Wanfeng set a sales target of 100,000 VCD units for the first year. Based on the current pricing, achieving this goal is neither difficult nor easy.
This depends on the development of the software vendors. To put it more simply, it mainly depends on how many pirated CDs the pirates can provide.
An entertainment machine that relies mainly on playback cannot survive without the support of massive videos.
It is impossible to open up a large market by relying on genuine CDs sold by genuine manufacturers for fifty or sixty yuan.
Bohai Audio and Video, the only authorized company at present, can only produce some karaoke song tapes at most. They have only been established for two or three years, and there are not many feature film copyrights in their copyright library, so it is impossible for them to produce feature films.
The first batch of VCDs brought the audio-visual company sales of 400,000 yuan. This project immediately attracted Tong Siyang's attention. The second batch of ten carefully selected karaoke discs also entered the market along with the second batch of BBK DVD players.
Although the console was reduced in price by 200 yuan, the second batch of sales was obviously not as fast as the first batch of DVD players, which also indirectly affected the sales of CDs.
Tong Siyang personally went to have a long talk with Weilai and Wan Feng to find out why the second batch of CDs were unsaleable.
"How many CDs did you press in the second batch?"
"Twenty thousand plates."
Wan Feng shook his head. "That's too much. You should maintain the same number for the second batch. The consumption of this kind of entertainment software is highly correlated with installed base. Without installed base, there will be no sales. My first batch of DVD players sold 2,000 units, and the second batch 3,000. Even if all of them were sold, the installed base would only be 5,000. How much do you expect your CDs to sell if you're a 5,000-unit general manager?"
Tong Siyang understood this principle and nodded continuously.
"How many systems will the DVD player eventually be installed in?"
"You ask about the end? That's too old a story. When the price of DVD players drops to a few hundred yuan in the future, there will be tens of millions of installed units. But don't count on that within three to five years. The price drop of DVD players is closely related to the development of electronic components. With the upgrading of components, the cost of DVD players will drop significantly. With the cheaper price, the popularity will naturally increase. However, the price drop of hardware itself is only one of the reasons. Another reason is the development of software, that is, optical discs."
Tong Siyang was a little confused: "What does this have to do with software?"
Wan Feng was exhausted. "Are you actually working in the audio and video industry? How could you ask such an idiotic question?"
"It's a huge deal. If people who buy DVD players now see that they only have karaoke and only a dozen or so titles, they'll naturally be less interested. If the market now offered not only a wide variety of karaoke tapes but also various Hunan and Hong Kong martial arts films and some romantic dramas, wouldn't that force people to buy VCDs?"
"That's true, but where can we get a Hunan-Hong Kong martial arts film? Buying the copyright for a film is very expensive, and we don't know if it can make money."
"Look, the Shaw Brothers from Hunan and Hong Kong have been making martial arts films since the 1960s and 1970s. They have hundreds of old martial arts films in their collection. If you're interested in buying them, you can contact them and buy all of them in bulk. Of course, the price shouldn't be too high."
Tong Siyang frowned and thought for a while: "What if the other party's price is too high?"
"If the price is too high, you can just take it and use it, and you won't even have the money left."
Tong Siyang was shocked: "That won't do. Copyright infringement is illegal."
"Who told you to infringe copyright? Who dares to say you infringe copyright?"
"Once they look for it, they'll naturally find out that we published it, and we'll have to bear the consequences if they sue us for copyright infringement."
Tong Siyang has a strong sense of copyright, which was rare in the early 1990s.
At that time, even regular publishing houses mostly printed audio-visual products directly without any awareness of copyright.
"If you put the name of your publishing house on the CD, who else would they come after? Aren't you Bohai Audio and Video Publishing House? If you put Black Sea Audio and Video Publishing House, I wonder if people from Hunan and Hong Kong would still come after you?"
"The Black Sea?"
"You could also name it Mediterranean, Caribbean, Coral Sea, or South, West, North Mountain, or East Mountain. There are plenty of names like that, right? Without copyright fees, your costs are naturally lower. You can sell a CD at half the price of the original. With cheaper CDs, people will want to buy more. This will in turn accelerate VCD sales, increasing its popularity. And with that, your CD business will improve."
"You mean piracy? We bought your audio and video production technology."
"Haha, if you don't do it, someone else will soon. It won't be long before they crack the compression technology of the CD. Pirated copies will be on the market by next year at the latest. We can't do anything about it."
Under normal circumstances, it is not difficult for a new electronic product to be cracked within about two years after it is launched on the market.
Especially for products like VCD, which do not have very high technical content, pirated discs may be available on the market next year.
If the problem of piracy can be solved, will Wanfeng sell the CD production technology for only one or two hundred thousand? It is through this technology that publishers are bleeding a huge amount of money.
But Wan Feng has no way to deal with piracy.
Since the problem of piracy cannot be solved, why not use pirated discs to increase the popularity of BBK VCDs? When his VCDs first reach an installed base of one million units, no other VCDs that come out in the future will pose a threat to him.
Although Wan Yan invented VCD in 1993 in his previous life, he did not capture much market share in a limited time, which created opportunities for Aido later.
Wan Feng would not give any chance to latecomers. By 1995, his VCDs had sold at least one million units.
At that time, the average profit from selling a VCD was 500 yuan, so he could still make 500 million yuan.
On the same day that Huaguang VCD was launched, Motorola released its first generation of Chinese character pagers in Hunan and Hong Kong. Of course, its original style was used by Huaguang's Chinese display, so Motorola came up with a weird appearance.
At this time, the digital pager war with Motorola was still going on, and the price of digital machines had fallen below seven hundred.
On the first day that Motorola's Hanxian machine was launched on the market, Huaguang took the initiative to ignite the war in the Hanxian field. On that day, the price of Hanxian machine dropped by 200 yuan, reaching the 5,000 yuan mark. Three days later, Huaguang reduced the price again by 300 yuan, making the Hanxian machine fall below 5,000 yuan for the first time.
Wan Feng must win this battle. Even if he cannot defeat Motola, he must at least make a name for himself.
This is beneficial to the subsequent release of mobile phones, otherwise it would be impossible for mobile phones to gain much market share in the field dominated by Motorola.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
