Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

Yanjing, Ni Cai headquarters.

Lu Hongbo sat glued to his computer, two webpages open side-by-side on his screen: the product pages for the Orange Mall and Pinbei’s ”Ten Billion Subsidy” program.

His finger hovered over the F5 key, pressing it every few seconds. His eyes were locked on the constantly refreshing pages.

The numbers were climbing at a shocking rate. In the blink of an eye, they surpassed 100,000 units!

His expression grew uglier and uglier.

The Ni Cai Da Qingcheng phone was already in production. They had sunk seventy to eighty million into it, hired Wang Baoqiang and Zhang Zhilin as celebrity spokespeople, and had the production lines running at full speed. How could they just stop everything now?

”That son of a bitch Chen Yansen! I thought you were joking, but you’re actually going through with this!”

Lu Hongbo’s brow tightened into a knot as he muttered curses under his breath.

The true performance of the Ni Cai Da Qingcheng was barely any different from the 499 and 599 Hua Yuan knockoff phones on the market. Meanwhile, Orange Technology’s Qingcheng D2 SE far surpassed it in terms of hardware configuration.

If he dared to launch it for sale, they would likely be crushed to dust!

”Hello, Yang Rui? Come to my office for a moment.”

After mulling it over for a while, Lu Hongbo finally picked up the phone and called Yang Rui.

The man had already submitted his resignation, and Lu Hongbo had approved it. But as long as he was still at Ni Cai for another day, he had to work for him.

Three minutes later, Yang Rui pushed open the door and sat down casually, the same respectful smile he always wore plastered on his face.

”Orange Technology launched the Qingcheng D2 SE. Its hardware is much better than our Ni Cai Da Qingcheng. What are your thoughts?”

Lu Hongbo asked, getting straight to the point.

”Nothing to worry about!” Yang Rui replied confidently after a moment’s thought. ”Orange Technology’s main sales channels are online, not offline. It might affect the Ni Cai Da Qingcheng’s market performance, but it won’t be enough to do any real damage.”

Lu Hongbo didn’t know he was planning to join Orange Technology; he just assumed Yang Rui wanted to return to the internet industry.

He had tried repeatedly to convince him to stay, but seeing how determined Yang Rui was, he had simply let him go.

”So you’re saying we should move forward with the Ni Cai Da Qingcheng project?” Lu Hongbo confirmed once more.

”That’s right! Orange Technology released the Orange D1 and Qingcheng D1S last year, both priced under a thousand Hua Yuan. They did have an impact on Ni Cai, but it wasn’t a huge problem. We have over 6,100 factory stores nationwide. When it comes to offline sales, Ni Cai is king.”

Yang Rui nodded, his expression serious.

”President Yang, why don’t you stay? I just feel like something’s missing at Ni Cai without you.”

Lu Hongbo stood up and put a hand on Yang Rui’s shoulder.

Yang Rui smiled faintly and refused decisively. ”President Lu, Ni Cai is full of talented people. Besides, the team structure and management system for the offline sales network are already in place. It makes little difference whether I’m here or not.”

But inwardly, he was sneering. ’He won’t even bother to dangle the empty promise of a promotion and a raise. Only a fool would stay.’

The number one rule of the workplace: once you submit your resignation, your boss will hold a grudge. Even if they give you a raise on the spot, they’ll inevitably find a way to settle the score later.

Having been in the corporate world for so many years, how could Yang Rui not understand something so basic?

”Come back and visit for a cup of tea when you have time,” Lu Hongbo said with a sigh, offering the empty pleasantry.

If he had genuinely wanted him to stay, he never would have approved that resignation letter in the first place.

Meanwhile, behind the explosive sales of the Qingcheng D2, Ah Li sensed the potential of the hundred-yuan smartphone market. They approached Celestial Language to collaborate on developing an even cheaper model, hoping to keep the price under 600 Hua Yuan.

Coolpad also initiated the R&D project for their Dashen F1.

Phone manufacturers like Huawei, ZTE, and Lenovo all turned their attention to the hundred-yuan smartphone market.

This was precisely the trend Chen Yansen was happy to see.

After all, the higher the number of active smartphones, the more stable Senlian Capital’s foundation would be in the mobile internet era.

And under his direction, Cao Dahua began frequently contacting phone manufacturers, striving to secure more OEM contracts and snatch business away from Foxconn.

...

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「The next morning.」

Sohu sued Qian Du for 100 million Hua Yuan, citing copyright infringement.

Immediately after, the Industry and Information Technology Association responded publicly for the first time, announcing that 4G licenses would be issued within the year to accelerate the development of the mobile internet.

Then, Huawei released the world’s thinnest smartphone, the Ascend P6.

It featured a 1.5GHz Hisilicon K3V2E quad-core processor, a 4.7-inch 720p Incell screen, 2GB of RAM and 8GB of ROM, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, and an 8-megapixel main camera.

Priced at 2,688 Hua Yuan, it offered a choice between two operating systems: Emotion UI 1.6 and Aurora Future OS 1.0.

Evidently, Huawei also harbored ambitions to break into the mid-range and even high-end markets.

If even the Yaocheng X1 could sell over a million units, there was no reason Huawei couldn’t.

How much money was there to be made in low-end phones, anyway?

Breaking into the high-end market was the dream of every phone manufacturer, and Huawei was no exception.

「Half an hour later.」

Someone on Weibo leaked the first-day pre-order numbers for the Qingcheng D2 SE: 673,000 units.

With no launch event and no advance hype, relying solely on the Orange Mall and Pinbei’s ”Ten Billion Subsidy” program, it had effortlessly achieved astonishing sales of nearly 700,000 units.

As the news spread, phone manufacturers both at home and abroad were suddenly on edge.

They had to admit that while smartphones in the several-hundred-Hua-Yuan range had razor-thin profit margins, the market size was shockingly massive.

More and more phone brands began scrambling to enter the fray!

Upon hearing the news, the knockoff phone factories in places like Shencheng City, Sichuan, Yanjing, and Sujiang were thrown into a panic, feeling as if doomsday had arrived.

In terms of R&D, production capacity, and quality, how could they possibly compete with first and second-tier phone manufacturers?

”Where is Chen Yansen’s family buried? I’m going to dig up all their graves!”

Many of them were jumping up and down in frantic anger, breaking into furious curses.

Meanwhile, Chen Yansen got out of his car and walked into Building 9, where he saw several staff members bustling around Wang Teng.