Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

As early as March, Xiaomi had already opened its first batch of ”Xiaomi Homes” in six cities: Guanzhou, Xingsha, Yousi, Dongguan, Qi State, and Lvda.

When it came to making phones, Xiaomi had a one-year head start on Orange Technology. However, the Orange Mobile Phone was released two weeks earlier than the Xiaomi Mobile Phone. Afterward, leveraging DST’s investment and supply chain resources, it managed to become the number one online mobile phone brand.

In the domestic market, it wasn’t just Xiaomi, OPPO, and Meizu—even giants like Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, and Lenovo were no match for the Orange Mobile Phone.

”President Lei, Orange Technology’s direct stores will definitely steal some of our offline orders,” Li Wanqiang added as a reminder.

”I know, but it’s not like I can stop Chen Yansen from opening his own direct stores,” Lei Yijun said with a helpless shrug.

”That’s true,” Li Wanqiang admitted, plopping down onto a lounge chair and staring into space.

You could use certain rogue tactics against someone like Zhou Hongyi, but not Chen Yansen.

After all, Chen Yansen was infamous in the industry for being vengeful. When Meituan loudly announced its entry into the food delivery sector to compete with Kuai Pao, Chen Yansen went after Wang Xin with everything he had.

Meituan, which should have become profitable in Q3, was instead dragged into a subsidy war and ended up losing over 60 million again.

It even lost its title as number one in the industry!

Under the intense competitive pressure from Kuai Pao, more than half of the few remaining group-buy websites were eliminated. Now, only Dianping, Meituan, Lashou, and Kuai Pao were left standing. WoWo Group was on life support, and all other competitors were on a countdown to extinction.

Li Wanqiang might dare to curse out Zhou Hongyi, but he wouldn’t dare raise a single finger against Chen Yansen.

”By the way, when will the market research report on the Tianzhu mobile market be ready?”

Lei Yijun suddenly sat up straight and asked Li Wanqiang.

At his words, Li Wanqiang’s expression froze. ”Of the five colleagues from the Market Department who went to Tianzhu,” he said awkwardly, ”four were hospitalized with acute diarrhea, and the last one got food poisoning. So I had to hire two new third-party consulting firms. It’ll probably be another week.”

Acute diarrhea?

Food poisoning?

Lei Yijun was stunned for a moment before it sank in. ”Didn’t I tell them to only eat at the hotel?”

”They don’t know what happened either. Maybe some things are just unavoidable,” Li Wanqiang said with a wry smile, shrugging his shoulders.

”President Lei, I have a friend who works at Micromax in Tianzhu. He gave me a rough overview of the local market, but the data is incomplete and I can’t guarantee its accuracy.”

Lin Bing, who had just returned from the beach, overheard their conversation and chimed in.

”Go on. I’ve heard the mobile market in the Tianzhu Region is pretty similar to ours back home.”

Lei Yijun nodded, signaling for Lin Bing to continue.

He’d heard of Micromax. The brand was Tianzhu’s largest domestic mobile phone manufacturer, holding 9.1% of the market share.

”Tianzhu has a total population of 1.23 billion and 840 million mobile phone users. Of those, only 29 million are smartphone users, which is a penetration rate of less than 3 percent. That’s equivalent to where our domestic market was three years ago. It’s just getting started, so the market has a very high ceiling.”

Lin Bing said calmly, sitting in a beach chair.

”Twenty-nine million? That’s not even thirty million!” Li Wanqiang exclaimed in surprise.

”Our domestic smartphone market went from nothing to what it is today in just two or three years. If we can successfully break into the Tianzhu market, the Xiaomi Mobile Phone might just find its success abroad! In the first quarter of 2011, smartphone shipments in Tianzhu were 2.6 million units. In Q3 of this year, that number grew to 4.4 million.”

Lin Bing said with a nod.

Tianzhu’s local mobile phone brands were Micromax, Karbonn, and Spice, but none had a high market share. Over 30% of the market was controlled by Mountain Star, while brands like Nokia and Sony held between 5% and 10%.

In his eyes, Tianzhu was like Hua Country two years ago—full of potential!

After hearing all this, Lei Yijun’s expression grew thoughtful. Back home, he was being suffocated by Orange, Mountain Star, Apple, and Huawei. Perhaps expanding into overseas markets was the crucial turning point Xiaomi needed.

The three of them chatted by the sea until dusk fell and the ocean breeze turned cold.

As soon as he got back to the hotel, Lei Yijun called an emergency video conference. He planned to assemble a team from the marketing, operations, and technology departments to send to Tianzhu and break ground in the new overseas market.

「Meanwhile.」

In Oslo, far in the Northern Hemisphere, it was currently twelve noon.

Inside an executive suite on the top floor of the Radisson Blu Hotel, Chen Yansen sat on a sofa, gazing at the distant Oslo Royal Palace and National Art Gallery as he mentally planned his afternoon.

The journey from Hu City to Copenhagen, followed by a transfer to Oslo, had taken a full day.

He was fine, but Song Yuncheng had crashed the moment her head hit the pillow.

Autumn was in full swing outside the window. The roadside was a tapestry of interwoven maple and ginkgo leaves, painting the view in vibrant shades of gold and crimson.

’The scenery in this damn place is nice,’ he thought, ’but it’s practically deserted.’

Even though the Radisson Blu Hotel was in the heart of Oslo, there were barely any pedestrians on the street.

BZZZT—!

The phone on the coffee table suddenly vibrated.

Chen Yansen picked it up. It was Liu Zhiping from Penguin.

”Martin, what’s up?” Chen Yansen asked directly.

As both of their net worths, statuses, and influence in the industry had grown, his private address for Liu Zhiping had evolved from the original ”President Liu” and ”Brother Martin” to a simple ”Martin.”

”WeChat is about to start developing a payment feature,” Liu Zhiping said, choosing his words carefully. ”We might... draw inspiration from Orange Pay for the feature design and marketing.”

Given the excellent partnership between Penguin and Senlian Capital, Ma Wenteng had decided to give Chen Yansen a heads-up before he started copying them.

For any other company, Ma Wenteng wouldn’t have been so courteous; he would have just copied them outright.

”It’s fine. I was just copying Ma Liyun anyway,” Chen Yansen said lightly.

”I knew President Chen wouldn’t mind,” Liu Zhiping said with a relieved, flattering laugh.

’As if you wouldn’t copy it even if I did mind.’

Chen Yansen scoffed internally. They were all adults here. Penguin didn’t want to burn bridges, so they chose a more ”dignified” method of competing. There was no need for him to call them out on it.

That would just make things awkward for everyone.

After all, both Fast Taxi’s Series C financing and Kuai Pao’s Series B funding plan depended on financial support from Penguin.

The two exchanged a few more pleasantries. When Liu Zhiping heard that Chen Yansen planned to visit Spotify’s headquarters, he immediately puffed out his chest and insisted that he had a great relationship with the CEO, Daniel Ek, and would be happy to make an introduction.

Chen Yansen just smiled, not refusing the offer.

In reality, Orange Technology’s partnership with Spotify was just as significant as Penguin Music’s.

The Alexa Smart Speaker had sold nearly three million units across the European and American Markets, which was equivalent to adding three million paying subscribers to Spotify. This had been an enormous help to Spotify’s fundraising efforts.

Upon receiving word of Chen Yansen’s impending visit, Daniel Ek had immediately rushed back to the Stockholm headquarters from the Lighthouse Country.

The Northern European market was too small. To break into the music streaming market in the Lighthouse Country, Daniel Ek had shifted his focus to Europe and America two years prior and was usually based in Manhattan, New York.

This just went to show how important the Alexa Smart Speaker was to Spotify.

It had now been eight months since Spotify’s last round of financing.

Daniel Ek was in desperate need of a capital injection to acquire music rights and fight for market share against iTunes and Pandora.

Therefore, the ecosystem licensing partnership with Orange Technology was crucial. If he could sign a long-term contract, Daniel Ek could leverage it to inflate Spotify’s valuation and secure more funding from investors.

Ten minutes later, Chen Yansen hung up the phone.

”Chen Yansen... be a good boy... call me Mommy...”

Song Yuncheng, still lying on the bed, suddenly mumbled in her sleep, her voice barely a whisper.

A normal person wouldn’t have been able to make it out, but Chen Yansen’s hearing was exceptional. He caught every single word.

His face darkened. ’What in the world is she dreaming about?’ he wondered.

So passed their first day in Norway: Chen Yansen reading a book to pass the time, and Song Yuncheng sleeping soundly on the bed.

At 7:30 that evening, Song Yuncheng finally opened her eyes, still heavy with sleep.

”Were you dreaming?” Chen Yansen asked with a smile, sitting on the edge of the bed.

”How did you know?” Song Yuncheng asked, surprised.

”You were talking in your sleep all afternoon. Called me ’Daddy’ seventeen times,” Chen Yansen said with a perfectly straight face, making it all up.

”Hehe, you’re just making that up. It was you who called me—” Song Yuncheng cut herself off, realizing what she’d almost said.

”I called you what?” Chen Yansen asked, a smirk playing on his lips.

”Nothing, I forgot! I remembered a second ago, but you talking made me lose my train of thought,” Song Yuncheng deflected, the tips of her ears turning pink.

Chen Yansen smiled but didn’t press the issue.

After having dinner at the hotel, the two of them drove to the nearby Sognsvann Lake to see the northern lights.

At that very moment, Liu Qiangdong, having just secured a 400 million US Dollar investment from the OTPP, was busy preparing for Jingdong’s massive ”Double Eleven” sales event, determined to reclaim his spot as the number two player in e-commerce!