fact, he thought it was necessary to burn money aggressively. After reviewing Qidian's financial situation and revenue expectations for the year, he decided to seize this social networking market with overwhelming force.

All preparations are underway in secret, with negotiations underway for television and offline advertising, celebrity endorsements, and other related matters.

The TV advertising was chosen from Hunan TV and CCTV Music Channel. It was a 15-second ad, with a discount for a quarterly package. Hunan TV aired the ad 4 times a day during the midday slot, with a list price of 2.5 yuan per ad. CCTV Music Channel aired the ad 6 times a day during the evening prime time slot, with a list price of 1.5 yuan per ad. The monthly cost was 570 million yuan, and the quarterly cost was 1710 million yuan.

In the second half of the year, Hunan TV's "Super Boy" will need to secure the title sponsorship for the entire show on Weibo and conduct related Weibo activities. There can only be one title sponsor, and Hunan TV is preparing to bid for it, aiming to reach 100 million yuan. However, Ren Ying assessed that because the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television rectified the chaos of SMS voting and suspended talent shows in 2006, and this year is the first time they have produced a male talent show, the advertising revenue is uncertain. If they submit a negotiated price in advance, they can reach an agreement of 60-70 million yuan.

Chen Xuebing simply offered a total title sponsorship quota for Weibo and a secondary sponsorship quota for Kirin mobile phones, to be negotiated together, aiming to get the most favorable price.

In addition, we discussed comprehensive advertising solutions for building videos, elevator frames, and retail terminals in 31 first- and second-tier cities with Focus Media, the king of offline advertising.

小区楼宇1000屏播放120次每天，核心写字楼5000个固定广告框架，全国TOP100卖场大屏终端每天白天8次15秒视频广告。

After careful evaluation, Jiang Nanchun claimed that such an ad campaign could reach 1.1 million business people every day, most of whom are netizens. This would have a much higher conversion rate than the 0.7 million general audience reached by CCTV during prime time. The final price was 1.57 million, or 3925 million per quarter.

Chen Xuebing countered with data from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, arguing that the total number of business people in China, broadly defined as corporate decision-makers, high-level executives, white-collar employees, frequent business travelers, and potential business participants, is less than 7000 million.

This proves that President Jiang was just bragging.

Then they offered a 50% discount.

The final agreement was reached for 9000 million, to be paid in quarterly installments.

After discussing both online and offline matters, the next step is communication.

Photo and URL tagging, along with one-click login, are the most direct and viral ways to achieve rapid user growth and increased user activity.

The maximum cost should also be invested.

Singularity is going to suffer a huge loss this time.

“WAP webpages average 20-30KB, Mr. Chen, are you offering a buy-one-get-one-free deal?” Mr. Wang chuckled after doing the math. “Didn’t you just look down on SP services, Mr. Chen?”

Chen Xuebing grinned: "Let's keep things separate. SPs have been overcharging and misleading consumers for a long time, and the crackdown on them has been going on for a while now. I have no intention of making users pay. This is a free benefit for members. Mobile registered users will receive two picture news articles and mobile website logins every week. I plan to use XHTML MP+3KB thumbnail technology, so the entire homepage size will be less than 18KB. I will pay users for the first click. If users see content that interests them on the homepage and click a second time, the mobile data fee will still be earned."

Mr. Wang was slightly moved.

"A monthly MMS message service? Sina and Sohu charge 10-15 yuan per month for this kind of celebrity photo shoot service, and you're giving it away for free?"

"Celebrity photos?" Chen Xuebing chuckled. "What's so interesting about those pictures downloaded from the internet? What I'm going to post are firsthand photos of celebrities that ordinary people can't see, the kind that the celebrities themselves took."

"Mr. Chen, you..." Mr. Wang was a little shocked.

Mr. Chen sensed a hint of a seasoned veteran and was somewhat shocked: "Mr. Wang, don't get the wrong idea. I'm talking about legitimate photos! Photos from the set, photos from everyday life!"

Mr. Wang had a dry cough.

"I didn't mean anything by it."

Mr. Chen smiled silently.

If you say you haven't thought about it, then you haven't thought about it. We're all men.

"Mr. Chen, have you started connecting with the entertainment industry?" Mr. Wang asked.

"A small investment," Chen Xuebing said dismissively.

This small investment, which hasn't even been credited yet, has already brought him considerable savings. Huayi Brothers currently has nearly 50 signed artists, and Jet Tone Films operates with an elite approach. The eight artists under long-term or short-term project contracts—Tony Leung, Chang Chen, Dong Jie, Fan Zhiwei, Julian Cheung, Gong Li, and Song Hye-kyo—are all big names.

Chen Xuebing only spent 800 million yuan in red envelopes to get most of the celebrities to join, and Tony Leung's exclusive lifetime contract with Jet Tone alone was worth the price.

Wang Jianzhou was slightly curious, but since China Mobile didn't invest in this area, he simply said, "Alright, since President Chen is making such a large investment, then I wish you great success."

Not refusing is tantamount to agreeing, and this is just a small business for China Mobile.

He didn't believe a new website could handle many registrations, especially mobile phone registrations. Getting close to a million would be good enough. At 5.6 yuan per user per month (8 posts), a million users would amount to 5.6 million, which would only be a 60 million yuan business per year.

"It's urgent, Mr. Wang, could you please recommend a qualified SP (Service Provider) for me? I need a nationwide information dissemination platform."

“That’s easy. Quite a few have gone out of business in the last two years. I’ll have someone contact you.”

"grateful."

The following day, the headlines on major portal websites were:
China Mobile bets on domestically developed operating systems, aiming to disrupt the mobile internet model.

"Free domestic smartphone with top-up phone credit; nationwide pilot program to begin next month"

Chen Xuebing, the Father of Kunlun OS: A Veteran in Finance and a Rising Star in Technology

The information bombardment orchestrated by China Mobile is preparing for the launch of the first wave of flagship 3G contract phones.

The first batch of Kirin-powered phones from the Qidian factory also rolled off the production line and were delivered to China Mobile after completing system loading, quality inspection, and random sampling.

This promotion undoubtedly spurred Nokia's contract phone plan. Nokia China held a press conference at its headquarters in Beijing, where Global Vice President Deng Yuanjun announced the "TD China Star Plan," stating that a TD laboratory would be established in Yizhuang, Beijing, and that a dedicated TD production line would be built in Huizhou in collaboration with BYD Electronics and Huawei to produce a batch of high-quality, affordable TD phones. The plan also included the N95 as a TD version model.

A group of Nokia's online supporters and die-hard fans cheered online, instantly igniting a battle on tech forums.

(Tianya Community - Digital Edition)

Original Poster Yida: Deciphering Nokia China Star's Smokescreen

Can you really master TD core technology by just drawing up a picture of a lab in Yizhuang? Have you ever been to a Kirin launch event? Thousands of Spreadtrum employees were there. Spreadtrum organized Kirin's launch events. Do you know Spreadtrum? The first TD chip manufacturer, controlled by the owner of Kirin!

Is a TD version of the N95 coming out? The price will probably skyrocket, turning the China Star into a business/boss star!
(ZOL Hot Comments)

"Heh, the Kunlun OS mini that's been hyped up to the skies is just a heavily modified Linux kernel with reskinned Symbian icons! Nokia engineers have been doing this for ages. A domestic rebrand doesn't even deserve to be called self-developed!"

Appendix: Comparison of the operating systems of Nokia 7700 GSM smartphones in 2004.

(A hilarious comment from Mop.com)

"The way China Mobile is being forced to purchase domestic operating systems is just like how relatives force you to eat rice with lard during Chinese New Year!"

(Sina Digital Forum)
"I firmly support Nokia! Without your high prices, how can domestic phones show their high cost-performance ratio? Please don't lower the price, continue to maintain your aristocratic attitude!" Mindless praise and sophisticated sarcasm appeared one after another, and the number of netizens participating in the flame war far exceeded that before. Most of them came from the original camp of "standing with Nokia" and "disliking Nokia", as well as the camp of lamenting the misfortune and anger at the lack of competitiveness of domestic phones. Kirin phones have not yet been launched, and many people do not know what Kirin is at all. Very few Kirin fans have explained it to these groups.

Singularity quietly hired an online army to push the URL of the Kirin launch event.

4 month 17 day.

Chen Xuebing was answering a phone call outside the remote conference room.

"Hehe, Mr. Yu, I thought Huawei was going to be very close to Nokia. Why do you still need our conditions for open source layer licensing? I hope Nokia won't misunderstand this."

Yu Dazui on the other end sounded quite helpless: "President Chen, our old man said a long time ago that we should make Huawei's own mobile phone brand, but China Mobile keeps pushing us to cooperate with Nokia! We already have a TD joint venture with Nokia, which involves Siemens, and there's a set of technologies in this company. You know that, right? How can we refuse when they want us to produce under their own brand? From a development perspective, we are absolutely inclined to cooperate with you!"

This tone is completely different from Mr. Wang's.

Wang Jianzhou said that Nokia took the initiative to cooperate with Huawei, wanting to produce TD handsets for China Mobile, and had long ago taken the initiative to include the N95 in the TD camp.

Nokia was forced into this situation and has only now announced that the N95 may be available on TD-SCDMA.

Yu Chengdong is now saying that China Mobile has been pushing Huawei to cooperate with Nokia.

Was Mr. Wang right, or Mr. Yu right, or were all three parties willing to cooperate and each getting what they needed? Mr. Wang finally got what he wanted in the N95 negotiations, and Mr. Chen naturally leaned towards "all of the above are correct".

Behind TD's billions of yuan in contract phone orders this year are more than a dozen mobile phone manufacturers, including ZTE, Lenovo, Hisense, Coolpad, New Postcom, TCL, Samsung, LG, and Motorola, and at least thirty to fifty private chat groups have been established behind the scenes.

China Mobile should focus its bets on Nokia and Singulato, both of which have Huawei backing their TD technologies.

Huawei may seem to be the weakest in the mobile phone sector, but they are not sheep that eat grass; they are wolves that eat meat.

"Mr. Yu, your router business is driven by Kunlun's mobile internet strategy. The mobile phone manufacturing business is a small part, at most a few hundred million in profit. Don't always think about making a fortune in every aspect. You should carefully consider what is more important and who to support in critical moments."

Huawei's global market share of routers has jumped to second place, with revenue of nearly 200 billion yuan, second only to Cisco. However, they used to produce backbone routers for operators, which have different hardware architectures and software systems from home WiFi routers.

Chen Xuebing's first meeting with Ren Zhengfei reminded Huawei that it had secured a long-term license for European Wi-Fi technology ahead of schedule.

If routers move from the backbone network of telecom operators into the home Wi-Fi market, it will bring Huawei an even more dramatic monetization of its technology.

Mobile phone Wi-Fi modules will also generate profits as a result.

This is also an important foundation for the multiple collaborations between the two parties.

Although Chen Xuebing did not need Huawei's help at the moment, he did not want Huawei to side with Nokia at this critical juncture and cause unnecessary trouble, so he issued a warning.

Yu Chengdong pondered for a moment and said, "I swear to God, Mr. Chen, the production line for Huawei Kunlun machines is all ready and we've been waiting for your system to go live and be authorized."

"Heh, the System Research Center must have been prepared all along, right? Now they're dismantling our fully open-source layer? Let me guess what your self-developed system is called? HarmonyOS?"

After Chen Xuebing finished speaking, he listened carefully to the other party's movements and found that the other party's breathing was not disordered at all, but just silent. So he knew that this name should not exist in Huawei for the time being.

"Mr. Chen is joking. But Hongmeng is a good name indeed."

This guy is shameless; he just stood there and started thinking.

"Old Yu, you're far from being good enough to play with systems with me. Don't waste your money. It's fine if you want to test the waters, but if you can't beat me, just surrender early. I'll give you Kunlun to use; I won't hold you back. You should focus on studying HiSilicon. You can work on operating systems when you have more experience. This is my honest opinion."

Chen Xuebing's heartfelt words made Yu Chengdong fall silent again.

"Mr. Chen, I think you are a true friend of ours, really."

"I'll have someone send you the technology licensing agreement in a bit."

"Hey Mr. Chen, I have a question for you. There's an issue with multitasking causing high CPU usage."

Push your nose and face.

Chen Xuebing hung up the phone, cursed, and returned to the conference room.

The group's management team was all present inside, and the management team of Qidian on the other side of the video call were also waiting for him to speak when he entered.

Today's topic is Weibo.

These days, this topic has become a focus on Weibo, which will be launched in three days.

"Let's not discuss the funding issue."

Chen Xuebing returned to his seat and tapped the table: "This is our first time getting into an internet project. Advertising will cost a lot of money, that's unavoidable."

“I know that Qilin is facing a critical moment right now, with production and marketing to consider. But we have everything we need right now. All this project will cost is money, and the returns from this investment will be limitless.”

Do you know why I'm recommending this project first?

"This is the only traffic-generating platform we can currently control, and it's also the most important information platform!"

"Once this platform is built, people will come to us to advertise their products!"

"With this platform, our Starlink project can form an API interface advantage."

"3G is coming, comrades! The fighting has already begun outside!"

"API! This is the absolute channel for driving traffic to the mobile internet. We want to create an integrated Qidian account, connecting mobile phones, Starlink, Weibo, Alipay, Taobao, JD.com, UC, YY, and more, to complete the most powerful ecosystem. All API ports can be accessed with one click, allowing users to enjoy the highest quality one-stop internet services within the Qidian system! Qidian's online brand must be strong, the strongest! This is an important monetization outlet for our self-developed technology!"

"Weibo, the pioneering battle!"

"For internet projects to determine a winner, it takes at most six months to a year!"

"We must pay attention to both content and information coverage!"

"In the coming year, Weibo will become a trending topic online, create trending topics online, and make Weibo visible to users online, on TV, in shopping malls, in text messages, and even in the elevator at home!"

When Mr. Chen first spoke about the internet, the blueprint he drew seemed to be bigger than in any other field before.

The Singularity management team exchanged glances and realized that this blueprint seemed easy for Singularity to achieve.

Guan is involved in investment, communications, mobile phones, and operating systems.

When it finally came to the door of the internet—which is just these past few days—Weibo was officially put on everyone's desk, and the problems encountered before—promotion process, technical obstacles, operation system, compliance application—were almost all solved at lightning speed.

The comment section of the Singularity official website's press conference is also experiencing a surge in popularity. By directing traffic from here, we have also obtained the source of the first batch of users to experience the product.

What reason could they possibly have for not doing this project well?

Sitting opposite Lu Weibing, he realized that he seemed to be empowered by some unseen force, and flicked his fingers lightly from under the table.

Boo!
A large door was easily pushed open.

"We'll listen to the chairman! This project can only succeed; failure is not an option!"

(End of this chapter)