Rebirth 05: From Coal Mine Owner to Mobile Phone Tycoon

Upon arriving at the location, Lao Liu couldn't wait to log into Legend and start chatting with his brothers, saying, "If you're a brother, come and fight me!"

Oh wait, back in 05, the phrase "渣渣辉" (Zha Zha Hui) hadn't become a viral meme yet. This was still the 1.76 version of the PC game with its stiff animations, terrible graphics, and PowerPoint presentation.

Lu Yuan opened the single-player game folder on his computer and skillfully found StarCraft among a bunch of icons.

Instantly select the Terran race, engage in a skirmish, and face 4 randomly selected computer AI opponents.

APM instantly spiked to near 200, the keyboard clattered loudly, and the screen kept switching back and forth.

Fifteen minutes later, Lu Yuan's Terran team was wiped out by four AI opponents.

It can be described as a prime example of a series of actions as fierce as a tiger.

"Damn, I should have chosen two fewer people, one old and one young. Sigh, I'm getting old, my hand speed isn't fast enough anymore."

Lu Yuan took his hands off the keyboard, found a comfortable position, and leaned back on the sofa.

I turned my head and glanced at what the brothers were playing.

Lao Liu was still making pre-battle preparations, it seemed that not all the people had arrived yet, and he kept typing and chatting in the guild channel.

The fourth and fifth brothers were actually playing Warcraft 3, a game that requires micro-management; it didn't seem like a game they were good at at all.

Upon closer inspection, wow, it's not that these two people didn't have any skills, but rather that they had absolutely nothing to do with skills.

Both of them chose the Orc race and looted a bunch of Great Golems and Tauren.

There was no harassment, pulling, or positioning; it was just an extremely simple and unadorned confrontation.

That's a really simple and straightforward way to play.

Well, this has only reinforced the stereotypes about the fourth and fifth sons.

Looking at the second one, Meteor Butterfly Sword, not bad, his combo is quite skilled, it's almost become muscle memory for him.

Lu Yuan remembered that playing this game required memorizing some kind of move list, but it was so long ago that he couldn't remember it clearly anymore. He hadn't expected his second brother to have such a good memory.

Finally, let's look at the third brother next to him.

The tycoon left Lu Yuan speechless for a moment.

"Third brother, why do you like making money so much? Making money in this game is no fun. It's not as good as making money in real life. I'll help you become a tycoon in real life too."

"No, boss, this is quite interesting. This Monopoly game is the Doraemon version."

I've never seen this before," Lu Yuan thought, looking at it closely.

Indeed, the characters have all been changed to Nobita, Doraemon, Gian, and Shizuka.

The currency was all exchanged for dorayaki, and even the item cards were replaced with items that appeared in Doraemon's pocket.

"Hey, you know what, this modification is actually quite interesting."

"Yeah, wouldn't it be so much more fun if we could port this game to our phones?"

He does not mean that.

Based on his experience from later generations, Lu Yuan knew that this kind of drastic modification could also circumvent copyright issues, because the gameplay itself was not subject to plagiarism protection.

As for the intellectual property rights of Doraemon, that's a different matter.

Lu Yuan could simply change the worldview, reskin it, and install it on his own phone.

But reality gave Lu Yuan a cold shower.

With current technology, it remains extremely difficult to adapt this simple Monopoly game to a mobile phone.

This is not only limited by hardware, such as screen size and memory size.

In terms of operating systems and software, there are even greater limitations.

The mobile phones currently produced in Lu Yuan's factory use a modified system based on the MediaTek MTK platform.

It's simply a matter of changing the theme, icons, and menu layout on the original platform, and adding some animations and effects.

Because of its high integration and openness, extremely low development costs, and short development cycle, most of the counterfeit and assembled mobile phones produced in Huaqiangbei currently use the MTK platform.

However, the limitations of the MTK platform are also very obvious; the system itself is closed and non-intelligent.

It only supports simple Java extensions, does not support users to freely install third-party applications, and lacks true multitasking and application ecosystem.

This is fundamentally different from other branded mobile phone operating systems of the same period, such as Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Palm OS.

However, these systems were all used in closed systems by major companies, and Lu Yuan wasn't interested in them.

Other suppliers such as Texas Instruments and Freescale are far less open than MediaTek, and their development costs are very high.

Moreover, there is a high risk of supply disruption.

Having learned from his past life, Lu Yuan decisively abandoned his pursuit of the existing platform system.

Assembled phones and feature phones will only dominate the market for 3 to 5 years, after which the era of smartphones will begin.

No one expected the revolutionary iteration of mobile phones to happen so quickly.

While other manufacturers were still producing fast-moving consumer goods with a lifespan of 1 to 2 years, Lu Yuan decisively increased the product quality to a lifespan of 20 years, nearly ten times that of other brands.

Besides pursuing a quality-first strategy to build a strong reputation for the company,

At the same time, a longer lifespan can also increase Tiangong mobile phones' market share.

In 05, the national average monthly wage was only 1500 yuan, and even in Shanghai it was only around 2000 yuan.

Many families treat buying a mobile phone as an important home appliance as buying a color TV, refrigerator, or washing machine.

After 08, the situation was completely different.

Given current purchasing power, most people are very cautious about buying a new phone if they already own one and it's working properly.

High-quality mobile phones are quite affordable for the average consumer.

In this way, even if sales are not high, it is not a problem for Tiangong mobile phones to surpass the market share of existing brand mobile phones in the next 2 to 3 years.

The price of a knock-off phone is the quality of a brand-name phone. As for other knock-off manufacturers, they can just go out of business.

At the same time, the company can reduce inventory buildup, both on the sales side and the original parts side, thus easing its cash flow constraints.

Invest more resources in the research and development of smartphones.

With this calculation, they've gained a good reputation, won public support, secured market share, secured funding, and left their competitors dumbfounded.

This isn't a win-win situation, it's a win-win-win situation!

Lu Yuan won 5 times.

This wave of Lu Yuan's play was like Qin Shi Huang touching an electric shock switch – he was completely overwhelmed by the victory.

Lu Yuan pulled his thoughts back from his reverie.

Five years is neither a long nor a short time.

For a company like ours that has to develop a smartphone from scratch, time is a bit tight.

Therefore, developing our own system is imperative.

At the same time, mobile game development also needs to be put on the agenda.

With the development of the times, the increase in internet speed, the acceleration of the pace of life, and the fragmentation of leisure time, etc.

Players' choices will gradually shift from PC games to mobile games.

Just like PC games, a hit mobile game can force hardware upgrades and promote overall industry upgrades.

The system development requires high investment and has a slow cycle, so it is difficult to see results in a short period of time. The goal is to create a system that can rival Android and iOS by around 2010.

This can't be rushed; it can only be done slowly.

But the game planning needs to begin now; before everyone reacts, we need to finalize some important IPs.

Ideally, it should be a permanent buyout, but not necessarily a full buyout; just the mobile game adaptation would suffice.

At that time, the readily available art assets and text copy will save a lot of time and costs for future development.

Looking at it this way, Lu Yuan realized that the money he had wasn't enough.