Rebirth of England.

Chapter 694 WoawChat
Although the independent information network will incur considerable costs in the process of localizing in European countries - not only does it need to improve the website's multilingual support, but it also needs to hire a considerable number of people in each country to maintain the website.

But these are all very necessary. After all, SEM Group hopes to become a media group with global influence like BBC, CNN and News Corporation, rather than just being limited to the UK. Therefore, expanding their audience through the emerging Internet will also be an effective way.

After all, in terms of sources of news and information, in addition to the original independent newspaper groups, they also have Reuters Group and other partners.

The primary goal of the SEM Group is to expand its communication network across Europe and extend it to Asia and Australia.

It’s not that SEM Group does not want to enter the most important North American market, but the key is that the competition in this market is too fierce. Even the BBC cannot gain an advantage there.

Therefore, in the future, Barron will still enter the North American market through investment.

Speaking of which, we are currently in the process of transforming the PC Internet into mobile Internet.

It’s like Barron knew that mobile Internet would rise in the future, and since the launch of iPhone and Honor Mate 1, coupled with the popularization of 3G networks, it has already marked the beginning of the era of mobile Internet.

Therefore, whether it is Woaw or Argos and other companies, they have already begun to plan for the mobile Internet era and have successively launched corresponding mobile apps.

But today's smartphone users and 3G network speeds have not yet reached the levels they will later achieve.

Just like YouTube has not yet launched an APP, because the 3G network of mobile phones is not strong enough to support users to access videos on their mobile phones...

Therefore, although the layout has begun, we still need to wait patiently until the user base of mobile Internet reaches a certain level.

Why do we say that after the Internet entered the mobile Internet era, many companies based on smartphone applications have emerged? The reason is that traditional Internet companies did not expect the development of mobile Internet to be so rapid, so they simply transplanted PC products to mobile phones.

However, in terms of the user experience of smartphones, there is still a big gap between these ported applications and applications specifically made based on the operating methods of smartphones, which enables emerging companies to quickly accumulate users and develop.

Barron is also trying his best to avoid this, so both the Woaw APP and the Argos APP are completely based on the operation method of touch-screen smartphones. In addition, Woaw Technology has also launched the chat application WoawChat APP.

WoawChat APP allows users to register directly using their mobile phone numbers, and users can choose to have it read their mobile phone address books, so that they can directly add friends who have registered for WoawChat in their mobile phone address books, and recommend friends who have not registered for WoawChat to download and register.

To put it simply, WoawChat is similar to Whatsapp and WeChat, and is a social software that is completely based on smartphones.

Once launched, WoawChat quickly gained popularity among users and was quickly promoted through users' real-life social networks.

It's just the same reason, because the current proportion of smartphone users is not high, and WoawChat has only launched applications for iOS and Android systems. The launch of Google's GOS system version is still on the agenda. Therefore, in terms of the total number of users, it certainly cannot be compared with chat software such as MSN and Google message.

But Barron knows that WoawChat represents the future. As long as it continues to develop in this way and does not make too many mistakes, it will become a globally dominant social application like Whatsapp.

Having said that, it is still unknown whether Whatsapp can still develop like in its previous life after the emergence of WoawChat.

Because in fact, Whatsapp had already been launched at that time, but Whatsapp 1.0 at that time was not a chat software, but a software that could display the user status on the phone. Just like the PC version of Skype at that time had a new function that could display the status of "busy" and "online", but such a function did not appear on the mobile phone.

At this time, the design concept of Whatsapp is this: before the user makes a call, he can open WhasApp first to see if the other party is online.

But obviously, this feature is not popular with users...

In the original time and space, it was not until this year when Apple launched the "push notification" function that Whatsapp developed a messaging function, turning it into an instant messaging software. Since then, Whatsapp has become very popular among users.

But now, WoawChat has been launched ahead of Whatsapp and has made its functions more comprehensive, so everything has changed.

It is difficult for Whatsapp to be as popular as before...

Even so, Barron is still sending people to keep an eye on the development of Whatsapp. Once it changes, Blue Valley Capital will find them to invest. After all, IC Capital managed by Ivanta is one of the major shareholders of Woaw. So after Woaw launches the WoawChat APP, if Whatsapp is still preparing to be an instant messaging application, it will not accept investment from IC Capital. It is safer to invest in the name of Blue Valley Capital.

Baron also knew that the founders of Whatsapp had a habit, which was that they wanted to work with as few investors as possible - in their previous lives, they almost only chose Sequoia Capital for their early financing.

Even if Whatsapp can still develop and compete with WoawChat, Blue Valley Capital can still become the main investor of Whatsapp with relatively loose investment conditions, and it will eventually still be invested by Barron.

And even if Whatsapp could have developed, in Barron's previous life, Whatsapp was eventually acquired by Facebook.

Now that Facebook is gone, it’s not impossible for Woaw to acquire Whatsapp…

……

"I convinced Madame Lilinaya Bettencourt, Your Highness the Duke."

At this time, Barron received a call from Ashley Weber, bringing him good news.

The lawsuit within the Bettencourt family is currently intensifying, and Lilinaya Bettencourt is also at odds with her daughter.

Under such circumstances, although it would be difficult to get Lilina Bettencourt to agree to sell the Bettencourt family's shares in the L'Oréal Group to the Gucci-Hermès Group - not to mention that Lilina Bettencourt is not really confused, she will not easily sell the Bettencourt family's shares. Even if she is willing to sell, her daughter Françoise Bettencourt Meyer is currently trying to gain control of the family's shares through litigation. In this case, she can completely use this as an excuse to ask the French side to temporarily freeze the Bettencourt family's holdings, making it impossible for these shares to be sold.

But at this time, Lilina Bettencourt still controls the L'Oréal Group, so it is still entirely possible to obtain her permission to sell the shares held by the Nestlé Group to the Gucci-Hermès Group as a second best option.

You must know that in the previous agreement signed between the L'Oreal Group and the Nestlé Group, the Nestlé Group was not free to sell its shares in the L'Oreal Group before 2014 - because during this period, neither the Betancourt family nor the Nestlé Group had any rights. If one party sells its shares in the L'Oréal Group, the other party will have priority.

Only after 2014 was Nestlé able to freely sell its shares in L'Oréal Group.

(End of this chapter)