We handed over the blueprints and prototype of the cheap pager to them before the new year.

Changhong can simply copy what they've learned; their system is much larger than Xing Baohua's.

If it were to operate at full speed, the output would be quite astonishing. Xing Baohua estimates it will appear on the market in another month or two.

Changhong has its own distribution channels.

They've been selling TVs and other appliances for years; they've already established their distribution channels.

Regardless of the channel model, Changhong can sell its goods quickly.

Pagers from the analog era will still have a market for nearly twenty years. Once mobile phone tariffs come down, this thing will be past its lifespan.

Xing Baohua made pagers the pinnacle of technology, causing pagers that were either preparing to be launched or already in production worldwide to lose their competitive edge. They could only be sold off cheaply, while others copied Xing Baohua's two-way pager idea.

Only rice and motorcycles have pagers with built-in keyboards.

To break through the combined defenses of the two companies, money is required. It's said that Motorola has received numerous patent licensing applications.

Unfortunately, without Xing Baohua's permission, the motorcycles could not be allowed to pass freely.

Both companies tacitly agreed to keep the profits to themselves.

So, what other innovative features can be added to two-way pagers?

Why not? Just add a new feature every year; that's money. Change the casing, add some features, upgrade the hardware. The price can be lowered slightly the following year.

It can still maintain sales volume, which is called "changing the name but not the substance".

Xing Baohua estimates that a truly comprehensive price reduction will not occur until the early 1990s.

At that time, there were more wealthy individuals.

Only when there are more private companies will we see an era where all industries flourish.

If prices don't drop, business owners with limited budgets will simply buy foreign goods. How can it be that domestic products are more expensive than imported ones?

For example, this year, the two-way pager to be exhibited at the Canton Fair has been given a new feature: it supports stock market updates.

Since we don't have a stock market in China yet, we don't need this for the time being; it's purely for export.

Users can experience it as long as they activate the service with the operator.

Xing Baohua estimates that very few paging stations will offer this service once the machines have this function enabled. He believes that operators will quickly implement the service; why wouldn't they make money from it!

Due to hardware limitations, only ten stock information entries and stock text reports of less than a thousand words can be saved.

The previous export version, which imitated the early Blackberry models, looked quite ugly. This time, the appearance has been changed. It still has a full keyboard, but a metal scroll wheel has been added to the body to be used as a page-turning button.

The fuselage was also changed from being entirely plastic to a combination of plastic and metal.

The cost increase from these modifications won't be much. The only hardware upgrade is adding memory. Currently, each 64k memory module costs around $4, and that's imported; domestically produced ones are about half the price.

To be honest, it's not that I don't want to use domestic products, but the quality control is just too poor, leaving Xing Baohua with a lot of unspeakable difficulties.

When the quantity was small, these things didn't matter, but now that the quantity has increased significantly, we can't compromise anymore.

Xing Baohua could only use a mixture of imported and domestic memory modules. He also had to assign some people to select the domestically produced memory.

This led to a gradual increase in his costs.

These are all minor matters in the face of huge profits.

The motherboard for the export pager needs modification, as some components need to be added. It's easy to modify; after adding memory, you just need to change a few resistors.

We'll also develop a small program that supports stock information, so that stock information can be displayed on pagers.

This year's update includes a feature that supports stock information.

Next year, Xing Baohua will add a news and entertainment information function to the two-way pager.

Once you activate the service, you can see a brief summary of the day's news without leaving home.

Even news about celebrities, sports events, etc.

What happened next? As hardware capacity increased, Xing Baohua added even more in various ways.

Have you ever seen a pager with a built-in radio?

Pagers with digital ringtones have evolved from eight-digit audio to 64-digit true ringtones, and from monotones to chords.

Look, these features are money.

This guy has even come up with advertising slogans for years to come.

"Always at the forefront of technology, never surpassed."

Only someone as shameless as him would dare to say that.

Having subordinates and a team is great; whatever framework or content I come up with, my team can quickly perfect it. It's not like the beginning, where I was working day and night and exhausted.

The donation from the rice electronics factory gradually took hold in society.

Many newspapers have published commentary columns praising it.

However, some objected, saying that Xing Baohua's move was an attempt to win people's hearts and minds.

They even brought up his bundled employment as an example.

If you're going to sponsor students, you have to treat everyone equally. You can't force someone to work for you in exchange for tuition and scholarship sponsorships.

This is a blatant provocation against the distribution system.

They even blatantly corrupt innocent students with money.

The discussion grew louder, and those who joined ranged from ordinary people to renowned figures.

Some say that this way of motivating students to improve is to increase the cultivation of talent.

Some people object, saying that this is a means to gain ugly capital in the current environment.

Director Lin from the Municipal Government Office arrived and conveyed two pieces of advice. One was to have Xing Baohua stop using the incentive method. He should first issue a public apology, saying that he hadn't thought it through properly, and that the apology statement shouldn't be written by him, as it had already been written for him and all he needed to do was sign it.

The second thing is to keep donating and not do anything else.

Well, this matter has really been keeping this guy on his toes!

Does this count as doing something wrong with good intentions? Probably not, but he forgot about the current circumstances.

Such incentives, which are essentially binding, have already gone too far.

He didn't even consider that there were already too few people to be allocated positions. Xing Baohua shamelessly tried to poach people by paying them money; do you think they would be willing to do that?

My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!