My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 573 Seize the opportunity to be a spendthrift
In fact, while Bill Gates was selling the DOS system to dozens of computer companies, led by IBM, there were many DOS systems on the market.

However, it was only by having his DOS system installed on more than two-thirds of personal computers that he accumulated his first pot of gold.

The only system on the market that can rival it is Apple's Macintosh system.

Originally, it only had about 15% market share, but after Steve Jobs revived the Macintosh computer last year, it managed to climb to one-third of the market share.

But the launch of the 86 Macintosh sent shockwaves through the entire market.

Three months ago, the advertisement was just a beautiful preview, but now the goods can be picked up all over the country.

The entire North American market is going crazy for it!

Apple's California factory had about 400,000 units in stock, and Shanghai Haikou supplied an additional 50,000 units.

Sold out in seconds.

The 50,000 units shipped from Shanghai to the Japanese market sold out instantly.

Even before the launch event, Steve was already confidently ordering parts from various component manufacturers to secure spare parts reserves.

The final assembly plant worked day and night to meet the demand, but still couldn't keep up with the supply.

On the night of the launch event, orders from North America, Europe, and Japan exceeded 1.5 million units!
It's worth noting that the total number of personal computers sold globally last year was only 700 million units.

In the previous six months, the 85 Macintosh computers sold 400,000 to 500,000 units. Now, in just six months, Apple's total computer sales have reached around two million units.

This number has already exceeded IBM's total of 180 million units last year.

Even if a large portion of the goods cannot be delivered yet, this situation will only make sales in the second half of the year even more frenzied.

For IBM computers, which have established a vast sales network around the world, this kind of high-profile, blockbuster sales has always been Steve Jobs' forte.

In fact, Steve Jobs was the originator of the influencer-style sales method used by Lei Jun in China 30 or 40 years later.

Compared to IBM's traditional approach of advertising everywhere on TV and in magazines and sending out a large number of salespeople to promote the market, Apple's strategy of relying on its boss to generate traffic and create buzz felt extremely familiar to Wei Dong.

With the same budget, the same product, and the same TV and magazine advertising, they had the same product.

But Steve's transmission rate was far higher than IBM's.

Consumers are easily swayed by the preconceived notion that they should choose Apple when buying a personal computer.

IBM? Those are all ancient relics, aren't they?

Steve's image easily symbolizes vibrant technological innovation, which makes him more favored by the capital market compared to the century-old IBM.

He is adept at using advanced methods such as press conferences and television broadcasts to quickly convey the product image.

This time, Demimore's new computer, which they started promoting and advertising three months in advance, has finally borne fruit in both style and function. Not only does it look good and have excellent performance, but it also has a surprisingly powerful software package.

For several days in a row, Steve kept calling Wei Dong frantically to urge him to restock!

Because the titanium alloy chassis, the titanium alloy keyboard, and the mouse with a titanium alloy cover are all made in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

By using a brand-new high-strength and high-toughness titanium alloy bending plate, the titanium content has been significantly reduced, resulting in a substantial decrease in titanium consumption.

But Wei Dong also urged Hongguang Factory to ship its monthly output of ten tons of titanium ingots there.

Keep up the good work, the two computer factories across the ocean, one in the east and one in the west, to reach a total monthly production of 300,000 units!

This forced Wei Dong to ask Jinling Factory to send manpower to support the Shanghai Apple Factory, and he even suspended the X Computer workshop to assist the keyboard and mouse workshop in working overtime.

Even at this point, Wei Dong learned from Steve's curses that the European factory was of no help whatsoever!

Anyway, the monthly assembly volume is 20,000 units at a leisurely pace.

They politely declined all requests to increase production capacity because, for Europeans, what they want is to make money steadily. If you suddenly increase production volume, what will happen when it runs out? What will happen to my fixed assets, equipment, factories, and all the workers I've hired if there's no work to do?

So let's just proceed slowly, following the initial designed production capacity.

Wei Dong just laughed out loud. This was the computer age covering the whole world. Even if he didn't understand computers, he knew that this was the real land grabbing across the world.

If the mainland can catch up with this wave of computer harvesting, then it will truly be rolling in profits.

start!
all!
When the Shanghai side communicated by phone, they offered their support without hesitation.

The old security guard with the missing hand used to always look at various jokes and gossip about Beijing and Shanghai on his phone, always equating the two cities as the same. Now that he's actually been in contact with them more, he's changed his mind.

The difference is too great.

Moreover, the support from the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui regions for Shanghai is immense, forming the base of a pyramid.

In 1986, when private enterprises were just beginning to emerge in other provinces, a large number of private enterprises were already providing resources in all aspects.

The non-ferrous metal plant that Rang Weidong had been dealing with for nearly three years was originally just a township enterprise. Now, after acquiring the high-strength and high-toughness titanium alloy plate technology, it has been frantically expanding its production capacity.

They don't have the hesitant mentality of Europeans at all. When it comes to stamping and bending, shipping tens of thousands of units every day is no problem.

Titanium alloy plates do have their own unique characteristics. They were chosen as a space material because they are hard and corrosion resistant.

In other words, it is not easy to rust.

While theoretically all metals will oxidize and react, pure titanium reacts almost zero. Even when added to other metals, the process currently involves simple stamping, bending, sanding, grinding, polishing, and assembly of the casing, without the need for surface painting or other processes.

It exhibits the luster of a frosted alloy surface.

Besides being incredibly cool, the production process is also quite quick.

Therefore, Shanghai immediately took on the production capacity to supply Japan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, and then shipped back to North America.

Compared to the automotive industry, the machinery industry is generally more extensive. Modern automotive joint ventures entering the mainland have all gone through a painful process of mutual adaptation.

The electronics industry is inherently more specialized, especially for those involved in the transformation of the Third Front electronics industry. From the workshops to the workers, they all have extensive experience in electronic component manufacturing processes.

Moreover, the timing of Apple's entry into the factory was excellent, coinciding with the transformation of various third-tier factories, resulting in idle and blank production capacity. A large number of factory workers were mobilized from Shanghai, the Fifth Ministry of Machinery Industry, the Fourth Ministry of Machinery Industry, and the First Ministry of Machinery Industry to participate.

Many factories even believe that getting rid of burdens will reduce labor pressure, and they adhere to the old idea that since everyone is a state-owned factory, the flow of personnel between them is all state-owned anyway, so they send them out freely.

Workers from third-line factories who were originally in mountainous areas and county towns would pack their bags and leave as soon as they heard they were going to work in Zhejiang, Nanjing, Shanghai, or Jiangxi.

The Shanghai Vacuum Electronics Factory, the Display Factory, the Apple OEM Factory, and the Xizhou Semiconductor Factory have employed more than 6,000 skilled workers.

Four thousand people were relocated from the Xishan Electronic Industrial Park in Jiangzhou.

Now they're all in use!
Keep in mind that the FOB price of each Apple computer is $1370!

The price of a monitor with a modified plastic casing is $630, while the price of a host, keyboard, and mouse is $740.

The original color monitor with a bakelite casing was priced at only $420, but the profit margin after the improvement is still over $100.

This would have been absolutely impossible in the OEM export industry of processing trade, and even the profit margin of later electronic products could not have reached this level.

But in the early 1980s...

After years of operating under a dual-track system, domestic manufacturers have adopted advanced external technologies and equipment, but the external world is still unclear about the extent to which domestic manufacturers can control costs.

Even though a significant portion of the electronic components are still shipped from Japan, many parts are still domestically produced in mainland China.

When I first started working with Apple, which was manufactured in contract factories, I didn't have time to delve into the cost of each domestic component.

So it can be considered that they took advantage of the time difference in capitalism.

The gross profit margin for the main unit, keyboard, and mouse is also $150.

Although Apple claims to have huge R&D costs, the computer priced at 2999 has a purchase price of less than half of that, and at most it bears some additional costs for components such as the main chip. The gross profit of over 1000 is still quite astonishing.

The fact that contract manufacturers could also make a profit of two or three hundred dollars surprised all the participating manufacturers.

The Shanghai side was utterly astonished by this daily output of several million US dollars!
Apple pays the offshore price of these thousands of computers every day in US dollars, which is the foreign exchange that China urgently needs.

In the past few years, the various processing trade economies that were developed with great difficulty included clothing products with low prices and meager profits. How could they possibly compare to computers that cost thousands of dollars each?

These days, it's the second highest value-added industrial product after automobiles.

Even if you haul a whole boatload of bed sheets, towels, and canned goods, you won't get many dollars in return.

Therefore, Shanghai is doing everything it can to ensure production.

Wei Dong estimated that later, some provinces went all out to ensure Apple's mobile phone manufacturing, which was also the situation.

However, by then Apple was already very mature and sophisticated, and the company and its contract manufacturers were extremely stingy with every penny.

The OEM factories currently registered under Rang Weidong's name are still operating in a very rudimentary manner.

He, the factory owner, should have been the one to act as a traitor, desperately cutting costs and squeezing out lower prices, making a fortune as a middleman.

As a result, he didn't even bother to go to the site, and directly handed over the work to Apple's engineers, on-site staff, and a bunch of college students he had sent to work there.

Capitalists don't need to do everything themselves.

So, as planned, Lao Geng went to Shanghai first to oversee the construction of a residential complex next to the electronics industrial park, which would provide 2400 housing units for the factory.

It primarily provides housing for employees of vacuum electronics factories, Apple factories, and display factories.

Their income is quite good now, and they can be considered a mainstay in the purchase of commercial housing.

It can also drive the relocation of housing from downtown Shanghai to the urban-rural fringe areas near the airport.

Throughout July, in addition to tens of thousands of Apple computers being continuously shipped out, various equipment was being transported to Shanghai to expand production capacity.

Wei Dong was still a little puzzled, so he went to Lao Huang and the others to ask, "Didn't we hear that Western imperialism has been blocking our high technology? How come it's so easy?"

The experts at the Third Front factories only knew roughly that the blockade was due to the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), an international organization that imposed embargoes and trade restrictions on socialist countries.

However, with the struggles of the 1980s, at least for now, many of the blockades on the mainland have been lifted, and all kinds of advanced equipment are being sold. This is one of the reasons why our foreign exchange reserves have been depleted, as there are too many things we want to buy.

Wei Dong suddenly remembered that this matter seemed to have come to an abrupt end later, right?

Then hurry up and buy whatever you can.

(End of this chapter)