Rebirth 79: I opened a bank in the United States

Chapter 600 Expanding the Market and Rejecting Monopoly

"That's right, it's over!"

"Remember Xerox's lesson, we don't need to make a high-end thing. A personal PC, a simple and easy-to-understand operating system guys, simplicity is king! The lower the threshold, the bigger the market!"

"Also, the department in charge of hardware development, take a look at this!"

Carter's words, after finalizing the next step of self-owned product development, his expression suddenly changed.In Gates' view, that smile has a bit of a cheap taste
This can't help but make Gates shudder.
"Mouse, oh no, the patent document of the XY position indicator. Apart from the soft card, your next job is to design a mouse. The technical difficulty is not high, and I even drew the appearance for you!"

After handing out several documents in a row, Carter twisted the stool:
"Bill, for this thing, I charge a patent licensing fee of 20 US dollars, isn't it too much?"

"I knew you were thinking about it"

Although his heart is full of flaws, Gates has to admit that in the current situation, it is really not good if the money is not paid.
And with the lessons learned from DOS, $20 doesn't seem to be that much
even
"I'll give you one million dollars a year, and you take back other patent licenses, and Microsoft will pay for the liquidated damages! How about it?"

"It's not good. It seems that this is our unique business. But, even if you don't talk about the possible anti-monopoly investigation, monopolizing the mouse, it is not good for us to expand this market! Bill, you can't Eat more cake and smash the oven!"

While Carter shrugged and refused, he couldn't help but look at Gates twice more.It seems that since the last DOS incident, this guy no, it should be said that before and after the last incident, this guy's changes are a bit different
Before that, to be honest, Carter couldn't see how strong the smell of copper was on Gates.He seems to lack the decisiveness and courage that a successful businessman should have, but now, these are slowly being made up.
"What's more, the technical difficulty of the mouse is actually not high. A positioning ball, plus a few sensors, even if there is no patent, just buy one in the market, take it apart and study it, and it can be imitated immediately."

"Also, don't forget what I just said, we need to lower the threshold! In addition to the technical threshold, the capital threshold is also very important! Only when everyone can afford a computer can our operating system sell well! Everyone will use our operating system system, we can monopolize this market, and it’s not something we do deliberately, people love to use our products, what can we do?”

"The anti-monopoly investigation has nothing to do with us! Because, that is the market's choice!"

"Multiple companies working together to make a mouse is conducive to business competition, and lowering the price is also conducive to promoting the technological change of the mouse. Don't think about this idea of ​​going astray."

"Steve, in the next stage, your work focus will not only maintain the original cooperation with IBM, but also provide language support for those computer companies, sell product cards and so on. You can also follow up on that production. Table software, that series should be called excel! Just like the name, I hope it can make the office far more efficient than usual!"

"Think about how many reports those big companies have to draw every year, and then think about the functions of this software. If there are conditions, such as the hard disk space of IBM XT next year is enough, you can try to add more to this simple tabulation software. function. For example, when making a sales statistics table, in addition to inputting data, can we add calculation functions into it, directly input parameters in the table, and then directly get the results, etc. "

"In this regard, Steve, please organize your manpower and do a market research. Then make statistics on the functions that are most needed in the daily office of major companies, and which processes are the most annoying to white-collar workers, and then put This information is given to the R&D team."

"okay, I get it."

Just as Gates was amazed that Carter started to promote a visual graphical operating system so early, Steve was also surprised that Carter didn't even look at DOS or BASIC, the two current Microsoft trump cards, in terms of business layout.

Instead, I focused on the current tabulation software that doesn't even have a name.
It's hard to tell if this is far-sightedness or blind command.
Leave everything to the future.
After the Microsoft meeting, Carter had a private meeting with Anna in the evening.The siblings talked, on the one hand, they talked about the profit of the mouse patent, and Carter entrusted it to Anna to handle it.With experience in DOS, Anna is responsible for handling this kind of patent income, and Carter is more at ease.

On the other hand, nature is about college
It's just a pity that, in Anna's words, she has earned a lot of money over the past few years.According to the three-year agreement, she and Joey should have gone out and started their own businesses long ago.
I have all the money and still go to school?What to study, not to!
Faced with his family's die-hard supporters of "the theory that reading is useless", Carter had no choice but to put the topic aside for the time being and hurried back to Yale.

From some perspectives, the importance of the Internet is far higher than that of Microsoft!
Even as a digression, Microsoft's positioning has always been a software company, but later it wanted to transform into an Internet company, but it was just an effect.
Simply put, an Internet can give birth to many companies whose value is no less than that of Microsoft.Of course, the existence of Microsoft also provides the soil for their birth.
"How? Did BITnet find it?"

Putting aside those unrelated thoughts for the time being, Carter approached Rick as soon as he returned to Yale.

"What are you looking for, I can't find it anywhere! I ran all over the computer room, but I didn't see the kind of computer with an extra wire you mentioned. The graduate school also ran away, I thought they might be in the laboratory I have seen it, but they all told me that I have never seen that kind of computer with an extra network cable.”

"Huh? It shouldn't be!"

Hearing Rick's answer, Carter was puzzled.
Could it be that old boy Sullivan is playing me? !
"Are you sure they all said they haven't seen it?"

"I'm sure. They all said they hadn't seen it. In order to find this damn thing, our Fuxing Agency searched all over the graduate students' apartments. We knocked on the door of each dormitory to ask, and asked repeatedly two or three times."

After Rick complained a bit depressedly, he was not discouraged:

"You came back just in time. We are planning to go to the professors' side to see if we can find out"

"Boom boom boom!"

Halfway through the conversation, there was a knock on the door
"Hello, who are you looking for?"

"I'm Gordon Freeman, I heard that someone recently was looking for a computer that can communicate remotely"

(End of this chapter)