Rebirth of England.

Chapter 671: Subversive

"Welcome, Your Highness the Duke."

The Devonshire landed at Tokyo Yokota Airport, and Barron chose Japan as the first stop of his Asian trip.

This time, he was relatively low-key and visited in a private capacity, but someone still came to the airport to greet him, and that was the founder of SoftBank Group, Masayoshi Son.

Basically speaking, entrepreneurs can be divided into two categories. One category is relatively high-profile and good at building their own image, thereby gaining the public's favor and support, and then extending this favor and support to their own company and products. The other category is very low-key and hardly appears in the public eye, let alone frequently being interviewed and facing the camera.

In the early stage of Barron's "entrepreneurship", he was more like the first type of person. "The youngest Duke of England" and "investment genius" can be said to be Barron's external image. After all, at that time, he needed to rely on these images to obtain funds and expand the scale of investment.

At that time, he not only accepted interviews, but also took the initiative to participate in some reality show variety shows.

But now, Barron no longer needs to build his personal brand image in this way, and as his assets expand, he doesn't even want his name to appear on the rich list, so he has become more low-key. He has not been interviewed for a long time, and all relevant interviews are conducted by his spokesperson.

As for Sun Zhengyi, he obviously belongs to the first category. He can often be seen in various reports, and his image has also brought great benefits to SoftBank Group. For example, after the subprime mortgage crisis, although SoftBank Group did not receive as much investment as $500 billion from the Middle East as in the original time and space, it also received part of the funds withdrawn by the Middle East from the United States, at least $ or billion.

Baron and Masayoshi Son have known each other for a long time, after all, both of them are shareholders of Alibaba.

In addition to this relationship, Sun Zhengyi's SoftBank Group also has a lot of cooperation with Barron's related industries. In addition, both parties have received a lot of investment from Middle Eastern funds. Therefore, when he came to Japan this time, Sun Zhengyi welcomed him very warmly and entertained him.

"Congratulations, Mr. Sun Zhengyi, you have successfully transformed Vodafone Japan. Thank you for bringing the Honor Mate series of mobile phones to the Japanese market..."

"It can be said that we have a win-win situation, Your Highness. The functions and quality of Honor phones that are not comparable to those of Apple iPhones are the main reason for their success with us."

The mutual flattery between Barron and Sun Zhengyi easily created a harmonious atmosphere between the two sides.

However, Baron is not exaggerating too much. Honor phones can enter the Japanese market thanks to SoftBank Group.

In fact, Japan's mobile phone market is somewhat special. In the previous era of feature phones, when brands such as Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola were popular all over the world, in Japan, the most widely used mobile phone brands were Sharp, NEC, and Panasonic.

This is not because the Japanese are patriotic, nor is it because they think Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola are not easy to use. The main reason is that the Japanese are rich and afraid of trouble. Therefore, they do not compare prices themselves and then buy mobile phones in shopping malls, but buy them directly from mobile phone operators.

Therefore, even if Nokia and other foreign brands of mobile phones are sold in shopping malls, the local people are mainly accustomed to buying mobile phones through operators. These operators are closely connected with their domestic big conglomerates, which also control local mobile phone brands such as Sharp, NEC, and Panasonic.

If this is the case, they will certainly only sell their own brand of mobile phones to the public. No matter how good Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and other brand mobile phones are, they will never be able to enter the operators' sales channels.

After entering the era of smart phones, Apple phones and Honor Mate series phones have become very popular in many countries. However, for a long time, people in Japan are still using local brand feature phones.

Japan's feature phones are more developed than any other country in the world. They have extra-large screens, flip-top mobile TVs, and extremely rich Internet services provided by operators... This is a closed mobile Internet system in Japan, and it has been working well for many years.

Under the propaganda of these operators, the Japanese people generally believe that traditional feature phones can already meet the needs of users well, and smartphones are too complicated to use. SoftBank Group, however, has existed as an industry disruptor since its inception.

As early as 2001, Sun Zhengyi's SoftBank Group entered the broadband market that had long been monopolized by Japan.

At that time, Japan's PC Internet market was dominated by the old state-owned enterprise NTT. The cost of Internet access for the people was very expensive and the speed was not fast.

NTT is a long-established state-owned enterprise in Japan, and its political and economic status in Japan is unparalleled.

Sun Zhengyi was also very courageous at the time. He took risks and rushed into the office of the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications with gasoline and a lighter, forcing officials to negotiate with him - demanding that the government amend the law to prevent NTT, which has long monopolized Japan's fixed-line Internet market, from monopolizing the fiber optic business.

In the end, Sun Zhengyi's adventure paid off. After negotiations, Japanese officials allowed SoftBank Group to enter this market. As a result, Sun Zhengyi's SoftBank Group acquired a huge market share through a low-price strategy and became an important network operator in Japan.

Then in March 2006, SoftBank Group entered the mobile communications market.

They announced that they would acquire Vodafone's Japanese subsidiary for 1 trillion yen (about 7500 billion US dollars) and officially enter the mobile communications business.

At that time, SoftBank Group did not have so much money, and they took on a huge debt of 1.9 trillion yen.

Afterwards, SoftBank Group launched a price war through the same low-price strategy, continuously increasing its market share and becoming one of the three major mobile operators in Japan along with NTT DoCoMo and KDDI.

As mentioned earlier, the main way for Japanese people to purchase mobile phones is through mobile operators.

Therefore, after becoming the main mobile operator in Japan, SoftBank Group subverted Japan's mobile phone industry - they introduced Apple mobile phones and Honor Mate series mobile phones into the domestic market of Japan.

As early as when the Apple mobile phone was still under development, Sun Zhengyi had taken the initiative to go to the United States to meet Steve Jobs, and eventually obtained the sales rights for the iPhone in Japan.

After the launch of Honor mobile phone, SoftBank Group was the only Japanese telecommunications operator willing to acquire the sales rights of Honor mobile phone.

Initially, because the Japanese people generally use feature phones, other operators in the industry were very pessimistic about SoftBank's move, believing that the Japanese people did not have the habit of using smartphones, so its move would ultimately end in failure.

But the final result was surprising. SoftBank Group was successful again. Apple mobile phones and Honor Mate series mobile phones were very popular in Japan. Young people bought them in large numbers and were proud to use Apple and Mate series mobile phones. The market share of these two mobile phone brands continued to rise, making them the best-selling brands in Japan.

Of course, the sales of iPhone and Honor Mate series phones have achieved a win-win effect for SoftBank. The introduction of these two touch-screen smartphones has greatly enhanced the attractiveness of SoftBank Group, and a large number of fashionable young people in Japan have flocked to SoftBank Group's network.

The monthly data traffic expenses these people spend on iPhones and Mate series phones are quite staggering. The monthly data traffic expenses of smartphones are more than ten times that of feature phones. This also makes SoftBank Group the first operator in Japan whose data revenue exceeds voice revenue.

In fact, whether it was when Barron acquired O2 Telecom and used a low-price strategy, or when he later acquired T-Mobile USA and used a low-price strategy to impact the American telecommunications market, they all more or less referred to Sun Zhengyi's successful methods in the Japanese telecommunications market.

(End of this chapter)