Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

Three months ago, Huawei launched a tablet called the MediaPad 10 FHD. The 16GB Wi-Fi version was priced at 2,499 yuan, with performance comparable to the Orange Pad 1.

Of course, that was just Yu Chendong putting a positive spin on it.

The MediaPad 10 FHD had a resolution of 1920×1200, while the Orange Pad 1’s was 2048×1536. Moreover, the former’s camera quality, operating system, and processor performance were also far inferior to the latter’s.

Yet the price difference between the two was 500 yuan!

”Huang Zhang was right. Chen Yansen and Lei Yijun are cut from the same cloth—both of them are a couple of shit-stirrers.”

Yu Chendong sighed softly and shook his head.

”The 32GB version is priced at 2,299 yuan, and the 64GB version is 2,899 yuan!”

Wang Teng continued on the video feed.

For tablets with similar specs, the 32GB Mountain Star N8000 was priced at 4,698 yuan, and the Apple iPad 4 was 4,488 yuan.

Compared to Apple and Mountain Star, the Orange Pad 1 was half the price.

Compared to Huawei, Lenovo, and Asus, the Orange Pad 1’s price was about 20 to 30 percent lower.

In other words, now that Orange Technology had set its sights on the tablet market, everyone else’s hardware profit margins had just shrunk by another 20 to 30 percent.

The Lenovo Pad A2109 was priced on par with the Orange Pad 1, but aside from the processor, it was completely blown away by the Orange Pad 1 in terms of screen size, resolution, operating system, battery specs, internal storage, and camera features.

After listening to Wang Teng’s presentation, Yu Chendong’s wariness toward Orange Technology decreased significantly.

After all, aside from its price, the Aurora OS, and the Moss voice interaction engine, the Orange Pad 1 was just an ”assembled” product with no real technical depth.

In his view, his company’s MediaPad 10 FHD was much stronger than the Orange Pad 1, as it was at least equipped with their in-house Hisilicon K3V2 chip.

Meanwhile, Wang Teng moved on to the second new product: the Orange MagicBook. It featured a silver chassis, an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 512GB hard drive, a dedicated GeForce GTX 660M graphics card, and a 14-inch screen, all while weighing only 1.9 kilograms.

In the 2012 laptop market, it was considered exceptionally thin and compact.

The launch price: 3,999 yuan!

It struggled a bit with demanding online games but was more than enough for daily office work and light gaming, making it perfect for college students and white-collar professionals.

Orange Technology’s first online press conference lasted a full two hours and ten minutes. By the time the Orange Pad 1 and Orange MagicBook launched for sale at noon on the Orange Mall, Pinbei, and Kuai Pao, Wang Teng still hadn’t concluded the event.

Long-time fans who were familiar with Orange Technology’s product launch rhythm were already camped out in front of their screens with the official Orange Mall link open.

Sure enough, as soon as the clock struck twelve, the Orange Pad 1 and Orange MagicBook were listed for sale right on schedule.

Although the back-to-school season was over, many university students still needed to buy new devices.

At Xuyuan University, for instance, freshmen hadn’t been allowed to bring computers to campus just a few years prior; only sophomores were permitted.

But as laptop prices dropped and campus-wide internet became common, more and more students began to consider a computer one of their back-to-school essentials.

Even so, the computer ownership rate among freshmen was still less than 50%. Most students waited until their sophomore year to buy their first laptop.

In dorm 8302, for example, only Chen Yansen and Song Yang had computers initially. The other four roommates all bought theirs during the spring semester of freshman year or the fall semester of sophomore year.

Of course, this didn’t apply to the more economically developed coastal regions.

And this was the peak purchasing season for sophomores.

For a laptop with the same specs, Asus would charge 4,699 yuan, while Lenovo had the audacity to ask for 5,999 yuan.

The Orange MagicBook wasn’t a top-tier machine by any means, but it won people over with its cool design—a sleek, ultra-thin, silver metal chassis—and its 3,999 yuan price tag, easily attracting a huge number of potential buyers.

It was worth remembering that thanks to products like the Aurora OS, the Orange Mobile Phone, the Moss Smart Speaker, and its power banks, Orange Technology already had a user base of over 30 million people across the country.

Furthermore, the majority of these users were young people.

As a result, in the first hour of the official launch, the Orange Pad 1 set a staggering record of 14,000 units sold, while the Orange MagicBook sold 6,700 units.

Wang Teng came down from the stage, exchanged a few words with the YY Live staff, and then took a car back to company headquarters.

On the way, he pulled out his phone to check messages in the project group chat. Colleagues from the data department were posting a sales summary every ten minutes.

In just two hours, from noon to 2:00 PM, they had sold 26,000 Orange Pad 1s and 11,000 Orange MagicBooks.

It might not sound like much, and it was a far cry from the sales figures of the Orange C3 and Qingcheng D1S.

But for Orange Technology, which was making its first foray into the personal computer business, achieving such sales numbers was no small feat.

It was all thanks to the user trust they had built up over time!

Chen Yansen was in his office when he received calls from Yu Chendong and Lei Yijun, one after the other. He chatted idly with them for a bit before hanging up.

Yu Chendong had been trying to gauge the extent of Orange Technology’s commitment to the tablet and laptop markets. Upon learning that the Orange Pad 1 and Orange MagicBook were merely supplementary products for the Orange Intelligent Life Hall, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Lei Yijun, on the other hand, was calling to ”learn from the master.” With the mediocre sales of the Xiaomi Mobile Phone, he had turned his attention to peripheral digital products, hoping to expand his product line and thereby increase the company’s overall revenue.

The Xiaomi Box had been his first attempt, and the launch of the Orange Pad 1 gave him fresh inspiration.

”I hear the total annual sales for the Xiaomi Mobile Phone aren’t even as high as the 360 Mobile Phone’s. President Lei must be getting really desperate.”

Chen Yansen put down his phone, chuckling to himself.

Both the 360 G800 Pro Shine and the 360 N1 were aimed at the low-to-mid-range market, perfectly meeting the demands of users in the early stages of the smartphone boom.