Top of the Great Era

Chapter 1527 The European and American Vision of Image Retouching Software

On November 11th, Zhou Buqi and his party went to South Korea and reached a further cooperative relationship with Hyundai Group.

Now, the two sides have a lot of business contacts.

For example, the South Korean Internet business was jointly invested by Ziweixing and Hyundai Group.In name, it is the Internet asset of Hyundai Group, but in fact, the majority of the shares are Ziweixing.

At the same time, the sales of Aster2 mobile phones in South Korea also rely on the channels of Hyundai Group.

Unfortunately, this business has failed miserably.

The total sales volume did not even exceed 20.

You know, since the South Korean authorities further approved the entry of smartphones in June this year, a total of more than 6 million smartphones have been sold!

Among them, there are nearly 3 million iPhone260gs, and almost all other shares are divided by Samsung and LG.

In the smart phone market, I am afraid it will be difficult to grab territory in South Korea.

However, the blind box guarantees no problem!

Chaowan Commune has successively obtained the copyright of the exclusive player blind boxes of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, and Liverpool, and there is no competitor.

Park Ji-sung is the spokesperson of Korean football, and he can take advantage of this further.

Gradually, Zhou Buqi also felt more and more the important role of players in promoting the team's derivatives market.

South Korea and Japan are very rich and have strong spending power, much stronger than Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, etc.The whole of South America combined may not be comparable to South Korea with a population of 5000 million.

South Korea and Japan are very passionate about football, and the overall level of football is not world-class, but these two countries can occasionally produce one or two world-renowned stars, such as Nakata Hidetoshi, Park Ji-sung, Sun Xingmin, Kagawa Shinji and others .

In this way, it will be easier to control the Korean and Japanese football markets. By buying their most powerful players, the derivative sales market can be dominated.

This kind of business thinking can be called steady and ruthless.

Zhou Buqi has some contacts in South Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia. The sales of Manchester United blind boxes in these regions do not require too many middlemen. Chaowan Commune can go directly to the docking.

To cooperate in the simplest way, "wholesale-retail" mode.

Chaowan Commune wholesales blind boxes to Hyundai in South Korea, Zhengda in Thailand, and Jingtao in Japan, and then let these three localized companies advertise and sell products.

For example, the official retail price of the Manchester United blind box is 7.99 pounds, and they are sold at a wholesale price of 4-5 pounds.Then they don't need to worry too much about how to set prices and what kind of sales strategies they want to formulate.

Zhou Buqi went on a business trip in South Korea for two days, then returned to the capital, attended two meetings, and then went to Shanghai to investigate the project of the International Department.

On November 11th, Zhou Buqi accepted Tang Binchen's invitation and went to Tokyo.

Japan is Tang Binchen's territory, and now it is like an independent kingdom. Although Ziwei Star's international headquarters took away 2 million US dollars two months ago, Ziwei Star still has a cash flow of up to 3.7 million US dollars in Japan's books.

There is no way, when other regions are burning money like a bottomless pit, Ziweixing Japan already has a steady stream of profits.Tang Binchen has already guaranteed that the Japanese region will create at least US$1 million in net profit next year.

Zhou Buqi thought he was talking about the game business, but unexpectedly, he had leapfrogged his attention to the European and American markets.

As soon as they met, Tang Binchen put away all the work in his hands, closed the door, and said anxiously: "UCgram, are you paying attention?"

"UCgram?" Zhou Buqi reacted for a moment before he realized what kind of product it was, "UCgram?"

Tang Binchen said: "Yes, it is UC Beauty, an English version developed for the European and American markets."

Zhou Buqi didn't get too much information about the European and American versions.

Then there is only one answer, this product has not been made.If it became popular, someone would have informed him of the good news.

"Any questions?"

"The download volume of UCgram is lower than expected. It was launched on Android and Apple in July. Now the total download volume is only 7 million, and the retention rate is less than 500%."

Tang Binchen is not very satisfied with such results.

In fact, it is already very good to be able to come up with such a report card in such a short period of time.

What is the concept of 500 million downloads?
If it is placed ten years later, a new product of a new type will have to invest at least 3 million to 4 million yuan in promotional expenses to achieve such a scale.

But in the current time period, it's really not enough.

There are fewer smartphones now than ten years later, but similarly, there are fewer apps!
There is no competition.

As for photo editing apps, there is only such a product in the entire Apple Store and Google Store.The technical difficulty of retouching software is not low, especially now that the performance of smartphones is very poor.

Ordinary developers are afraid to set foot in this field.

The process of retouching is the process of modifying, smearing, rendering, and automatic correction of the original image, which requires a lot of computing power.Without many years of relevant experience and technical optimization level, the developed mobile phone will not be able to run.

The product design of UCgram actually needs to castrate many amazing and wonderful ideas to make the product design simpler so that the mobile phone can run.

Therefore, UCgram has no competitors in the world.

If smartphone users want to edit pictures on their phones, there is only UCgram for now.Without competition, it will be much easier to operate. It has accumulated 4 million downloads in 500 months, which is not enough to watch.

This idea is all in vain.

Zhou Buqi had already had psychological expectations, and said: "It's not surprising, I said earlier that European and American cultures are not the same as our Confucian culture. China, Japan and South Korea are all popular in retouching pictures, and young people in Europe and the United States advocate It’s self-confidence and authenticity, and they are not very interested in this kind of photo editing software.”

Tang Binchen didn't take it seriously, "That's not necessarily true!"

"is it?"

"Young people in Europe and the United States also have a great demand for photo editing software. However, what they modify is not their own appearance, but to cover up some background images. Or crop and organize the pictures appropriately to make some personalized displays."

Zhou Buqi asked: "Is there any relationship?"

With an inscrutable look on Tang Binchen's face, he said with a smile: "Catch the key points and show it!"

Zhou Buqi no longer pays attention to product details, and really doesn't understand, "Exhibition, what's the problem?"

Tang Binchen said: "Nowadays, social networking sites can't upload pictures for display. Facebook can, but Twitter can't. But Facebook is social networking with acquaintances, and the circle is very narrow. Confident and sunny young people want to show after taking pictures to more people."

This topic falls on the server again.

The picture is too big, and the storage space occupied by one picture can store 100 million words.

Therefore, for many websites, there is no function for users to upload pictures to the server, and users can only display text.

Including some chat software.

MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, and other chat software on mobile phones were developed early, but Helo succeeded in one blow and beat them all over the place.

why?
A very important point is that Ziweixing dared to invest and spend money to provide the function of image transmission for Helo on the mobile phone.

Smartphone users can now send pictures to their friends through Helo!

For many young people, this is simply a technological revolution!

In the era without Helo, what should young people do if they want to send pictures?You have to pay a high price to send MMS.Moreover, the technical means of MMS is too poor, the picture is too distorted when the signal is converted, and the clarity is far inferior to that of Helo.

When the financial crisis came, Twitter gritted its teeth with $3000 million on its books. Facebook is different. It would rather take the initiative to lower its valuation and raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

Part of the reason is that Twitter can only post text, while Facebook can post pictures.

In the previous life, the domestic Sina Weibo has not opened the picture function for a long time.Later, Penguin entered the market and started Penguin Weibo, intending to start grabbing territory. In June 10, the function of uploading pictures was first launched, which intensified the competition, and many domestic "Weibo" products have opened the picture function. .

Zhou Buqi gradually understood, and said slowly: "It's really like this. The financial crisis is not known when it will pass. Venture capital institutions are tightening their pocketbooks, and Internet companies dare not invest too much in their products. big investment."

Tang Binchen said: "That's right. I read the data. One of the most popular functions in Helo is to send photos to each other. Many people will use UCgram, and it is also here to simply modify and adjust the pictures to make them look better. Make it cooler and send it to your friends via Helo."

"Where's Facebook?"

"Facebook's mobile app does not have the function of uploading pictures for the time being. If users want to upload, they need to import the pictures to the computer, and then transfer them to the website through the computer, which is too troublesome."

Zhou Buqi guessed something, "Is this the case? The function of uploading pictures requires relatively high computing power, which is difficult to do with today's smartphones?"

Tang Binchen said with a smile: "There are such factors. Facebook has too many functions, so we have to make a trade-off. Helo has fewer functions, so it can be done."

Zhou Buqi gave a "hmm" and nodded.

Because of his knowledge of the amazing product "WeChat", he has a lot of whimsical ideas about Helo's product design.However, many of these ideas were shelved by the product department and had to be documented for future use.

Mobile phone software is different from computer software, and mobile phone software will be severely restricted by the performance of the mobile phone.There can only be a way of "running fast in small steps, updating quickly and iterating quickly".

Every week, a new version is developed to upgrade the mobile app, and new ones are added little by little to explore the compatibility between new functions and mobile phones.

Tang Binchen has long been aware of this, and said solemnly: "According to Moore's Law, the performance of each generation of mobile phones can be improved by about 50%. When the next generation of mobile phones appears next year, I believe that there will be apps with some basic functions." The soil for survival. I think it can be expected for the next generation of products.”

"UCgram?"

"Not only UCgram, but also YikYak, which is not very popular in Europe and America."

(End of this chapter)