Reborn in 08, a heretical cultivator starting a business

Chapter 214 The Preliminary Version of Future OS is Released, and a Massive Ecosystem Acquisition is Underway! (Seeking Monthly Tickets)
In late September, just before the system was proposed and officially launched, 50 R&D engineers were recruited.

In the following months, the investment was further increased.

They aggressively poached engineers and recruited top talent from Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

Initially, Future Technology was a small company, and it was difficult to recruit people, so they could only increase salaries.

It has to be 30% more than what the competitors offer.

However, with the continuous development of WeChat, Vipshop, and YouTuan.com, Future Technology's strength and brand awareness have increased rapidly.

The industry's recognition of future technologies has also increased significantly, making talent acquisition much easier.

In particular, with WeChat's monthly active users exceeding 100 million, all architects have seen a bright future.

Putting everything else aside, simply by deeply binding WeChat's hundreds of millions of monthly active users with the future operating system, they've already achieved half the success.

In addition, iOS has only been around for a short time, and Android has only been launched for a few months, so the operating system market is still a blue ocean.

Future Technology's entry into this market at this time has great potential, and many Silicon Valley elites have chosen to return to China to join.

After more than four months of development, the R&D team for the future operating system has now reached 500 people!
The annual salary expenditure for these 500 top engineers is 150 million!
In 2009, the average annual salary was 30 yuan!
Unfortunately, the development system doesn't need recent graduates or junior engineers; it needs senior engineers, architects, and seasoned experts!

However, the money wasn't wasted.

With Wang Junshan as the R&D director, who finalized the technical roadmap, the team avoided six months of detours. Coupled with hundreds of top engineers, the future operating system is progressing very smoothly.

Upon seeing Wang Junshan arrive, Chen Jing, the future OS system R&D director, quickly stood up:

"Chairman, you've come at the perfect time. Our Future OS system prototype has already run successfully on the prototype machine. Although there are still many bugs and shortcomings, it's a very good start!"

This person is the top architect that Tang Jinghe poached from Microsoft.

He is one of Microsoft's youngest architects, but he is very capable.

In fact, many core architects and top experts of foreign giants are of Chinese descent.

Compared to purely foreigners, these people are actually easier to recruit.

Getting foreigners to settle in China is particularly difficult, but it is relatively easy to persuade some overseas Chinese to do so.

After exchanging ideas with Chen Jing, Wang Junshan recognized Chen Jing's abilities and directly appointed him as the R&D director of Future OS.

Chen Jing did not disappoint Wang Junshan, bringing in another fifteen-person R&D team from Microsoft, which rapidly enhanced the strength of the Future OS R&D team.

Chen Jing and his team quickly implemented and tackled the technical challenges outlined by Wang Junshan!

"It ran successfully? So fast!"

Wang Junshan was surprised and quickly went closer to take a closer look.

As expected, the system ran successfully.

Although the functions are very basic, with only a simplified version of WeChat, a calculator, and a few other applications.

But at least it worked!

It can even run a simplified version of WeChat and interact with PCs and Nokia phones!
This is a huge breakthrough, demonstrating that a future OS is entirely feasible!

"Excellent, far exceeding my expectations. Wasn't it supposed to take nine months before the new year, until June, to produce the early access version?"

Chen Jing laughed and said, "Originally, it would have taken at least June to get it running successfully, but the route you set for us, Chairman, was perfect. It was all the correct route, completely missing the wrong ones, which saved us three months!"

"Including the fact that we didn't get a break during the Chinese New Year, everyone worked overtime, and we finished in February."

In fact, developing an operating system is like finding the right way out of a maze.

The hardest part is finding the right route and avoiding detours.

Therefore, it can take six months, or even eight months, to initially determine the technical approach.

We need to keep trying, correcting, and exploring before we can find the right path and move forward quickly.

Therefore, when there is a shortage of manpower, it often takes five years, such as in the early stages of Android.

Even with sufficient manpower, it would typically take three years to build a high-caliber team of 500 people.

More than half of that time was spent searching for the right technical approach, experimenting with and eliminating incorrect approaches one by one...

Unfortunately, these flawed approaches simply cannot be discovered without months of research and development.

Only by constantly trying and making mistakes can we find our way out of the "maze".

But future operating systems won't have to do this.

With Wang Junshan there, the most correct technical route was determined from the very beginning, and the ultimate route out of the maze was known!
Moving in this direction directly saved more than half a year.

In the subsequent research and development process, Wang Junshan also rejected those erroneous research directions.

Guiding the team to proceed directly in the most correct R&D direction saved more than a year.

This is why an operating system that originally took three years to develop can now be completed in about a year by Future Technology, even with relatively simple functions.

What was originally nine months to develop into a beta version of the system has now been completed in less than six months.

It means you avoid taking unnecessary detours.

"You've worked hard. Not only did you create a pilot version of the system, but you also developed the development toolkit for the future system. Your contributions are immeasurable!" Wang Junshan was very satisfied.

This progress has far exceeded his expectations.

"Chairman, you've given us the greatest support. There are over 500 engineers, and an annual salary investment of 1.5 million. The budget is ample. With such a generous budget, if I still can't achieve results, I might as well just kill myself, hahaha," Chen Jing laughed.

At Microsoft, he was just the youngest architect, with a group of senior engineers above him, as well as very arrogant and discriminatory foreigners.

Any good ideas he has are either ostracized and suppressed, or his achievements are stolen.

However, when he arrived at Future Technology, Wang Junshan directly appointed him as the R&D director.

We will provide whatever support is needed.

Five hundred engineers were assigned to each position, and the budget was sufficient.

Even the entire group's resources are being tilted towards the future OS department.

Chen Jing was extremely grateful, and his academic performance was outstanding.

Wang Junshan was in high spirits: "Now that the pilot version and development tools have been developed, the future ecosystem porting of the OS must also be fully promoted."

"Yes, Chairman, although our department has a large number of people, our tasks are also more important."

"In addition to developing the system, we also need to allocate some manpower to develop supporting basic applications."

"For example, the future input method is relatively simple. We have a team of 15 people who have been developing it for three months and have produced a trial version. We expect to launch the official version by the end of the month."

"But future browsers will be more complex."

“Even if we invest a team of 50 people to develop based on the most mature open-source kernel at present, WebKit (the kernel of Apple's Safari and later Chrome), it will still take 9 months. The internal beta version is expected to be launched in June, and the official version will be released in August.” “Other functions, such as calculator, radio, and notepad, are very simple, but we still need to invest manpower to develop them.”

Wang Junshan nodded: "You've thought this through very well. A new operating system must have a relatively complete supporting ecosystem."

Admittedly, in 2009, smartphones were just starting out, and operating systems were also just starting out, with few applications available for each system.

But it must have the most basic features such as a calculator, input method, browser, radio, email, file management, etc.

Fortunately, Chen Jing had made arrangements for all of these.

The most challenging browser ever, development of which began last year.

As for the simpler ones, now that the pilot versions and development tools are out, we need to focus our efforts on developing them.

This resulted in a shortage of even 500 engineers.

"Ecological issues must be resolved as soon as possible, but these cannot all fall on your department's shoulders. Pass the notice down; there will be a meeting in half an hour," Wang Junshan decisively stated.
"Your department is responsible for system development. Just make the development tools available to other departments and let them adapt them themselves."

"Then there's no problem." Chen Jing breathed a sigh of relief.

Wang Junshan then experienced the Future OS preview version for another half hour before finally arriving at the conference room.

All the senior executives have arrived.

Wang Junshan looked around at everyone and said, "First of all, I have some good news to share with you all."

"Our fully self-developed domestic operating system, Future OS (pilot version), is running successfully!"

"what?"

"The pilot version is complete!"

"Great!"

Everyone beamed with joy and applauded enthusiastically.

"Thank you everyone, thank you," Chen Jing said with a smile.

Wang Junshan spoke again: "Although the initial version of Future OS has been developed and the development toolkit has been completed, the subsequent ecosystem building will still be a long process."

"The systems department, on the other hand, still has to focus on subsequent research and development, improvement, upgrades and optimizations, and has no time to deal with compatibility issues."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

If Chen Jing and his team do the adaptation, who will develop the future OS system?

"Chairman, release the development toolkit. We'll research and adapt it ourselves!"

"WeChat's R&D director, Chen Lanzhou, spoke up."

Although the initial version successfully ran WeChat Lite, it was only a simplified version.

The complete adaptation to WeChat is a long process, which can easily take several months.

"We will develop a separate app for Vipshop that is compatible with future OS systems," Tang Zhi also said.

"Yes, our Weibo account is also adapting itself. I will immediately mobilize manpower to start adapting to the future OS system."

"We also adapted the WeChat Farm app ourselves."

"And with Angry Birds, while developing the iOS version, a second team was also established to start the adaptation work for future OS systems."

The heads of various business units all expressed their opinions.

Wang Junshan nodded: "Very good. You all need to mind your own business and work together well."

"If you can't even adapt your own app properly, then that would be a joke."

"Don't worry, Chairman, everything will be fine," everyone said.

"Thank you for your support of Future OS. Our Future OS department will also set up a dedicated team to handle application adaptation."

Chen Jing breathed a sigh of relief, then changed the subject:
"However, there are some other applications that need to be developed."

"Basic applications such as sticky notes, flashlight, calendar, alarm clock, file management, and radio can be handled by our OS department in the future. We just need to hire more people."

"But strategic applications such as music players and video players are difficult to solve."

“The development of these media players’ features is very simple, but the content is the problem, as is the copyright issue.”

Wang Junshan nodded: "This is a big problem, and one that urgently needs to be solved. What are your thoughts?"

Someone suggested, "We can develop our own music player, create our own WeChat Music and WeChat Video, or Future Music and Future Video. Then we can invest hundreds of millions of yuan every year to buy copyrights. Player development and copyright acquisition can be done simultaneously, without any pressure."

Tang Zhi disagreed: "This approach is indeed feasible, but it's very slow. It's not just a research and development issue, but more importantly, there's the subsequent operation!"

"Whether it's music or video in the future, it's a long-term development that requires building corresponding business units to handle daily operations, copyright transactions, and profitability. This requires huge expenditures, not just financial costs, but also time costs. It's like we've entered two completely new and unfamiliar fields."

“That’s right!” Jiang Fan also chimed in, “Moreover, the future music and future videos that we create ourselves will become exclusive products of the future OS platform, making it difficult to dominate other platforms, which is not a good thing.”

"It would be better to acquire a mature platform directly. For example, the absolute leader in mobile devices, Tiantian Dongting, would be a good choice."

"Once we acquire TTPod, we can make it compatible with Future OS and make it the built-in music software of Future OS. And we can also capture TTPod's 5000 million mobile users!"

"Acquire some more legitimate copyrights and gradually make Tiantian Dongting a legitimate platform, then it will be safe."

Wang Junshan nodded: "That's a good idea."

In 2009, Kuwo Music dominated the PC market.

Mobile devices are where Tiantian Dongting (天天动听) reigns supreme.

Almost every Nokia smartphone comes with the Tiantian Dongting app, which has over 50 million monthly active users.

QQ Music, on the other hand, is just starting out, relying on QQ pop-up ads for promotion, but currently has few users.

Wang Junshan's acquisition of Tiantian Dongting not only saves him time in researching and developing his own platform.

Most importantly, we can take advantage of this opportunity to acquire these 50 million users of TTPod, or in other words, Nokia users!
Once we acquire TTPod, we can use TTPod to push future mobile phones and future OS to 50 million Nokia users and guide them to make purchases!
These days, whether it's Apple's explosive growth or Android's rise, 80% of the users are being taken away from Nokia, and the remaining 20% ​​are being taken away from users of counterfeit phones and other brands.

Similarly, the same applies to future mobile phones.

If we can acquire TTPod, then we can target our 50 million Nokia users with precise advertising!
These days, users who can afford Nokia smartphones are high-quality users, and they are Wang Junshan's targets!

More importantly, the acquisition cost is very low!
With rampant piracy and the absence of music memberships, apps like Tiantian Dongting face difficulties in monetization and have low valuations.

Even with 50 million monthly active users, it would only cost 150 million to 200 million RMB.

But right now, with the financial crisis, even the most pleasant days are tough, and losses are severe.

At this point, 8000 million is enough for Wang Junshan to make a move; no more than that.

Acquiring 80 million yuan to Tiantian Dongting, a platform with 50 million monthly active users, is worth it just for these high-quality users!
"President Tang, you should go to Tiantian Dongting. 8000 million, full acquisition."

(End of this chapter)