Chapter 306 Lian Yi's persistence! Encirclement and suppression
Quantum Technology spent $12.5 million to sponsor this year's Oscars.
There are many similar promotions around the world.
Such a promotional effort is simply unbelievable, and even seems like a complete luxury and waste.
Especially in China, whether it is on CCTV or the five major TV stations allied with the Lightning Group, advertisements about WeChat are almost overwhelming.
At the beginning, Tencent was treating it as a formidable enemy and was ready for a comprehensive defensive counterattack.
After about a month or two, they found that QQ's daily active users not only did not decrease, but continued to grow.
In other words, WeChat’s crazy promotion has not had any impact on QQ at all.
Immediately afterwards, Renren, which was acquired by Lightning Group, officially completed its revision and was officially renamed Xiaohongshu.
At present, Renren's daily active users may be only about one-tenth of Facebook's, maybe slightly higher, but it is also a very large number of users.
Although in the past few years, the team has gradually turned it into a high-end social network, a niche track, and more of a life sharing site, its form of expression is still a relatively traditional social networking site.
And after this revision.
Everyone was surprised to find that it had really been completely transformed.
This... this is not a social networking site at all.
What is this? There is not much text on the entire homepage, it is all pictures.
Recommendations, outfits, food, makeup, movies, work, relationships, home, games, travel, and fitness.
These are the channel categories for the entire website, and below them are all pictures and even videos.
That is, the promotion and sharing by bloggers from various channels.
There is a saying that goes, if you take too big a step, you are likely to get hurt.
For most users, this revision is too drastic a step and is completely different from the previous Renren.
As a result, countless users posted messages to denounce it.
“This is not the Renren we want.”
"Lightning Group, Xia Xi, give us back our original Renren."
"Who was the idiot who designed this? What kind of social networking site is this?"
Almost all of them were criticism, even abuse. And the data showed that the number of daily visits and daily active users kept decreasing.
As a result, many conspiracy theories emerged.
Lightning Group bought Renren.com and made such desperate efforts just to destroy Renren.com.
There was once again an air of unrest within Chen Yizhou's management team, and doubts were once again raised.
Because after the revision, the traffic has been falling continuously.
As the chairman, Xia Xi behaved very arrogantly. He did not give any explanation to the entire management team. He did not even give any account of the sudden drop in traffic, nor did he hold any meetings.
Instead, Chen, as the CEO, held meetings frequently every week.
"Transformation must have a period of pain."
"After Renren was bought by Microsoft China, we couldn't find a way out because our original track overlapped with Facebook, so we began to transform. We started high-end social networking, and tended to target female users. At that time, we also experienced a year-long traffic slump, and then it started to rise."
"But... even after its transformation, Renren's positioning is unclear, and its attributes are unclear."
“We even tried to change the name many times, but in the end nothing came of it?”
"Why? It's because you don't have enough courage. You don't have a strong force to back you up."
"And now, under the strategic guidance of President Xia, we have completed a thorough transformation."
"Although our traffic is dropping every day, our positioning has become extremely clear, and our business attributes have also become extremely clear."
“The future strategic direction has also become extremely clear.”
"I might as well tell you that President Lin, President Xia and I have held a meeting and said that we should be prepared for a year of traffic decline. This is because our users' attention and behavioral inertia lag behind our strategic deployment, which is very normal."
"I can tell you that I strongly support President Xia's strategic guidance. I strongly support this transformation and I am full of confidence in the future."
"So it's not just me who has to change my mindset, it's the whole team that has to change their mindset."
"If you don't change your thinking, change people. It's that simple."
"There are also rumors that Lightning Group acquired Renren in full just to kill it. What a joke. I can tell you that this year alone, Lightning Group has provided more than $150 million in funding to Xiaohongshu!"
"Moreover, the overseas Facebook group will also take over Xiaohongshu's international deployment."
"This is Mr. Lin's decision. Xiaohongshu must also go overseas and internationalize as soon as possible."
……………………
Everyone knows that it is Lin Xiao’s will to promote WeChat so crazily.
This is one of his biggest achievements this year.
Because his past experience was so brilliant, no one dared to question him at first. They just watched and waited quietly.
Finally several months passed.
WeChat's market share in instant messaging is still very low and has not had any impact on QQ at all.
Tencent even released a special announcement about QQ's daily active users, total user stay time, etc., all of which showed an increase.
At an event, someone asked Xia Xi.
"Mr. Xia, may I ask how many users does WeChat have now, and how many are active users?"
Xia Xi: "There are about 92 million registered users and about 13 million active users."
Everyone was stunned. They didn't expect Xia Xi to say it so frankly.
Reporter: "Do you know how many registered users and active users QQ has?"
Xia Xi: "900 million registered users, about 490 million active users, just announced."
Reporter: "Do you know how many users Fetion has?"
Xia Xi: "170 million registered users, 59 million active users!"
Reporter: "Can I ask, out of curiosity, how much did WeChat's promotion cost in the past two months?"
Xia Xi: "In China, it's probably around 1 billion."
Everyone gasped. They spent 1 billion yuan on promotion, but only got 13 million active users? That means they spent about 100 yuan per user on average? Reporter: "Mr. Xia, does that mean that Ergou has suffered a setback in his WeChat strategy? Is this a failure?"
Xia Xi: "It's too early to say that."
Reporter: "Mr. Xia, it has been more than a month since Renren was completely redesigned into Xiaohongshu. May I ask how much the active user traffic has dropped?"
Xia Xi: “About 38%.”
Reporter: "May I ask who is the strategic guide for this revision? Is it you or General Manager Lin?"
Xia Xi: "It's the result of a discussion between Lin Xiao and me."
Reporter: "If there can only be one leader, who is the leader of this revision?"
Xia Xi: "Lin Xiao!"
Reporter: "Does that mean that Lin Xiao's two major initiatives at the beginning of the year are facing failure? To some extent, is Lin Xiao dragging down the performance of Lightning Group?"
Xia Xi: "I still say the same thing. If everyone could read and understand Lin Xiao's strategic guidance, he wouldn't have achieved what he has today."
……………………
The promotion of WeChat in China is far from successful.
The international WeChat is actually slightly better, or much better.
Whether it is the number of registered users or active users, it far exceeds that in China.
Of course, it’s not that foreign users are better, but that there is no super social software like QQ or such monopolistic instant messaging software abroad.
Because of the foundation of Facebook, massive promotion, and the excellent attributes of WeChat itself, its development overseas is relatively promising.
Even though there are not many smartphone users in the world at this time, on the PC side, overseas WECHAT activity is much higher than in China.
However, on the PC side, WeChat can only be regarded as a pretty good instant messaging software.
Only on the smartphone side can it show its advancement and superiority.
There is a Chinese saying that goes, "If you try to plant flowers, they may not bloom, but if you plant willows by accident, they may grow into a shade."
In the quantum mobile client, there are two software that became popular almost instantly.
One was incubated by Facebook overseas, Instagram, also known as the INS photo wall.
This is an application designed for smartphones and released on IOS and X operating systems.
In the first week, the number of downloads exceeded 500,000, and then soared rapidly.
Another application is ONLYFANS.
On the surface, this has nothing to do with Facebook, but... it is actually a product incubated by a team under Wu Lingxi, and it was also invested and funded by Facebook.
The strategic director is a certain old pervert, the leader of the Er Gou sect.
Different from the few in history, this APP had a very high starting point at the beginning. It signed a large number of beauty bloggers at the beginning and guided them to take a lot of sexy photos, or color photos and videos.
Many of them have a lot of fans on Facebook, with good traffic and considerable fame.
Of course there are also various models, starlets, adult film actors, etc.
This is not a hard-earned start-up, but a huge amount of resources and money were invested from the very beginning.
The results proved it.
Color is really the primary productive force.
This app became popular almost instantly after it was released on the iOS and Quantum mobile phone platforms, reaching the top of the download rankings in a short period of time. Even the traffic on the PC web page was extremely popular.
Another one is Twitter.
Last year, Lin Xiao, Yang Zhiyuan, and Masayoshi Son paid $260 million to acquire Twitter. Yang Zhiyuan resigned as CEO of Yahoo Group to focus entirely on Twitter.
This APP also chooses IOS and quantum mobile phone platforms.
Currently, its daily active users are also increasing.
Therefore, unknowingly, an ecological moat that excludes the Android system is being established.
However, there are still too few smartphone users, so it did not cause much response.
On the contrary, because almost all the world's mobile phone manufacturing giants, except Nokia and Sony Ericsson, have sided with Google Android, the global technology media feels that the balance of victory is constantly sliding towards Google.
In the lawsuit last September, Quantum Technology completed the final reversal, which caused a huge response and greatly promoted the sales of quantum mobile phones.
But now more than half a year has passed, and this momentum has subsided.
The new sales of quantum mobile phones are also gradually slowing down.
The current global total sales volume is approximately 13 million, of which half is accounted for by the Chinese market and the other half is accounted for by overseas markets.
Therefore, Lin Xiao insisted on treating the domestic market as the rear base and the core foundation, which showed his wisdom at this time.
This sales volume is already very good, even amazing.
But...the proportion of mobile phone users in the world is still very, very low.
Especially for an operating system, this ecosystem is far from secure.
In fact, the lawsuit between Quantum Technology and Google Android has never stopped over the past six months.
Quantum Technology sues Google Android for plagiarism and infringement.
At the beginning, this lawsuit was very eye-catching, but as time went on, people gradually stopped paying attention to it.
It's the same everywhere in the world, everyone is paying attention to new hot spots.
The freshness and attention of a thing will be consumed quickly.
During the more than half a year of litigation, Ms. Gerken did not appear on the court very often. Instead, Lian Yi appeared on the court many times on behalf of Quantum Technology.
The court session was held five times in half a year.
And the trials are basically open to the public.
April 26, 2009! The Northern District Court of California made a ruling.
Quantum Technology sued Google for Android plagiarism, but the case was rejected!
The emails that Lin Xiao sent to Andy were certainly evidence of his innocence, but... these emails were sent to Andy by Lin Xiao on his own initiative, and he took the initiative to show them to the other party and discuss them.
In addition, Quantum Technology is unable to provide more authoritative evidence to prove that Google Android was plagiarized.
……………………
After the trial, Wu Lingxi specially invited Lian Yi to dinner.
"Don't be depressed. Neither winning nor losing is the norm in this world..." Wu Lingxi said with a smile.
Lian Yi: "I just feel that Ms. Gerken's attitude has weakened recently. Her enthusiasm in the lawsuit against Google is waning."
Wu Lingxi: "This is normal. After all, Google has a huge influence and will put pressure on her through various channels."
"Little water drop, you must be prepared. This is a protracted war."
“Also, a certain amount of momentum is needed.”
"In recent months, your man has not produced any works, so his influence has naturally weakened."
When Lian Yi heard the word "your man", her face turned slightly red.
He, is he my man?
In the past few years, the two have barely met each other, and have hardly had any intimate actions. It seems that the two are still in a state of breaking up? And a few months ago, he had married Teacher Xiao.
……………………
A few days later!
Google once again held a technical conference and released the Android 2.0 system.
The entire press conference focused on the operating system.
The core members of Lightning Technology watched the entire press conference.
As a result, I found that the Android 2.0 system is very similar to the X operating system in terms of UI design, layout, many operating logics, and especially transition animation design.
Compared to Android 1.0, it is a huge leap forward.
Originally, Google Android's strength lay in the underlying end-points; its UI design and even some of its interaction logic were not mature at the beginning.
However, with the X operating system as a reference, the gap was eliminated in just one year.
Wu Di said slowly: "This time, they really plagiarized us."
“The entire UI design and interaction logic, I don’t know how much of it was plagiarized.”
"And in order to deliberately show that they are different from our operating system, our icons and backgrounds are flat and solid-color. Theirs, on the other hand, uses skeuomorphic design, realistic and bright."
"But they have infringed many, many of our patents."
Lin Xiao: "Go ahead and sue."
At this time, Google's press conference was still going on, announcing a series of mobile phones that would be equipped with Android 2.0.
In May, Samsung's Galaxy i7500.
In August, Motorola Droid. (earlier than history)
In October, Lenovo's Lephone (earlier than history) In November, LG's Optimus One (even earlier than history)
In February 2010, HTC Nexus One. (Later than history)
Almost every few months, there is an Android phone produced by a giant.
After the press conference, many media outlets published comments saying: “Google’s counterattack has begun!”
“Quantum phones will be surrounded by global mobile phone giants.”
"In just one year, Google Android completely closed the gap in operating systems."
……………………
Almost immediately after the Google Technology Conference, Quantum Technology sued Google again in the Northern District Court of California, claiming that the new Android 2.0 system infringed on the relevant patents of the X operating system.
Then...
Google also sued Quantum Technology for infringing on several Android patents.
So, the legal team, which had just rested for a short time, was busy again.
And Ms. Gerken's enthusiasm seemed to wane once again.
Lian Yi is the weakest in this team in terms of qualifications and experience, but because of her strong initiative and the fierce battle in the past year, she is once again at the forefront of this lawsuit.
This...is indeed a protracted war.
May 18th! Samsung's Galaxy i7500 is officially released.
Lin Xiao still watched the normal press conference and even had a prototype in his hands. This was completely different from the historical Galaxy i7500.
Even beyond recognition.
At this time in history, Samsung was undecided about the operating system. Should it be Android, Microsoft, or even Nokia's Symbian? Therefore, Samsung's first Android phone in history was also experimental in nature. Whether it was configuration, appearance design, or even screen resolution, it was only average.
It can even be described as thick and ugly, and it has several physical keys.
However...the success of quantum mobile phones seems to have brought some kind of exemplary effect to these mobile phone giants.
So this Android phone from Samsung has been completely upgraded.
It has a 4-inch screen, a 480P screen, and even an 8-megapixel camera.
Not only that, the thickness is also controlled at 9.8 mm.
Moreover, it also uses an imitation glass back cover!
This appearance is much better than the historical Galaxy i7500.
It all looks so beautiful.
And the most important thing is that Samsung’s brand power is stronger than that of quantum mobile phones.
So at this time, quantum technologies have all felt the double-edged sword of being one step ahead.
Especially the UI design and the phone appearance design.
If you dare to overdraw on aesthetic design for a few years, others will be able to catch up in the shortest time and follow you.
"The Android camp is getting serious!"
"The fight against quantum phones has officially begun!"
"The first-mover advantage of quantum phones has disappeared. Next, the Google camp will completely crush quantum technology with its super-large scale advantage."
"The victory of Master Ergou seemed so short-lived, lasting less than half a year."
"In 2009, the Ergou leader had a bad year. He spent a huge amount of money to promote WeChat, but the results were not obvious. He acquired Renren.com and completely revamped Xiaohongshu. The traffic plummeted and he almost declared failure!"
"It turns out that Master Ergou is not omnipotent. This may be the starting point of his failure. From now on, he has to get used to this kind of failure."
……………………
Lin Xiao holds the Samsung Galaxy i7500 in his hand.
On the one hand, I feel impressed by Samsung's strength, and on the other hand, I feel impressed by Samsung's helplessness.
In fact, even in this world, Samsung's mobile phone does not have this design, it is still the same design in history.
However, quantum phones came out and achieved huge success.
Therefore, Samsung almost overturned all previous designs and adopted a brand new design. Not only the appearance design looks like a quantum phone, but even the relevant configuration parameters are also in line with it.
But... it was too hasty.
It took less than ten months from finalization to launch.
Historically it used the MSM7200A processor, but in this world it was upgraded to the Qualcomm QSD8250 processor.
But this processor was only released a few months ago, and the Android 2.0 system was only released more than a month ago.
The result of such haste is that the phone looked great at the launch event and even had a good design.
However, after actually using it for a while, it became quite disastrous.
Qualcomm's qsd8250 processor is manufactured using a 65nm process, so its performance is inherently weaker, and there is not enough time for tuning.
So the problem is heat generation, and it is not mature enough to match Android 2.0.
This brings up another problem, which is lag.
Because Samsung forced a 480P resolution screen and an 8-megapixel CMOS, but it couldn't buy Sony's flagship CMOS.
Although the original i7500 was very rough and had relatively low parameters, it was at least mature and highly finished.
Even though it was released a month later than in history, it was still released in a hurry, so the result was a product that looked good on the outside but was hot and stuck on the inside.
The key reason is the screen characteristics of amoled. Although it also has a 480P resolution, its clarity is only about 70% of the LCD screen with the same resolution.
Forcing it to 4 inches will result in large grains, and when you hold them in your hands, the clarity is far less.
In addition, Sony's most flagship CMOS is not available, and Samsung's own CMOS is not yet fully mature, so although it claims to have 8 million pixels, the photo-taking effect is still far behind.
Of course, Samsung announced it in mid-May, but it won’t be available to the public until the end of June.
They probably hope to use this one or two months to solve the problems related to this phone as quickly as possible.
But there is no doubt that this press conference was a great success.
Because the entire press conference demonstrated various advances in quantum mobile phones.
And in terms of price, it is a little more expensive than the quantum phone, basically about US$30 more expensive for each version.
This means that Samsung's brand value is higher than that of the Quantum phone.
Because Samsung and Google are fully promoting this phone, there is overwhelming publicity in the media, and the hype about smartphones is higher than ever before.
Therefore, this phone has also received more attention and appeal than ever before.
A week after the launch event, Samsung made an announcement.
In just seven days, the number of Galaxy i7500 pre-orders worldwide exceeded 2.8 million units!
This data far exceeds the sales data of quantum phones last year! ……………………………………
Note: I finally finished writing it. I'm going to have dinner now. Happy Dragon Boat Festival to everyone! Can anyone who has monthly tickets give me a few? Please!
(End of this chapter)
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