Chapter 490: Selling crazy

Since the collapse of the Nasdaq stock market in the United States, the international IT industry has fallen into a fog. Without the support of venture capitalists who spent a lot of money in the past, Internet companies have finally exposed their weaknesses of being unable to make a profit and embarked on the road of bankruptcy. For the past, they only care about the maximum rate of operation and just blindly rely on making a fortune in the future, they have been sentenced to death. Internet tycoons who survived through this turbulent baptism have also given up the practice of acquiring famous brand companies in a high-profile manner. Turn around and lick the wound silently, accumulating strength to wait for the next Internet tide to come.

Since Internet companies have all shrunk their front lines, the large orders they have placed before with many IT hardware manufacturers have naturally become a silly blunder. In addition, the stock price of the entire IT industry caused by the Nasdaq collapse has directly led to the prospects of hardware companies being particularly bleak.

The wave of collapse of Internet companies means that the faster chips needed for the rapid development of enterprises, super-computers and servers that are super-performance but consume equally amazingly, and the software and services required to play their functions have become clouds. When major companies announced their company performance expectations for next year, they have all lowered their pain and made a big cut, not seeking success but seeking no mistakes.

At the peak of the Internet boom in 1999, three companies broke the world's stock market value record, the 500 billion US dollar mark! These three companies are all related to the IT industry. They are the champions in their respective fields - Cisco, Intel and General Electric, among which Microsoft even broke through $600 billion. Although they have not been on the throne of a market value of $500 billion, compared with the current prosperity, the stock prices of these three companies have been sold due to the bursting of the Internet bubble. The stock prices have fallen all the way, and now they are less than 60% of the peak.

Even the industry bosses are too busy to take care of themselves, and other IT companies are even more in the cold winter and have to take various measures to deal with the crisis. The emergence of a revolutionary new product is undoubtedly a good way to restore customers' psychology. So in July 200, when Hong Kong, which has always been regarded as being behind in IT, a company launched an Internet laptop with a price of half the price of similar products, a small appearance, thin and easy to carry, the entire market caused a sensation.

The netbook was only discussed in a small way in the industry for the first two or three days. At first, everyone regarded it as a toy-like consumer electronics product in the OPC plan, but soon people found that it was easy to operate, fully functional, and able to achieve the basic functions of an ordinary laptop. The key is that the price is half the price! However, the most authoritative fashion consumer electronics magazine in the United States, "Wire", then published the review article of the netbook and gave it a "epoch-making product in the history of computer development", and the sales suddenly became popular.

Negroponte, the main writer of "Wire", is one of the collaborators of the OOLPC project initiated by Yang Xing and others, so this article is very suspicious of soft advertising. At the same time, many industry insiders have also expressed that there are many shortcomings in surfing netbooks. They are barely more functional than laptops, and can only run through the most basic computer programs, and do not have much use value.

But consumers have a bright vision. With the Skimer browser, 80% of their work can be solved online by using the Skimer browser. The built-in multimedia and wifi Internet function of Tai Chi CPU is quite practical when watching online downloaded audio and videos and places such as Starbucks, McDonald's or airports that allow free access to the Internet. In the United States and Japan, the Internet has been very developed, and has immediately set off a wave of attention to netbooks. In just a few days, the web pages promoted by Starbucks Network for Olpc were squeezed by various inquiries and questions about netbooks, which almost collapsed. What everyone is most concerned about is when will the netbook be released?

As if to make everyone's appetite higher, the manufacturer of netbooks, Superstar Computer, has immediately thrown out a more attractive cake. Superstar Computer announced on the main page of the Star Store online store that it will simultaneously release a number of netbooks of different sizes and colors around the world in August. Among them, the most popular are 7-inch and 10-inch screen size netbooks. Although the 7-inch netbook has the weakest single data, it is jointly developed with Stardust Communications, and it has the ability to make calls and use 2.5-generation mobile communication technologies such as GPRRS or CDMaone to access the Internet. It is a large S smartphone! So it is expensive.

The 10-inch netbook is recognized by the industry as the best golden ratio for thin and light laptops. It can not only meet the minimum requirements of most computer programs, but also control the weight and size of the body. In the function display advertisement specially played on the promotional web page, a beautiful model took out a white netbook that was only slightly larger than A4 paper from a large envelope bag, surfing the Internet with a smile, listening to music, watching movies, playing games, and finally specifically marked the time it took to do all this - a full 5 hours! This item alone far exceeded the time when the laptop used the battery for the same period.

August 11th is the day when netbooks are officially sold. At the foot of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, the United States, the American flagship store of Nebula Electronics was crowded with people. As soon as the twelve o'clock in the middle of the night, a fanatical enthusiast rushed in and rushed to buy them. Some American media reporters calculated here that on average, five netbooks were bought every minute. Within three days after netbooks were put on the shelves, the inventory of 100,000 netbooks prepared by Nebula Electronics Store in the five major cities in the United States was stolen and a new computer sales record was born!

Not only did the netbooks go crazy, but this sales feast also made the industry related to netbooks popular. This time, the first wave of netbook sales were all selected in Nebula Electronics' specialty stores. Nebula Electronics spent a huge amount of money to buy real estate decoration stores in the heart of big cities in Europe and the United States last year.

It is just because Nebula Electronics has been established for a short time. Although it has heavyweight products such as S series smartphones and MMP music players, the brand is not attractive enough and its sales performance has been mediocre. However, the glass house where Yang Xing displayed smart homes at the World Conference last year made Nebula Electronics' high-rise buildings suddenly open, and unified decoration of specialty stores, highlighting the sales atmosphere more, and no longer focusing on low prices.

For example, in this netbook promotion, the sales staff did not vigorously boast about the price of US$499,599, but instead taught customers step by step how to use netbooks and answered various questions, which made customers feel very satisfied. The sales of major specialty stores soared, not only were the netbooks sold out, but also caused the sales of many surrounding digital products to rise sharply. At the same time, it subtly established the brand image of Nebula Electronics in the minds of customers.

The great success of netbooks has also made industry insiders curious about its CPU. Although Nebula Electronics is vigorously promoting the characteristics of netbooks such as long standby, lightweight, low power consumption, Internet access and multimedia, it is closed to the origin of several key components that make up netbooks. However, it only takes a small disassembly to see the clues.

Soon, Xingmang Microelectronics, a company under Nebula Electronics, has never been seen by everyone, and became the focus of attention in the industry. It actually launched a CPU that can be comparable to Intel and Amd in a calm expression! It surprised everyone. With its ability to reach 80% of the functions of similar products in other companies, as well as its unique secrets such as wireless Internet access and multimedia applications, especially the low purchase price, many flexible computer manufacturers became interested in Tai Chi CPU, and contacted Nebula Electronics in private and expressed their purchasing intentions. The CPU boss Intel was very nervous and announced the launch of a new product with low power consumption and cheaper to challenge Tai Chi CPU.

Of course, another winner of the hot sales of netbooks is the OPC program. Superstar Computer not only donated 10,000 netbooks to the program, but also promised to donate one dollar to the program for every netbook sold, which attracted widespread attention and participation from IT practitioners. The slogan "Help children who cannot use computers use netbooks" spread suddenly, and many people donated generously. Even Bill Gates, Buffett and others donated corresponding funds, making this charity project that was originally used as a promotional gimmick for netbooks come true.

The first batch of Olpc dedicated netbooks have been delivered to Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries in Southeast Asia. Yang Xing, Li Zekai, Li Xianyang, and Negroponte also appeared on the cover of the special issue of the August issue of Time magazine. On them, they looked straight ahead with a prominent title under the photo with their hands folded in their chests and looked straight ahead, "The perfect combination of chasing money and charity, the success of Olpc!"

However, at this time, Yang Xing could not enjoy the joy of successful sales of netbooks. He is now staying in Shenzhen Nanfang Xingcheng waiting for the final result of a boring work, which is to repeatedly calculate the highest peak of a super computer's calculation. Originally, it only required professional scientists to come forward, but this test is of great importance. After the end, he had to welcome big figures from the central government to inspect. The qualifications of those present were not enough, so Yang Xing had to come to accompany him.

This is another additional bonus when developing CPUs. When Yang Xing was secretly developing Tai Chi CPUs, he also set up another group to conduct parallel research. At that time, considering that many of the Tai Chi CPU design teams were foreign researchers, the main team was based on the acquisition of multiple foreign companies, such as the patented technology of x86 chip architecture, and was authorized by Intel. Under the US high-tech control over China, Yang Xing took a lot of effort to open up the review link of the US Foreign Investment Commission. So in order not to be controlled by others, Yang Xing mainly relied on domestic experts to establish another CPU R&D team.
Chapter completed!