Top of the big era

On November 6, Zhou Buqi and his party went to South Korea and reached a further cooperative relationship with Hyundai Group.

Now, both parties have a lot of business dealings.

For example, the Korean Internet business was invested by Ziweixing and Hyundai Group. Nominally it is the Internet assets of Hyundai Group, but in fact the majority of the shares are owned by Ziweixing.

At the same time, the sales of Aster2 mobile phones in South Korea also rely on the channels of Hyundai Group.

Unfortunately, this business failed miserably.

The total sales volume has not even exceeded 200,000.

You know, since the Korean authorities further approved the access of smartphones in June this year, a total of more than 7 million smartphones have been sold!

Among them, there are nearly 2.6 million iPhone 3gs, and the rest of the share is almost divided between Samsung and LG.

In the smartphone market, it may be difficult to gain ground in South Korea.

However, the blind box guarantees no problem!

Chaowan Commune has successively obtained the exclusive rights to player blind boxes from Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, and Liverpool, and there are no competitors.

Park Ji-sung is the face of Korean football and can exploit this further.

Gradually, Zhou Buqi began to feel more and more the importance of players in promoting the team's derivatives market.

South Korea and Japan are both rich and have very strong spending power, much stronger than Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia and so on. The whole of South America taken together may not be comparable to South Korea, which has a population of only 50 million.

South Korea and Japan are very fanatical about football, and their overall football level is not world-class. However, these two countries can occasionally produce one or two world-famous stars, such as Hidetoshi Nakata, Park Ji-sung, Son Heung-min, Shinji Kagawa and others. .

In this way, it will be easier to control the Korean and Japanese football markets. If you buy their most powerful stars, you can dominate the derivatives market.

This kind of business idea can be called stable and ruthless.

Zhou Buqi has some connections in South Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia. The sales of Manchester United’s blind boxes in these areas do not require too many middlemen. Chaowan Commune can just go there and connect directly.

Cooperate in the simplest way, the "wholesale-retail" model.

Chaowan Commune wholesales blind boxes to Hyundai in South Korea, Zhengda in Thailand, and Jingtao in Japan, and then lets these three local companies do advertising to sell products.

For example, the official retail price of Manchester United blind box is 7.99 pounds, and it is sold to them at a wholesale price of 4-5 pounds. Then they don’t need to worry too much about how to price and what kind of sales strategy they want to formulate.

Zhou Buqi was on a business trip in South Korea for two days, then returned to the capital, attended two meetings, and then went to the capital to investigate projects of the International Department.

On November 10, Zhou Buqi accepted Tang Binchen's invitation and went to Tokyo.

Japan is Tang Binchen's territory and is now like an independent kingdom. Although US$200 million was transferred from Ziweixing International Headquarters two months ago, Ziweixing Japan still has a cash flow of US$370 million on its books.

There is no way, while other regions are burning money like a bottomless pit, Ziweixing Japan is already making a steady stream of profits. Tang Binchen has guaranteed that Japan will create at least US$100 million in net profits next year.

Zhou Buqi thought he was talking about the game business. Unexpectedly, he had already leapfrogged and set his sights on the European and American markets.

As soon as they met, Tang Binchen put down all the work in his hands, closed the door, and said anxiously: "UCgram, are you paying attention?"

"UCgram?" Zhou Buqi reacted for a moment, then thought about what kind of product it was, "UC Beauty?"

Tang Binchen said: "Yes, it is the English version of UC Beauty, developed for the European and American markets."

Zhou Buqi didn't get much information about the European and American versions.

Then there is only one answer, this product has not been made. If it had become popular, someone would have given him the good news long ago.

"Any questions?"

"The download volume of UCgram is less than expected. It was launched on Android and Apple in July. The total download volume is now only 5 million, and the retention rate is less than 40%."

Tang Binchen was not satisfied with this result.

In fact, it is already very good to be able to produce such a report card in such a short time.

What does 5 million downloads mean?

Ten years from now, a newly launched new type of product will require at least 300 million to 400 million yuan in promotion fees to achieve such a scale.

But at this time, it’s really not enough.

There are fewer smartphones now than there will be ten years ago, but there are also fewer apps!

There is no competition.

As far as photo editing apps are concerned, there is only one product like this in the entire Apple Store and Google Store. The technical difficulty of photo editing software is not low, especially now that the performance of smartphones is very poor.

Ordinary developers dare not get involved in this field.

The process of retouching involves modifying, painting, rendering, and automatically correcting the original image, which requires a lot of computing power. Without many years of relevant experience and technical optimization levels, even a mobile phone developed would not be able to run.

UCgram's product design actually requires a lot of amazing ideas to be made simpler so that the phone can run.

Therefore, UCgram has no competitors in the world.

If smartphone users want to retouch pictures on their mobile phones, for now, there is only one product called UCgram. Without competition, it is much easier to operate. It has accumulated 5 million downloads in 4 months, which is a bit unsatisfactory.

This idea is all in vain.

Zhou Buqi had already had psychological expectations and said: "It's not surprising. I have said before that European and American culture is different from our Confucian culture. Photo editing is popular in China, Japan and South Korea, and young people in Europe and the United States admire it. It’s confidence and authenticity, they are not very interested in this kind of photo editing software.”

Tang Binchen disagreed, "That's not necessarily true!"

"Yeah?"

"Young people in Europe and the United States are also in great demand for photo editing software. However, what they modify is not their own appearance, but to cover some background pictures. Or they can crop and organize the pictures appropriately to create some personalized displays."

Zhou Buqi asked: "What does it matter?"

Tang Binchen looked incomprehensible and said with a smile: "Grab the key point and show it!"

Zhou Buqi no longer pays attention to product details, and he really doesn't understand. "Show, are there any questions?"

Tang Binchen said: "Nowadays, social networking sites cannot upload pictures for display. Facebook can, but Twitter cannot. But Facebook is a social network for acquaintances, and the circle is very narrow. After taking photos, confident and sunny young people want to show them Get in front of more people.”

This topic falls on the server again.

The picture is so big that the storage space occupied by one picture can store 1 million words.

Therefore, many websites do not provide the function for users to upload images to the server, and users can only display text.

Including some chat software.

Mobile chat software such as MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and Google Talk were developed long ago, but Helo succeeded in defeating them.

Why?

A very important point is that Ziweixing dares to invest and spend money to provide the picture transmission function for Helo on the mobile phone.

Smartphone users can now send pictures to friends through Helo!

For many young people, this is simply a technological revolution!

In the era without Helo, what should young people do if they want to send pictures to each other? You have to pay a high price to send MMS messages. Moreover, the technical means of MMS are too poor, the picture distortion is too serious when the signal is converted, and the clarity is far inferior to that of Helo.

When the financial crisis hit, Twitter relied on the US$30 million on its books to hold on. Facebook is different. It would rather lower its valuation proactively than raise hundreds of millions.

Part of the reason is that Twitter can only send text, while Facebook can send pictures.

In the previous life, domestic Sina Weibo also did not have a picture function. Later, Penguin entered the market and launched Penguin Weibo, intending to start grabbing territory. In June 2010, it first launched the function of uploading pictures. This intensified the competition, and many domestic "Weibo-type" products have opened the picture function. .

Zhou Buqi gradually understood, and said slowly: "It's really like this. We don't know when the financial crisis will be over. Venture capital institutions are tightening their money bags, and Internet companies don't dare to make big changes in their products." big investment.”

Tang Binchen said: "Yes, I looked at the data. One of the most popular functions in Helo is to send photos to each other among friends. Many people use UCgram to simply modify and adjust the pictures to make them perfect. Make it cooler and send it to your friends via Helo."

"Where's Facebook?"

"The Facebook mobile app currently does not have the function to upload pictures. If users want to upload, they need to import the pictures into their computer and then transfer them to the website through the computer, which is too troublesome."

Zhou Buqi guessed something, "Is it like this? The function of uploading pictures requires relatively high computing power, which is difficult to do with today's smartphones?"

Tang Binchen said with a smile: "There is such a factor. Facebook has too many functions, so you have to make choices. Helo has fewer functions, so it can be done."

Zhou Buqi said "hmm" and nodded.

Because of his knowledge of the amazing product "WeChat", he has a lot of fantastic ideas for Helo's product design. However, many of these ideas were shelved by the product department to be documented for later use.

Mobile phone software is different from computer software. Mobile phone software will be severely restricted by the performance of the mobile phone. We can only adopt a method of "running fast in small steps, updating quickly and iterating quickly".

A new version is developed every week to upgrade the mobile App, updating it bit by bit to explore the compatibility of new functions with the mobile phone.

Tang Binchen has known this for a long time and said solemnly: "According to Moore's Law, the performance of each generation of mobile phones can be improved by about 50%. When the next generation of mobile phones appears next year, I believe that some apps with basic functions will be available The soil for survival. I think we can make predictions for the next generation of products.”

"UCgram?"

"Not only UCgram, but also YikYak, which is not very popular in Europe and the United States."