Chapter 227: Shockingly Good Value for Money!
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Cheap. It was truly cheap! This low price might even make some think, Could the manufacturers even earn a profit?
Of course they profited. Even though the two versions of Red Pepper Z1 were selling at “friendly prices,” the net profit per unit coming from the hardware was about $50. If sales volume exceeded millions or even tens of millions, the net profit per hardware unit might even reach $100.
In order to support the production of this 100% domestic phone, the essential hardware components were sold to Tiny Pepper Corporation at a highly discounted price. The components included the SX-800 jointly developed by Xing Hai Technologies and Teng Xun Corporation, the LPDDR4 memory chip from Purple Ray, and the internal storage from Da Jiang storage chip factory. They were sold at prices that were only slightly higher than the production costs.
Moreover, other components such as the screen from Oriental Crystal, the motherboard from Shentong Corporation, the camera modules from Ou Feiguang, the battery from Desai Corporation, and so on, were sold at discounted prices to Tiny Pepper. Those manufacturing companies wanted to show their goodwill to Xing Hai Technologies and establish a good business relations.h.i.+p with them.
The price of the communication baseband was a little more expensive. It used the Baron 5000 add-on baseband. Hua Yao Company could be considered one of the more loyal and patriotic companies. They did not charge a particularly high price for the 5G baseband to show their support for the 100% domestic mobile. In addition, they had even waived the communications patent licensing fees, which was equivalent to 3.5% of the mobile phone’s overall selling price.
What about the gangster monopoly of Qualcomm? Even the most advanced 5G communication baseband still needed the CMDA technologies which had been patented in the early ages of mobile communications. One would not be able to make calls on their mobile phones without CMDA technologies. The patents of more than 10,000 CMDA relevant technologies were under the control of Qualcomm. If you wanted the call function on your mobile phone, you had to pay money to Qualcomm.
However, time was the greatest enemy. Most of the CMDA communication patents that were valid for only 20 years would expire after 20X0 and could be used free of charge. Hence, Qualcomm was behaving in a more honest and humble manner the past few years. They could not afford to employ cheap tricks like “Buy our baseband and you’ll get a free CPU” any longer. In addition, most of the products produced by local suppliers in Z countries were characterized by “good quality and low prices.”
Hence, even though the selling price of the 100% domestic phone, Red Pepper Z1, was not high, it still had a certain profit margin. In other words, most of the pure local-made electronics were products of good quality selling at low prices.
However, all of this did not have any significant direct impact on Xing Hai Technologies. No matter if the Red Pepper Z1 flopped or if they flew off the shelves; no matter if Tiny Pepper made a loss or a profit from the mobile phone; Xing Hai Technologies received no revenue from Red Pepper Z1. Chen Jin’s sole purpose in helping Tiny Pepper publicize the product was to aid the distribution of the Star Cloud System. The lower the selling price of Red Pepper Z1, the better.
…
In a testing area where video content creators filmed their product reviews, at the edge of some long and bulky tables, Journalists from hundreds of science and tech media as well as staff from more than ten review organizations were doing their user experience reviews on the newly launched Red Pepper Z1.
A famous review host on Bilibili, the “Mischievous Koala,” was holding a white mobile phone. He began speaking to the camera in front of him. “Let’s do a simple user experience review. We’ll first talk about the phone’s ergonomics. On the front is a 5.8 inch OLED display screen; the back of the phone is made of plastic. A plastic sh.e.l.l on a phone? Doesn’t that belong to ancient times? All right, even though it’s not as good as metal or carbon fiber at dispersing heat, it’s light, very light. The texture and feel of it in the hands is unexpectedly good.” Seeing the tiny crack in the middle of the phone’s body, he mumbled to himself, “This type of phone is the easiest to take apart. I can open up the phone with my bare hands to access its interior. Let’s get into the user experience. The system interface is simple and clean. Touches and movements on the screen are abnormally smooth. Going into Taobao; f**k, it only took about 0.5 seconds. Much faster than any phones that I’ve used. This is really stunning. Opening the app for WeChat, QQ, UC browser, and Dou Yin. The startup speed of the apps is unimaginable. Perhaps this is the advantage of a late entry into the market? The Star Cloud system is far superior to the Android or iOS system. The niche of the Star Cloud in its first entry must be speed! Photos are average. It can take up to 12 million single shots but this should be enough for basic use. With this price, you can’t be too fussy about the quality of the photos taken. Let’s try some games… I’m not seeing this wrong, am I…? It has all the mainstream games like ‘King’s Pesticides,”A Thrilling Battlefield,’ and ‘Crash 3’? It even has the newly launched ‘Crash 4’? It’s only been a few short months, yet Xing Hai Technologies has built up its ecosystem of applications to such a terrifying degree?”
Koala’s mouth hung open. He was truly shocked. Xing Hai Technologies was too terrifying. It had built a complete ecosystem of applications even before the launch of the first 100% domestic phone, when there were only a minority of Star Cloud System users. “We’ll leave that aside and play some games!” He opened the app for “King’s Pesticides” and shot a group of human bots. He nodded. “The phone maintains a frame rate of 60 frames per second easily throughout the entire game. I support the SX-800!” Then he went into a game of “A Thrilling Battlefield.””F**k, what is happening now? Even though its showing HD quality images, it still manages to maintain a full frame run at its peak of 60 frames per second with only the occasional drop to 58 or 57 frames per second. How is this possible? The running benchmark of the SX-800 is only half of the top quality CPUs, how can it have the same frame rate performance?”
The cameraman standing at the side reminded him, “President Chen had mentioned this at the launch, the Star Cloud system is equipped with ‘game super-optimization’ technology. By reducing the level of transcoding, compressing program instructions, and other optimization methods, they doubled GPU performance without the need for increased power consumption. This type of optimization technology is twice as powerful as the GPU-Turbo of Hua Yao phones. Games on the phone have been optimized to an unimaginable peak!”
Koala’s eyes widened and he mumbled, “Just what did I miss in the launch that happened mere moments ago?” After a round of “A Thrilling Battlefield,” he played “Crash 3” for another 10 minutes. Then he touched the back of his hand to the back panel of the phone. He exclaimed in shock, “Where’s the heat? I’ve been playing almost an hour of games non-stop. Why doesn’t the phone feel hot?” How could it not feel hot at all when he had been playing games for an hour? The phone used a plastic sh.e.l.l for its back panel and it was not equipped with graphene in its interior to disperse heat.
The cameraman explained again, “It’s been said at the launch. The Red Pepper Z1 has excellent control of its power consumption. With a full charge, one can play “King’s Pesticide” for up to 18 hours in a row, which is twice as long as can be played on most mobile phones. There is no need to worry about excessive heat and reduction in its CPU frequency.”
Koala was stupefied for a moment. He glanced at the phone again. It still seemed to be roughly crafted. Curiosity welled up in his mind and he could not wait to take it apart to see its internal structure. However, he suppressed this impulse. His conclusion: Due to the outstanding performance of the operating system, the user experience of the Red Pepper Z1 was comparable to the top quality flags.h.i.+ps that were selling for a few thousand dollars. However, this phone was only selling at $999. The 128GB version was also selling at a low price of $1,099! The price of a Red Pepper Z1 costs only about a tenth of an Android or Fruit flags.h.i.+p.
He looked at its appearance again, decked out in a shade of white that was pale as paper. A thought zipped through his mind! He could not help but ask the cameraman, “What is this color called? What white?”
“Woeful White.”
Koala beat his chest and raised his head. He stared at the ceiling light. An expletive suddenly burst from his mouth, “What a f**king amazing ‘Woeful White’!” Whoever thought of this name was a genius. He predicted that mobile phone manufacturers, both domestic and foreign, would have a paper-white expression on their faces after testing out the Red Pepper Z1. The color of their expressions could be suitably described as a “Woeful White.”
“This is a definite victory for Xing Hai Technologies! Via the additional advantages conferred by its operating system, you can now have the user experience of a ten thousand dollar phone for only one thousand dollars. It is part of the natural order that this will be a victory for Xing Hai Technologies!”
The leader of the field was about to be changed. With such ridiculous value for consumers’ money, what else could stand in Z country’s way?
In yesteryears, the smartphone defeated Nokia via its interactive mode, which was an entire generation ahead of its time. Now the secret behind Star Cloud System’s defeat of Android and iOS would be its amazing value for money.
…
After the end of the launch event, the real Chen Jin returned back to his room. Just as he took out his phone, he received a new WeChat message. It was from Su Zipeng.
Chen Jin felt slightly stunned when he saw the contents of the message.
“Brother-in-law. You’re actually… A super bigwig.”