Backtracking to the Age of Literature and Art

Chapter 1022
On May [-], in the AOL CEO's office, Steven Case asked his assistant while signing the document, "Edward, how is the progress of Deep Space's acquisition of Huawei? Is there any new news?"

Edward shook his head and said, "There is no news for the time being. Whether Deep Space is really interested in Huawei has not yet been confirmed. Everything is just a rumor, but there is one thing that is quite strange. The film "Source Code" by Deep Space Films The premiere ceremony was held in Atlanta, Atlanta is not the first choice for the premiere ceremony, and Deep Space has never held a premiere ceremony in Atlanta before."

"Atlanta..." Steven Case squinted his eyes and thought for a while, then asked, "When is the Telecom Equipment Exhibition in Atlanta?"

"On the nineteenth of June, sir," replied Edward.

"Where's their movie premiere? Could it be that day too?"

Edward nodded and said, "It's not the same day. The premiere of "Source Code" was the day before, June [-]th. Now it seems that Deep Space Corporation may indeed be acquiring Huawei."

Steven Case waved his hand, "It's not necessarily true, Jimmy is a person who is very good at throwing smoke bombs, maybe they put the film's premiere in Atlanta, and the time is close together, it is very likely that they just hope that others I believe they are buying Huawei."

"Then why did they do that?" Edward asked puzzled.

At this time, Steven Case had finished signing the documents, he put down the pen, moved his neck again, and then said with a smile, "Letting others buy Huawei from them is good for them and Huawei. Didn’t there be news before that Motorola also wanted to acquire Huawei? Perhaps other than Motorola, there are other companies that are also interested in Huawei. Now there is news that Deep Space Corporation wants to acquire Huawei, which will allow Huawei to sell at a higher price. It’s more profitable in the deal. For Deep Space, if others believe that they are going to buy Huawei, especially Cisco, they will definitely rush.”

"Deep space companies, like most companies, use Cisco's network equipment. If the deep space company acquires Huawei, this is not good news for Cisco, which means that Cisco is likely to lose a big wave. Order."

"But can Huawei's products compare to Cisco's? Deep space companies should not have low requirements for network equipment. Even if they acquire Huawei and tilt some orders to Huawei, they will not give too much, right? Otherwise, it may affect their own competitiveness." Edward was still puzzled.

Steven Case leaned back, waved his hands and said, "Edward, you know too little about Huawei. In fact, Huawei's equipment performance is very good now, and it is fully capable of threatening Cisco. Otherwise, why would Motorola Interested in a Chinese company? If I'm not mistaken, Chambers had contacted Jimmy by this time, and they might have even reached some kind of agreement."

Edward nodded, "I really don't know much about Huawei."

Steven Case turned his chair and looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows for a while. Because he had been working with his head down for a long time, when he first looked outside, his eyes were still a little blurry. When his vision gradually became clear, he said, "By the way , we also received an invitation to Telecom Atlanta, right?"

"Yes, the invitation is still in your drawer."

"What happened to me on June nineteenth?"

Edward shook his head and said, "I haven't made a schedule for that day yet."

With a month to go until June nineteenth, Steven Case's schedule wasn't there yet.

Steven Case thought for a while and said, "In this case, let's put the participation in Atlanta Telecom Exhibition in the itinerary of June NO.19. If there is nothing else, I will attend it then."

Edward wrote down the matter in his notebook, and then said, "Okay, I will book a ticket for you in advance."

Steven Case nodded, "Thank you... What's the name of the movie that held the premiere ceremony?"

"Source Code is a sci-fi film. This is YU's original film. I heard that on the day of the premiere of the film, the novel of the same name will be officially released. At that time, YU will also appear at the premiere ceremony to sign autographs for fans at the scene. Selling new books." Edward replied.

Steven Case held his chin and thought for a while, then said, "Well, let's put the itinerary of NO.18 in Atlanta, buy an extra copy of Will's for the ticket, he must want a copy of YU's autograph new book."

"Ok, no problem."

"Is this their latest movie?" Steven Case asked.

Edward shook his head, "No, their latest movie is "Spider-Man" which will be released tomorrow."

"Spiderman... help me book three movie tickets for tomorrow." Steven Case said.

"Do you need to book an IMAX theater?" Edward asked.

"Of course." Steven Case nodded immediately, "This kind of movie must be seen in IMAX. I have to say that Deep Space Corporation has a good vision in this regard, and invested in IMAX early. Alright, You go ahead."

After Edward left, Steven Case frowned, showing a tired look. When Edward was there just now, he had been holding on because he didn't want to show fatigue in front of his subordinates.

In the eyes of Steven Case, running a company is like fighting a war. If the marshal shows a lack of confidence, the impact on the morale of the soldiers will be fatal. Who would want to fight with a marshal who has no confidence?
In fact, he was really tired during this time, and the company's affairs made him exhausted.

Although Steven Case didn't want to admit it, everything in the past two years proved that their alliance with Time Warner was wrong.

Steven Case has always complained about the restrictions of the regulatory authorities, but he knows that even without the antitrust restrictions of the regulatory authorities, the combination between AOL and Time Warner must have failed.

First of all, the internal reason is that the two companies have not been able to complete the integration.

If one plus one is to be greater than two, then the pace of the two companies must be the same, and they must be tightly twisted into one rope.However, not only did the two companies fail to keep pace, but they consumed each other, and conflicts continued. Not only did one plus one not exceed two, but one plus one became less than one.

The reason why America Online acquired Time Warner was because America Online needed Time Warner's cable TV business as a new profit growth point, and Time Warner hoped to use America Online's platform advantages to enter the new media market.

However, after the combination of the two parties, the integration of business resources failed.Due to technical constraints such as online lending and transmission, AOL could not absorb Time Warner's huge content resources, and Time Warner could not use AOL's services to sell its own content, so it could not establish a successful profit point.

Moreover, the integration of their corporate culture has also failed. America Online belongs to the company of the new era, and its corporate culture is relatively free and dynamic.In Time Warner's view, this kind of freedom and vitality is unorganized and undisciplined. Time Warner is a traditional large enterprise with a deep and serious corporate culture.

After the merger, the management of both sides has been quarreling endlessly, and estrangement and conflict have become the main theme of both sides.

In addition to internal factors, there are also external factors. With the emergence of a new generation of Internet media models represented by web2.0, content production is no longer limited to organizational forms, and content sources are no longer dependent on traditional media.

In this regard, Deep Space Company has done a particularly good job. Their Deep Space Tribe directly enables ordinary people to become content exporters at any time. The influence of many traditional media on the Internet is not even as good as that of a tribe owner.

And when they first started to join forces, it happened to be the time when the Internet technology stock bubble burst, coupled with the impact of broadband Internet on dial-up Internet business, AOL's advertising revenue in the past two years has not been particularly ideal, and Time Warner originally Hope to take advantage of AOL's network advantage to develop the existing business disruption also naturally came to nothing.

At that time, Steven Case's previous strategy was actually just to develop the Internet into traditional media content as an important means of driving traffic.He originally hoped that the cross-media advertising business could be regarded as a new economic growth point, and planned to combine traditional media businesses such as magazines, books, limited services, and animation with the new economic operation mode of network services.

But now it seems that the structure and development model of new media should be like that presented by Deep Space Tribe and Google. Interactive services and value-added services have gradually become the mainstream model of Internet profitability.

What Steven Case is hesitating about now is that he knows that broadband services have great advantages over dial-up Internet access. To realize the high-speed Internet blueprint, they need to enter the broadband market.

The dial-up service fee is 24 US dollars per month, and the Internet speed is only 56kb per second, while the broadband service charges 45 US dollars per month, and the speed can reach 25 Mbps. The cost is less than double, but the speed is faster [-] times, the advantage of broadband is incomparable with dial-up.

But the problem is that their company's roots in dial-up are too deep, and it is not easy to pull out. As the leader in the dial-up market, if they directly enter the broadband market at this time, the impact on the dial-up market will be fatal. , If the performance of the broadband market is not good enough, then their revenue may shrink very seriously.

But if you don't enter the broadband market, then as the growth rate of network users slows down, new and old customers may be attracted by competitors of broadband networks or other dial-up services, which will greatly impact their most basic business.

If you want to enter the broadband market, you need a very good time, but where is the best time, Steven Case can't see clearly.

Steven Case has been paying close attention to the development of Deep Space Corporation over the years, and he slowly discovered that Deep Space Corporation has actually achieved what he wanted to do before.

At the beginning, Deep Space Company relied on content, and then entered the Internet industry, and then relied on websites such as Deep Space Tribe to continuously output their company's content.

Recently, Deep Space Company is developing a video website. After the video website is also launched, Deep Space Company will enter a fast-track mode in terms of content output.

……

The next day, Steven Case's family of three went to a movie nearby. Fortunately, there was an IMAX theater in the movie theater near their home.

Edward spent a lot of effort to get these three tickets. "Spider-Man" was released on the first day today. Tickets are already very difficult to buy, especially the tickets for the IMAX theater. Let alone today, it will be a long time later Tickets are no longer available.

Steven Case seldom goes to the cinema to watch movies. On the one hand, he has no time. On the other hand, he also finds it too noisy. He prefers to watch movies in his private theater at home, where he can hold a glass of red wine and no one else will disturb him. .

But his son is more willing to come to the movie theater, especially after the imax comes out, his son will not even go to the ordinary movie theater to watch movies anymore.

Steven Case can also understand that his son is like this. After watching IMAX, he also feels that the four-person theater in his home is not good.

No matter how good the audio-visual equipment in the home is, the space is limited. The huge screen in the IMAX theater has an invincible impact on the audience.

However, the ticket price of imax is too expensive. A movie ticket for an ordinary movie is only about six dollars, and some movie tickets are more expensive, only eight or nine dollars, not more than ten dollars.

But the ticket price of an IMAX movie is basically more than [-] US dollars, which is three to four times the price of ordinary movie tickets.

Take "Spiderman" as an example, the price of an ordinary theater is only 23 to [-] dollars, but the ticket price of an imax theater is basically [-] dollars.

This is just the face price. It is not easy for ordinary people to get tickets to watch IMAX movies. Edward said that the three bills in his family cost more than two hundred dollars.

Sitting in the waiting area, Steven Case looked around the cinema hall. At the moment, there are still many people queuing up at the ticket gate to buy IMAX movie tickets.

In fact, more than 60.00% of the IMAX movie tickets are put on the box office website, and the audience can buy it through the ticketing website without having to queue up at the scene.

Considering that some people do not have the conditions to buy movie tickets online, Deep Space Company did not put all the tickets online.

Sometimes it is really the details that determine success or failure. Thinking about the operation of Box Office, Steven Keith believes that if Box Office was built by himself at the time, it is very likely that in order to increase the number of users of Box Office and PayPal, he There is a high probability that all movie tickets will be put online.

However, in this way, the possible result is that many people cannot buy tickets at the cinema.

After a while, the film began to check tickets, and Steven Case walked into the hall with his family.

After a 10-minute commercial, the film officially begins.

(End of this chapter)