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Chapter 394 0384 [Meizu Phone is About to Be Released]

Chen Guiliang had an exceptionally fulfilling Christmas this year.

On Christmas Eve, I drove to the Central University for Nationalities, bringing gifts to accompany Tao Xue to the movies. The most popular films were "If You Are the One" and "Forever Enthralled," and Chen Guiliang decisively chose the former.

On Christmas noon, he accompanied Xu Fengyin to have Western food and they skipped work to play for half an afternoon.

When Chen Guiliang got home that evening, he spent time with Bian Guanyue. Bian Guanyue said she wanted to watch a movie, so Chen Guiliang watched "If You Are the One" for the second time...

To be honest, I'm a little tired.

New Year's Day is just around the corner, and we've entered 2009.

Bullog.cn, which claimed to "never delete posts," was not spared from this storm and moved its servers to the United States to continue operating.

However, Luo Taijun also created a website called "Yanniu.com" in mainland China, which means "the castrated Bullog.cn". He also wrote sarcastic articles, which attracted a large group of public intellectuals to write articles in agreement. "Yanniu.com" became a gathering place for yin-yang masters as soon as it was launched.

"Good luck! Don't be nervous." Chen Guiliang escorted Bian Guanyue to the postgraduate entrance examination site.

Bian Guanyue said with a relaxed expression, "Don't worry, I've already made adjustments."

Chen Guiliang said, "We'll celebrate when I get back."

The game industry annual meeting coincided with Bian Guanyue's postgraduate entrance exam, and Chen Guiliang still had to fly to Qingdao today.

You can't not participate.

They have the exact same name; both are game industry annual conferences.

One was organized by a unit under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, held at the Great Hall of the People, and presented an award called the Golden Finger Award. It lasted half a day.

One is sponsored by the State Administration of Press and Publication, held annually in different locations, and the award presented is called the Golden Phoenix Award. It lasts for three days.

Whether it's the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology or the State Administration of Press and Publication, Chen Guiliang has to give them face and must attend in person.

Bian Guanyue waved goodbye and turned to walk into the postgraduate entrance examination site.

Chen Guiliang said to Yang Shuo, "Go to the airport."

Yang Shuo excitedly said while holding the steering wheel, "I've been looking at houses every month for the past two or three months. You guessed right, house prices have been falling. I'm even thinking of postponing the wedding and waiting a few more months to buy a house and get married."

Chen Guiliang said, "Just buy it, getting married is the most important thing. Don't buy a house too far away, it'll be inconvenient for your commute. It doesn't matter if it's a little more expensive, I'll lend you whatever you're short on the down payment. You need to keep some money on hand, don't make the wedding too shabby."

"Okay, when I get back from Qingdao this time, I'll take my girlfriend to buy a house," Yang Shuo said happily, his spirits high with joy.

This year, housing prices in 80% of Beijing's residential communities have continued to decline, with a general drop of 20% to 30%, and some individual properties experiencing a drop of more than 40%.

But the decline won't last long. Promotions around the Spring Festival will cause sales to pick up again.

As soon as transaction volume rebounded, housing prices followed suit with tentative increases.

Buy more as prices rise!

If Yang Shuo buys a house for his wedding in January, it will be the perfect time, as he has chosen the lowest point in Beijing's housing prices—the lowest point in two years and more than ten years.

Upon arriving at the airport, the car was left in the parking lot, and Chen Guiliang led Yang Shuo through security.

The waiting hall was quite crowded. When his phone rang, Chen Guiliang found a coffee shop and sat down.

The phone call came from Zhou Guangping, head of HarmonyOS phone R&D: "Meizu announced that they have obtained a mobile phone license, which they got a week ago. They have also released photos of the phone online, as well as its main specifications. It's a smartphone!"

Chen Guiliang asked, "When will the Meizu phone be released?"

Zhou Guangping said, "After the Lantern Festival comes Valentine's Day."

“We need to speed up the process, but more importantly, we need to ensure quality,” Chen Guiliang said.

Zhou Guangping said, "Our mobile phone may still need another seven or eight months of research and development. If serious problems arise in the middle, the time could be extended to a year."

Chen Guiliang's response remained the same eight words: "Accelerate research and development, and ensure quality."

“I will try my best,” Zhou Guangping said, feeling immense pressure. “I will apply for funding. The previous R&D expenses have been almost used up.”

Chen Guiliang said, "I'll give you another 3000 million. You have plenty of funds; come back to me when you run out!"

Screw the budget.

That thing is used for breakthroughs.

Zhou Guangping even swore: "I'll work overtime to get this done, give them triple pay plus huge bonuses. Let's get the engineering machine out within three months!"

Sigh, quite a few people's hairlines are going to recede again.

Chen Guiliang put down his phone, picked up his coffee, and took a sip. He frowned slightly; no matter how many times he tried, he still couldn't get used to the burnt taste.

Once the HarmonyOS phone passes the mass production review, he will have Youke develop two mobile games.

A game called Fruit Ninja.

A game called Match-3.

As for ByteDance, they plan to launch a stripped-down version of WeChat.

It has to be a stripped-down version!

If something like this can't be recorded or sent, or can't be used for voice or video calls, it will inevitably be jointly suppressed by the operators.

To put it simply, when China Mobile launched Fetion, it couldn't send messages to China Unicom users.

It was only after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology intervened that users of China Mobile and China Unicom could send messages to each other via Fetion. Chen Guiliang dared to launch WeChat this year mainly because policies were gradually changing.

A week ago, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom officially obtained 3G licenses and are planning a massive rollout of 3G networks this year. The network conditions for launching WeChat are now in place.

Yesterday, the regulations issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology at the end of last year came into effect: the differential pricing between mobile phone text messages within and between networks was abolished, and each text message is charged a uniform fee of 0.1 yuan.

Although WeChat messages use data traffic and have little to do with SMS pricing, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's new regulations have a deeper meaning: operators such as China Mobile and China Unicom are not allowed to engage in monopolistic practices, and are not allowed to forcibly set up barriers that cause inconvenience to users.

If it were last year, Chen Guiliang would have been crushed by the telecom operators if he had dared to develop mobile instant messaging software, even if it only allowed text messaging.

Even Mobile QQ was targeted by China Mobile. At the time, Fetion wanted to merge with Mobile QQ, which put enormous pressure on Tencent.

After Tencent managed to pull through, they even staged a heavily modified version of "The White-Haired Girl" at the company's annual meeting.

The plot is roughly as follows: Huang Shiren (via Feixin) tries to force Xi'er (via mobile QQ) into marriage, but Xi'er resolutely refuses. Xi'er then throws various valuable items at Huang Shiren's face with sarcastic remarks.

Compared to pressure from carriers, the lack of interoperability between different phone brands is the most significant challenge in promoting WeChat. This is because Chen Guiliang's WeChat is developed based on the HarmonyOS mobile operating system.

Chen Guiliang had a chat with Guo Feng some time ago, and Guo Feng then convened a meeting of technical personnel to discuss the matter.

The mainstream approach is to develop based on open instant messaging protocols such as XMPP. As long as the same protocol specifications are followed, different mobile phone systems can theoretically exchange messages.

Of course, it's only "theoretically" possible!
In practice, all sorts of problems will definitely arise.

Guo Feng also had a brilliant strategist who came up with a very creative and bizarre idea: to encapsulate WeChat instant messages into emails, send them via SMTP to the target user's mobile carrier or mail server, and then have the recipient's server parse and deliver them to the corresponding client.

In this way, the interoperability problem between different mobile phone systems is solved, and WeChat is disguised as a mobile email to eliminate the suspicion of operators such as China Mobile and China Unicom.

So, what is the price?

Users experience some delay in sending and receiving WeChat messages, and data charges are much higher (approximately 30% higher).

In particular, data traffic fees were already high in 2009, which could potentially deter users.

Even now, Guo Feng's side is still arguing over the two plans.

After much debate, everyone has leaned towards the third option: learning from the approach taken by mobile QQ.

This involves developing dedicated client programs for different mobile operating systems, and then connecting these clients to a unified backend server for information exchange.

The downside is that it is time-consuming and labor-intensive.

First, develop a WeChat client for the Symbian system—currently, Symbian is the mainstream system in the Chinese smartphone market, with a market share of approximately 75% in 2009. Android, on the other hand, only had a market share of 0.3%. Apple's iOS system didn't even have data because it couldn't access the Chinese telecommunications network.

We also need to develop a client for the Windows Mobile system, which has a market share of about 22% in China.

Once the HarmonyOS phone passes mass production approval, we will develop the WeChat client for the HarmonyOS system.

"Boarding time is approaching," Yang Shuo reminded him.

Chen Guiliang stood up and strolled toward the boarding gate.

He walked through the VIP passage and walked inside, absentmindedly playing with his Symbian smartphone.

That's right, he's using a Nokia smartphone now.

To be honest, if he hadn't been reborn, Chen Guiliang would hardly have imagined that Nokia would decline.

Whether it's smartphones or feature phones, Nokia phones are at their peak in China this year. Their market share is frighteningly high; no one would believe it's going to collapse.

After boarding the plane and taking a seat, the flight attendants were particularly enthusiastic. They probably already recognized Chen Guiliang and would occasionally walk over to him unintentionally.

After the plane took off and stabilized, the flight attendant came over again to ask what services were needed.

"I need to rest, thank you." Chen Guiliang closed his eyes.

"Then I won't bother Mr. Chen any longer." The flight attendant smiled and left the first-class cabin.

Sigh, there's nothing you can do when someone is too handsome.

This year's annual meeting was held in Qingdao, a tourist city where the air quality is much better than in Beijing during winter.

Chen Guiliang actually wanted to bring his girlfriend, but Bian Guanyue was taking her postgraduate entrance exam these past few days, and Tao Xue also had her final exams. Xu Fengyin also didn't want to come, saying that taking leave without a valid reason would have a negative impact.

The staff from Youke arrived two days in advance.

Many domestic and international game companies also participate in the Qingdao Game Annual Meeting.

Let's see if we can sell the game.

At the ChinaJoy electronics show that summer, "Future Era" was only sold in Europe, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia.

The European market is doing well right now because there are no direct competitors. The constant price gouging by *DNF* has annoyed the European distributors, who have now all suspended negotiations with the Koreans.

In Singapore and Malaysia, however, *Future Era* will have to compete head-to-head with *DNF*. For now, it's outmatched, given *DNF's first-mover advantage.

As for the Vietnamese market, it exploded!
The Vietnamese online gaming market has always been dominated by Chinese martial arts and fantasy games.

"Future Era" is a hodgepodge, incorporating elements of martial arts and fantasy, as well as a post-apocalyptic theme with Western fantasy elements. Furthermore, Vietnam has a large arcade player base, but lacks similar side-scrolling fighting online games (DNF hasn't been sold in Vietnam yet).

Vietnamese players, who were already somewhat tired of MMO games, showed a very high level of acceptance for "Future Era," capturing 3% of the Vietnamese market share in just over a month—the technology transfer and localization took four months, and "Future Era" was only launched in Vietnam at the end of November.

As soon as Chen Guiliang arrived at the hotel, the sales representative from the export department said, "The Japanese agents have come to contact us, but they are pushing for extremely low prices."

Chen Guiliang said, "If we really can't negotiate a price, let's sell. Let's treat this as a trial run and then try to break into the Japanese market."

(End of this chapter)