My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 574 The real war has only just begun.

Because Qin Yuye goes on a shopping spree in North America.

Weidong didn't get any of the money from the contract manufacturing; each factory made its own profit.

Even though Wei Dong was the largest individual shareholder of Vacuum Electronics Factory, he could only receive dividends at the end.

He funded the joint venture between Apple and Vacuum Electronics.
The Apple factory was a joint venture between him and Apple Inc.

Then, the keyboard, mouse, and chassis factories were joint ventures between Apple and Xishan General Factory, Third-line Electronic Computer Factory, and Non-ferrous Metal Factory, respectively.

The Xizhou plant, which produces memory card chips, is also a foreign joint venture.

Whenever state-owned assets are involved, he deliberately takes only a symbolic one yuan.

Try to channel profits into worker welfare.

In any case, they're all just taking advantage of Apple's manufacturing system, with the ultimate goal of generating US dollar foreign exchange.

So they simply choose to remain ethical and not make money within the entire OEM industry.

Wei Dong was all too aware of some people's greed. If this foreign-invested business owner could make a lot of money, someone would definitely come to snatch it away and demand a joint venture. If they couldn't snatch it away, then the capitalists would be hanged on lampposts, and they would rather give up the industry than not kill the people to appease public anger.

So they simply made no profit.

It's a thankless task, and we can't morally blackmail them, all for the sake of creating jobs, restructuring, and generating foreign exchange in China.

This would allow Wei Dong to claim patent royalties overseas.

A royalty fee of $10.2 is charged per computer for the use of the mouse, keyboard, computer case, monitor, and pluggable cartridge memory.

He can get $5.6 for each kung fu software package on each computer.

With the current order of 1.5 million units, Wei Dong can earn more than 20 million US dollars before tax!
In addition, memory cards sold separately will receive a commission of $4.8 each, and software packages will receive a commission of $55!

Especially the latter, the software can be copied infinitely, so what cost is there!
For other PCs that rarely use removable cartridges, the disk-based Kungfu software package sold over 600,000 copies within a week of its release!
And this number is increasing by tens of thousands every day!

In Steve's somewhat exasperated yet joyful tone, it was clear that someone was making pirated copies, otherwise selling two million copies wouldn't be a problem!

But it's okay, we'll fix this bug in the next upgrade!
Wei Dong couldn't help but inquire, "Didn't I hear that people in Europe and America are of high quality and never buy pirated goods?"
Steve laughed heartily. Back when he was just a blond-haired kid, his first business deal was with the guy who assembled Apple computers. He made an electronic box that could make free long-distance calls. He was in charge of selling it, and the guy was in charge of manufacturing it.

This is blatant phone theft! Wei Dong immediately realized that you guys are the ones with questionable morals.

Regardless of what the next version of the anti-theft measures will be, the computer sales brought in about 20 million US dollars, which were deposited into the account gradually. The card account brought in more than 7 million US dollars, since the computer cost 3,000 US dollars but only came with a card. I should buy one or two more cards to store some things I like.

The follow-up to this sale is actually very significant.

The software received over forty million US dollars in revenue sharing from its two revenue streams!

And there's a continuous stream of more coming.

Compared to last year when he assisted with sales at the press conference, the transfer of the proceeds, which was purely out of Steve's personal gratitude, amounted to more than 20 million US dollars, and was later invested in the construction of the vacuum electronics factory and the Shanghai Apple factory.

This is a passive income that you can keep eating and earning!
No wonder Bill later became the world's richest man.

Therefore, this money is not included in the foreign exchange data controlled by the Chinese government.

So Qin Yuye followed the advice of Apple's lawyers and financial advisors to do tax avoidance.

Naturally, this involved purchasing real estate in Citibank, starting companies, and establishing a technology foundation...

What surprised Steve and Qin Yuye was that when they asked Wei Dong about these things, they thought they would have to explain to this mainland genius, but he cut them off with a single sentence.

The tax authorities are well aware of these tricks.

However, capitalist countries naturally serve capitalists, so all kinds of rules are tailor-made for them, and they will not overturn the table and settle scores.

Only a fool would do that.

Just don't try to imitate this approach in China.

Seeing Qin Yuye happily buying things everywhere, even reaching for business jets, they quickly stopped her and asked her to discuss with Steve whether it was possible to build the best chip manufacturing plant in mainland China.

Because the 6502 is actually a 10-year-old product, and the one used in Apple computers wasn't that much more advanced.

Steve immediately called Rang Weidong, not because he suspected Rang Weidong of having any ulterior motives, but directly: "You've also discovered our biggest weakness right now?"

Wei Dong said, "Didn't I tell you before? By some twist of fate, I got the exclusive distributorship for IBM Greater China from someone else. I must have gotten all their products here too, and I'm sure I've figured out where the problem with the 86Macintosh is..."

The production of modern computer chips is a super high-tech industry.

Wei Dong had vaguely seen it in some old videos. In short, it was some kind of high-tech silicon clay or something, stretched into a pillar under special high temperatures, then cut into thin slices like pancakes. These slices were then used for photolithography to create chips. One slice could be used to etch many chips, and each fingernail-sized chip contained hundreds of millions of large-scale integrated circuits. There were also good and bad ones; the good ones were used for this, and the bad ones for that.

That's about all he can recall. Right or wrong isn't important; at least it's a basic concept. There were so many discussions about the chip wars in the past few years.

Now he can ask any question in China, and there are plenty of experts to answer him. That's right, China produced its first large-scale integrated circuit in the 1970s, and it was right there in the remote mountains near Jiangzhou.

The first 4K static memory, the first generation operational amplifier, and the first single-supply 16K-bit dynamic memory for a very large-scale integrated circuit were all produced in this third-tier factory.

One theory is that they were once only five years away from reaching international advanced levels.

Of course, after understanding the actual situation, it becomes clear that just like the Xiangshan factory, which can produce SLR cameras, compared to SLR cameras from Nikon and Hasselblad, it only has those two words to it.

Therefore, it's hard to say whether mass production is even possible.

Now, he has quietly assigned a group of experts to work at the Shanghai factory, exposing them to the latest technologies.

The results were reported to him, and Apple's computer chips were really not that advanced.

Steve is quite shrewd; he's a top-notch business strategist who's adept at turning a bunch of mediocre things into the best possible products.

That's why he later influenced the entire internet industry – it was his product manager mindset.

It's not just pure technical experts who rely on heap performance, heap iteration, and heap data that can win.

Use the most suitable components to assemble the most marketable product, use the most attractive story, and sell it at the highest price.

That's his usual tactic.

Therefore, Apple products try to differentiate themselves from other competitors in terms of materials and components, making it difficult for people to make simple comparisons.

Wei Dong hadn't realized this at first.

But these are the reports they gave.

The key point is that the US dollar was more readily available during this period, which allowed Weidong to bring all the products from IBM through legitimate channels as samples for his research experts to compare and disassemble.

The result is this wave of dismantling.

This allowed Wei Dong to see an acquaintance, a rare occurrence.

The most prominent product among them is the IBM PC/AT, which IBM is primarily promoting in mainland China. It costs HK$50,000 per unit, and even the basic wholesale model costs around HK$30,000.

This computer system, which Xu Rao originally planned to recommend to the domestic banking system, cost between 15,000 and 25,000 yuan per unit at the exchange rate at the time. In fact, apart from tariffs, he didn't make any huge profits.

The current price per US dollar is an extremely high level, ranging from four to six thousand.

The CPU, once disassembled, turned out to be an Intel 80286 processor!
Anyone who came from the 1990s and had experience with computers should know this term, right?
Intel is the best CPU brand, the most authentic and the most expensive. In the 1990s, its advertising on TV and in magazines had the highest prestige.

Then, in Shangzhou, there was a derogatory term, "286's head," which describes someone as having a backward mind.

Not to mention that online political commentators often use nicknames like 286 and 386 to express different generational positions of the highest-level status.

It turns out this computer is a 286!

Wei Dong, who had absolutely no computer knowledge, suddenly became nervous.

Because this clearly means pulling onto that track...

After the 286 came the 386 and 486, followed by the Pentium computer. The Pentium seemed to be divided into three types, and in short, we entered the crazy era of computers with increasingly powerful performance and faster and faster upgrades, which everyone knows today!
We need to speed things up!

Wei Dong was very clear that the international computer industry, represented by IBM, had already set up its heavy artillery and was about to accelerate its development in the computer era...

The reason he started dealing with Steve was because, starting from their contact in Japan last year, he felt that Steve wasn't quite a pure businessman.

Unlike commercial behemoths like IBM, which are simply giant business machines, cold and impersonal, only interested in making deals.

Any individual standing before such a behemoth would be utterly powerless and utterly insignificant.

Steve still had that human touch that you can talk to in a startup, and it was probably because I happened to meet him at the Tokyo World Expo when he was ostracized and alone that I was able to get in touch with him.

There isn't such a strong ideological barrier for the mainland either.

Therefore, at this point, Wei Dong would definitely choose to stand on Steve's and Apple's side without hesitation.

He couldn't establish a stable contract manufacturing relationship with IBM either.

The fact that Apple tacitly avoided entering the mainland market, which was thought to be a way for Wei Dong to preserve his computer business territory and not to invade North America with low-priced computers costing two or three hundred dollars, was enough to form a solid strategic alliance.

So now Wei Dong can make it very clear: "The high-end model, which costs six thousand US dollars, comes with a 14-inch color monitor and a 20M hard drive."

Steve certainly knew: "Yes, we can bring that too. For an extra two thousand dollars, we can bring a 20MB hard drive, and our total price will still be about a thousand dollars cheaper."

Let Wei Dong blurt out: "The key point isn't here. On the surface, a 20MB hard drive can store programs from various floppy disks and memory cards on the computer, allowing you to launch any program after booting up. But isn't the most crucial point that this increases the computer's operating load and requires stronger computing power?"

In other words, hard drives led to the expansion of military bases, and an arms race between computers began.

(End of this chapter)