Extraordinary Genius
Chapter 744 – Future plans
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WithIron-fist Zhu’s help, Feng Yu got a Hong Kong pa.s.sport in the morning 3 dayslater. His China Pa.s.sport was still valid.
AfterFeng Yu got his pa.s.sport, he contacted the US side and then fly to New Yorkwith some of his Hong Kong staffs.
The lasttime Feng Yu went to the US was to trick Pfizer Company. But this time, Feng Yuwill be staying in the US for a while. The US economy was thriving in this era.Although the growth was not more than 4% and average at 3%, it was stillalarming because of its strong base.
Therewere a lot of opportunities in the US during this era. This was also the timewhen the US tech industry developed. Telecommunications, PC, technology,software, etc. will replace the US traditional manufacturers as the primaryindustry.
Thistrip, Feng Yu had targeted 3 industries. PC, software, and telecommunications.These were also the industries he wanted to introduce in China.
Telecommunicationsdoes not need any further explanations. Pagers will be slowly replaced bymobile phones. After 1999, SMS technology was introduced, and it could managemore than 500 SMS every second. This was the technology that killed pagers.
Feng Yu’splan for Aiwa Electronics was to introduce the Aiwa brand and Wind and Rainbrand of mobile phone before 1997. Then they will modify their factories’production line. Pager production will stop within 3 years after the mobilephones are introduced in the market.
Thisdecision puzzled many people at Aiwa Electronics. They felt pagers should stillbe in the market for at least the next 10 years. They should increase theirproductions to meet the demand. Why are they withdrawing from the pager marketso early?
Feng Yutold them that after mobile phones have SMS services, pagers will be obsolete. Thestaff at Aiwa Electronics does not believe. It was because the messaging systemnow could only process 1 short message per second. That’s why there was a longdelay. SMS now was not as convenient as pagers.
No onewould expect the SMS technology would develop so fast. In the future, it couldprocess 16,000 messages in a second, and SMS was the most popular feature usedby mobile phone users. This was because SMS cost the lowest. It was about thesame as pagers.
Feng Yutold his staffs at Aiwa electronics that this is an order. There’s no room fordiscussion. Feng Yu was the main shareholder and could make the overall decisionas long as it is not against the law. He can override the decisions made byother shareholders.
For thePC industry, Feng Yu will leave it to Lenovo. Lenovo was good at controllingtheir manufacturing cost. China taxes on imported electronic products were high,and Lenovo will be starting a price war this year. They wanted to take over thewhole China market.
Soon, itwill be the PC era as Windows 95 operating system will be launch soon.
Thisoperating system was the main reason the PC became popular. It was simple,convenient, fast, user-friendly. Users only need to click on the mouse, andthey could operate it. Even seniors and children can operate it. Microsoft willalso introduce Internet Explorer. This dramatically increases the developmentof the internet.
This wasa great opportunity that cannot be missed. It might be impossible for Lenovo tobecome a world-cla.s.s PC manufacturer now, but it should not be a problem forthem to control the Chinese market.
Lenovohad signed contracts with many companies to supply parts for their hardwareproducts. They will also be producing the core components in China. This yearwill be China’s PC peak!
Feng Yuwants Lenovo to seize this opportunity, and Liu Chuanzhi agreed. He also feltthis was the right time to start a price war.
Lenovo inthis life was different from Feng Yu’s previous life. In his previous life,Lenovo had to get listed in Hong Kong to raise funds for its development. Inthis life, Feng Yu had invested in Lenovo directly and stopped them fromgetting listed.
Feng Yuwanted Lenovo to wait for a few more years. Even if Lenovo were to get listednow, they have to pick the best location for their listing. The top choice nowis the US. Regardless whether if it is NYSE or the Nasdaq, both are much betterthan Hong Kong.
In FengYu’s previous life, Lenovo was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and gotdelisted after a few years. Feng Yu does not want this to happen again. Gettingdelisted will affect the confidence of the investors.
Feng Yu firmlyoppose Lenovo to get listed now. He does not want his shares to be diluted now.Unless he could purchase more shares internally and his proportion of his stakein the company will not be affected, he will never allow the company to belisted.
As forsoftware, Lenovo is also working hard to develop their software products. FengYu made some suggestions to Liu Chuanzhi. The number one Chinese softwaredeveloper company, Kingsoft, in Feng Yu’s previous life, was alreadyestablished. There were lots of talents in this company.
If Lenovocould acquire Kingsoft, then they will be able to gain a stronger foothold inthe Chinese market. They would have software and hardware to go hand-in-hand.
LiuChuanzhi also likes those developers at Kingsoft. They were quite famous in thesoftware developers’ circles. But they are not the best developers in Chinanow.
China’sbest software company in this era is Rising. But it was owned by the government,and Feng Yu doesn’t suggest acquiring them. Liu Chuanzhi had wanted to mergewith both Rising and Kingsoft but was stopped by Feng Yu.
Risingwas a good company, but if they merged with Lenovo, Lenovo’s shareholdingstructure would collapse. Rising’s backing was too powerful. They were sopowerful that they might takeover Lenovo.
Kingsoft wasa better choice. They were strong in software development too and does not havea strong backing. It will be easy for Lenovo to take over them. Also, Kingsoft wasthe most advanced when it comes to Chinese language software.
In thecurrent era, no companies in the world could catch up with Microsoft when itcomes to the operating system. Feng Yu also did not expect his companies todevelop an operating system which was better than Win95 now.
But itwas crucial to creating a Chinese version of Win95. Microsoft still does nothave operating systems in other languages except for English.
If there was only an English version ofWin95, then it will be difficult for it to be introduced in China. Feng Yuremembered that it was Kinston that developed the Chinese language pack forWindows operating system in his previous life.
But later, Kingsoft used Microsoft system’s codes and produced a free versionof the operating system. They were sued by Microsoft, and lots of their topdevelopers quit after Kingsoft lost. Kingsoft changed its direction after thatand entered the mobile phone systems. They started Xiao Mi and Lei Jun, theformer boss of Kingsoft, entered the limelight again!
Feng Yu intends to replicate US current successfuldevelopment in China. He wants to let China companies takeover and acquire UScompanies.
Now, Feng Yu was going to the US to checkout the businesses there.
Translator’s notes:
WPS software. First Chinese-language word processor designed anddeveloped for the China market.
Jun