Top of the Great Era

Chapter 3175 Conquering India
Zhou Buqi has a big plan this year.

He and his friends were all too young, most of them were under 30 years old, yet they all had billions of dollars in assets at a young age, were on the rich list, and had earned enough money to last them several lifetimes.

With more money, I feel a little confused.

Even Zhou Buqi felt a bit like this.

It is necessary to take some time off, return to campus, rediscover the meaning of struggle, and enter a short semi-retirement period of studying.

Before his "retirement", Zhou Buqi's last major event was to arrange the listing of Estar.

For this purpose, he personally took charge and designed a Bluetooth headset as a product manager.

After Cook took office, he led Apple to launch one of his "original" products, the smartwatch. Although it was not so amazing, it was enough to lead the industry trend, allowing hardware manufacturers around the world to follow suit and achieve huge success.

Zhou Buqi couldn't give all the glory to him.

Smart Bluetooth headsets are one option.

This project has reached the final stages of testing and will be finalized in March or April this year at the latest. Then, Astar plans to hold a global press conference in May to release this new product designed and developed by Mr. Zhou himself!
As long as this product becomes popular, Astar’s IPO in July or August will be more confident and more popular in the capital market.

But I didn't expect to encounter such an accident at the beginning of the year.

Asda has been hit with a serious patent lawsuit in India, which may even lead to the ban on the sale of Asda and its sub-brand Motorola mobile phones in India!

This matter must be resolved as soon as possible.

Not only that, it is already a new year and all major companies will have management review meetings for the previous year.

Zhou Buqi also needs to participate.

Even Lao Zhang invited him and called him, "Changyou's annual summary meeting, you have to attend!"

Zhou Buqi responded: "Here we are. We have entered the border and will land in two hours."

Zhang Chaoyang smiled and said, "You're back? That's great, I'll call a few friends and we'll get together."

"Goodbye, there are too many things to do." Zhou Buqi knew what he meant and said with a smile, "Are you talking about the cooperation between Netflix and Sohu Video?"

Zhang Chaoyang laughed and said, "I proposed two projects, but Xu Baihui disagreed with both of them."

Zhou Buqi said, "You have to pass her test, right? What are you doing? Do you want to bypass Jieyu Media and find another production company to help you shoot the drama?"

Zhang Chaoyang sighed and said, "It's very difficult!"

Zhou Buqi said angrily: "I have given you the green light and given you such good resources, and you are still having a hard time."

"Actually, I have an idea."

"Ok?"

"Let's talk about it when you come back. After reading Changyou's financial report for the past year and understanding the operating conditions of some key games, I think you will have the same idea as me. Absolutely! It's in line with your usual style!"

Zhang Chaoyang is full of confidence.

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "Okay, I'll go back and see when the meeting will start."

"Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow is fine. It's up to you."

"Where's Mattrick?"

"He's already in the capital. I'll treat him to dinner tonight and see if he wants to eat roast duck or Beijing-style hot pot or something like that."

"That's fine." Zhou Buqi thought for a moment, "Then let's have the meeting the day after tomorrow morning."

Zhang Chaoyang smiled and said, "Okay."

He has made a mess of Sohu now.

However, Sohu's current market value is still as high as more than 200 billion US dollars, not much less than NetEase, mainly because of Sohu's shareholding in Changyou.

Changyou's market value has now exceeded the 900 billion US dollar mark. Zhou Buqi was busy the moment the plane landed.

Head straight to Estar.

Met Zhou Shaoning.

Zhou Shaoning was afraid of being criticized and was too embarrassed to directly mention the troublesome matter, so he smiled and said, "Last year, Asda was the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer! It was 7 points ahead of Samsung!"

"Oh?" Zhou Buqi was indeed very interested in his words, "What aspect are you talking about?"

Zhou Shaoning said: "Sales volume! According to preliminary statistics, the total global smartphone shipments last year were 11.6 billion units. The smartphone shipments of the Asda Group were 3.6 ​​million units, accounting for 31% of the market share. Samsung's shipments were 2.8 million units, accounting for 24% of the market share. The iPhone ranked third in the world, with shipments of 1.9 million units and a market share of 16%."

Zhou Buqi asked a more pointed question, "What about the profit?"

Zhou Shaoning cleared his throat and said, "The financial reports of Samsung and Apple have not been released yet, so the specific profits are unclear. As for Estar, the mobile phone business revenue is 770 billion US dollars, and the operating profit margin can be around 13%. As for the net profit, it can basically reach 10%."

Although Asda's shipment volume is high, 3 million of them are Motorola's mid- and low-end models, with low prices and low profits, with an average price of just over US$200.

The iPhone is different.

1.9 million of them are high-end machines.

The prices are high and the profit margins are high.

Although the shipment volume is not as large as that of Asda, the iPhone can bring Apple at least $20 billion in profits in the past year.

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and asked, "Where's the shipment chart? Let me see. Our shipments have surpassed Samsung. Is this because of the explosion of the Indian market?"

Zhou Shaoning smiled and said, "It's mainly due to the explosion of the three markets of China, Europe and India, mainly low-end and mid-range phones. We still have to rely deeply on the Motorola brand. Facts have proved that your initial decision to acquire Motorola was absolutely correct."

"An aging brand like Motorola can only be revitalized in our hands. Without some Internet-based operations, the Motorola brand would have died like Nokia."

Zhou Buqi is not bragging.

Like in the past, Lenovo acquired Motorola and was once highly favored by the market. However, the brand value of such old-fashioned and rigid IT companies has been shrinking, let alone leading Motorola to turn around. As a result, Motorola's brand value has been getting lower and lower, and its mobile phone business has become increasingly marginalized.

However, even if Lenovo is bad, it is still better than Microsoft.

After Microsoft acquired Nokia's mobile phone business, Nokia basically bid farewell to the mobile phone market.

Zhou Shaoning took the document from his secretary, handed it over, and said with a smile: "The Indian market is booming. Last year, the shipment of smartphones exceeded 4500 million units. We are the company with the largest shipments, reaching 1900 million units, accounting for 42%."

"Samsung..." Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows, "Samsung only accounts for 16%? Only more than 300 million units?"

Zhou Shaoning smiled and said, "Yes, Samsung's market share in India was as high as 33% last year, but we have taken over the market this year. It is expected that Samsung's market share in India will further shrink to around 5% next year."

"LAVA? What is this?"

"Indian local brands are nothing, just a ZTE brand."

"What about this MICROMAX?"

"They are also OEMs, either ZTE or Huawei, or Coolpad or Panda."

Zhou Shaoning gave some simple explanations on this.

In recent years, many local smartphone brands have emerged in India, all wanting to "start a business" and grab the market. However, many brands have died because these brands have cooperated with domestic copycat manufacturers, and the quality of the products they have OEMed are very poor, which naturally aroused the disgust of users.

The two brands LAVA and MICROMAX have been able to succeed because they are relatively "sincere" in doing business, cooperating with large domestic manufacturers, and the quality of their mobile phones is guaranteed, thus forming a good reputation among users.

However, these big manufacturers are no match for Astar in the country.

It would be even more unrealistic to just do a OEM and then compete head-on with Estar.

Zhou Buqi said: "When I came back, I read some reports. The Indian Ministry of Commerce issued a document saying that India's mobile phone manufacturing industry has reached a self-sufficiency rate of 96%. Is this bragging?"

Zhou Shaoning laughed, "That may be true, but local-made mobile phones cannot survive. LAVA and MICROMAX are so competitive because they chose OEM. Those who design, develop and manufacture their own products are either dead or dying."