Reborn: Billionaire in College

Chapter 238 Orange Cell Phone
In the middle of last year, Riot conducted a small-scale internal test in North America, and the results were quite good.

The timing of the appearance of "League of Legends" was quite accurate.

WAR3 and StarCraft are gradually withdrawing from the stage, and the battles are mainly individual.

DOTA1 is gradually losing popularity due to its high difficulty in getting started and lack of updates.

"League of Legends" fills the gap in MOBA games very well.

The success of the internal beta test allowed Riot to advance the launch of "League of Legends".

After the North American launch, "League of Legends" had 10 people online at the same time in the US server within a week, resulting in people having to queue up to enter the game.

The impressive data has greatly stimulated Riot Games.

Seeing how popular League of Legends was, Tian Hongrui could no longer hold back and started preparing for the national server early on.

"There are only 23 heroes to choose from now, which is too few. You need to contact Riot to speed up the research and development of new heroes. At least 40 heroes must be prepared before the national server can be officially launched." Chen Pingjiang frowned after entering the game. Riot took some detours in the early stages of the game, and his task is to reduce these detours.

“Subsequent heroes must be continuously developed so that the competitive playability can be gradually improved.”

"The game is still a bit difficult. Don't learn how to deny in DOTA, as that is not friendly to new players. Stick to your own style."

“In addition to the battle mode, a free-for-all mode can be added, with only one lane and players fighting in a melee.”

Tian Hongrui asked curiously, "Mr. Chen, are you also so familiar with MOBA games?"

Chen Pingjiang choked and made up an excuse: "I've played DOTA before, this game is similar to DOTA."

After thinking for a while, Chen Pingjiang continued: "With our powerful publicity and promotion system, it is not a problem for League of Legends to be popular in China, but how popular it will be in the end depends on how well the e-sports system is implemented."

"You can set up a separate company to organize e-sports events, mainly professional leagues in various places. This will open up a bigger stage for League of Legends, allowing outstanding professional players to showcase their talents, and also allow the game to begin its commercialization journey. At the same time, it will also provide a platform for the popularization and promotion of the game. In time, the success of the professional league will attract more investors and sponsors, thus forming a positive cycle."

"Half a year after the domestic launch, we will select a team from each region and hold a global finals."

Tian Hongrui was a little puzzled: "Current e-sports competitions are all affiliated with WCG. If we hold the global finals ourselves, the prize money expenditure will be a considerable amount in the long run.

Chen Pingjiang shook his head. "The first global finals will be an invitational event. Once the professional leagues are established in various regions, the top three teams from each region will be selected to participate in the global finals. By then, the global finals will be held for one month, and we will make it the World Cup of the gaming industry. The prize money for the competition is easy to solve. A fixed percentage of the annual skin sales plus ticket revenue will be enough."

"This is not a small amount of money. The current e-sports champions only get 10 US dollars at most, and the total prize money is only 20-30 US dollars. Mr. Chen, according to your calculation, our global finals prize pool can even reach 2-300 million US dollars. This is too exaggerated."

Chen Pingjiang smiled and said, "It's a lot of money to buy horse bones. After the commercialized professional competitions become popular, there will be TV stations or websites to buy the copyrights, and they will also attract advertising sponsors. We will never lose money."

Tian Hongrui has unconditional trust in the big boss.

In fact, the reason why "League of Legends" has become so popular and continues to be so popular is closely related to its successful commercial operation.

That year, Bilibili alone spent 8 million RMB to acquire the three-year live broadcast rights for the League of Legends World Championship.

This is just the global finals!
What about the mid-season tournament?

What about the broadcasting rights for each region?

What about ticket revenue?
These numbers add up to a terrifying number, which directly resulted in Riot's annual profit of 2020 billion in 17.5.

It's not just the game itself and the events that make money. IP-derived mobile games, animations, music, virtual idols, comics, novels, and figures can all make money.

Therefore, whether or not "League of Legends" can be made ultimately depends on how the professionalization of e-sports is carried out.

In Chen Pingjiang's opinion, Tencent and Riot have indeed done a good job in this regard. They have actively promoted the inclusion of "League of Legends" in the Asian Games, and the event is also relatively mature.

The topic of EDG's victory that year was read 33.9 billion times, sparking 420 million discussions. Celebrities from all walks of life posted congratulations, and young people across the country stayed up all night.

No other e-sports game can achieve this kind of achievement.

"Understood. I will contact Riot and pass on your instructions."

"Wait a minute, don't give it to them yet." Chen Pingjiang stopped Tian Hongrui and said, "I will ask President Bu to go to the United States to try to acquire the company, and then we will implement the plan just now."

It is the most appropriate time to enter and acquire shares of Riot Games.

The game has just been released, and although it has achieved a small-scale success in North America, it has not yet been proven in the global market.

Moreover, it has been a year since the last round of financing, and Riot has probably spent most of its money.

The best solution is naturally to acquire Riot and become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renren.com, but at the very least, it is necessary to acquire more than 60% of the shares.

Bu Housheng was very quick and brought back good news in just one week.

Riot Games agreed to Chen Pingjiang's acquisition conditions, and Renren spent US$1.7 million to acquire 70% of the other party's shares.

After this round of acquisition, Riot Games officially became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renren.

When the news got back to China, glasses fell all over the floor.

Many people said they couldn’t understand it.

"Renren is really rich. They spent so much money to acquire such a little-known company."

"There's so much money to burn, and it doesn't seem like this company is worth that much."

"You can't say that, right? Riot's League of Legends is still very popular in North America, and it is said that a Chinese version is also being prepared."

"It's just a MOBA game, can it be as profitable as DNF?"

"What do you guys know? Our CEO Chen's vision has been proven many times by the industry. What do you know? You're just a bunch of keyboard warriors."

"..."

Chen Pingjiang turned a blind eye to all the disturbances in the outside world. His vision would only be proven when various League of Legends competitions became popular in a few years.

Besides, the deal actually cost very little.

Renren will be listed soon, and the national version will be almost online at that time. This round of mergers and acquisitions comes at the right time, which will also increase the outside world's expectations for Renren, thereby raising its valuation.

…………Lin Bin and Zhou Guangping are both quite old, but this does not hinder their enthusiasm for work at all.

The team was almost assembled in less than two months.

Half of them were recruited through various channels, the rest were recruited from other sources, and some came from Renren.com.

The mobile phone development process is divided into seven steps: demand analysis, design, prototype development, software development, hardware development, testing and production.

In accordance with Chen Pingjiang's requirements and with an eye on reality, Orange Mobile's first mobile phone will be priced in the middle, and will enter the high-end market when conditions are ripe.

Even though the Meizu M8 is selling well right now, Chen Pingjiang's competitor is not him, but Steve Jobs' iPhone.

Therefore, the product functions, performance and size of Orange mobile phones will be aligned with the latter.

Lin Bin and Zhou Guangping originally thought that Chen Pingjiang was a layman, but they did not expect that Chen Pingjiang could actually serve as a qualified product manager.

He made many practical suggestions, not only in terms of appearance but also in terms of software functions.

Many of the ideas even amazed Lin Bin and Zhou Guangping.

Chen Pingjiang didn't want his Orange phone to follow in the footsteps of HTC as soon as it was released, so he had no intention of selling the first phone overseas, and therefore didn't care about patents or not.

Patents developed by our own company will not be reflected until the second or third generation at the earliest.

Chen Pingjiang's actions further verified what he said to Lin Bin at the beginning, that he did not want to make an assembly and OEM machine, but really intended to invest funds in research and development.

In fact, not only now, but even in a few years, many mobile phones will be OEM-produced. The most exaggerated thing is that a certain car brand also crossed over to make a mobile phone, and the research and development and design were all done by others. They dared to sell it for 6000+ just by putting a brand on it.

Consumers generally praised him as an expert, saying that he at least had some conscience and could have just robbed the seller.

Didn’t Lao Luo say that before?
I have nothing to say about the so-called "black technology" of those manufacturers.

“I’m not saying that any one company is not good, but that all of us here are ‘solution integrators’, and we all get components from suppliers. Why should our competitors act like grandsons?”

Except for one certain company, all other products are assembled and they boast of their supply chain innovation.

Although what he said was offensive, it was also true.

Most of the so-called domestic mobile phones rely on hardware combinations to attract consumers, and they don’t have much innovation at all, especially the lack of core technology.

Some mobile phone companies claim credit for changes that originally belonged to the supply chain. For example, the full screen was not an innovation of mobile phone manufacturers, but almost all mobile phone manufacturers used it as a selling point. Later, under-screen fingerprint recognition came out, and a small number of mobile phone manufacturers tried it, but this also depended on the supplier and had little to do with the mobile phone manufacturers.

Apple improves photo-taking effects through algorithms, while domestic phones improve photo-taking effects through beautification.

Without core technology and just doing assembly, it does not meet Chen Pingjiang's expectations, nor does it fit the positioning of Orange mobile phone.

"We can use integrated solutions for the first generation of Orange phones, but in the future we will develop our own mobile phone systems, algorithms for each part, and even chips."

Zhou Guangping nodded: "This is the only way now. Research and development is not something that can be accomplished overnight. It requires a lot of time and capital accumulation. Let's just work for those foreign manufacturers first."

As for display screens, BOE is still a long way off, so Samsung and Sharp may be the best choices right now.

You can only go to Qualcomm for chips.

For memory, look for Samsung and Hynix.

The camera alone requires a large number of suppliers, including camera modules, camera lenses, camera chips, and camera motors.

This situation will not change until a number of domestic suppliers such as BOE and O-Film grow up. It cannot be changed in an hurry.

After all, no matter how powerful a mobile phone manufacturer is, it is impossible for it to develop so many components in-house.

In this era, if you don’t sell your mobile phone at a higher price, you really can’t make any money. All the profits are taken by the suppliers, and the most you can make is the handling fee.

The key is that others make money from you and still want to strangle you from time to time.

Huawei is restricted because it has core technology, but Xiaomi is too lazy to block it.

The one that is posing the biggest bottleneck is Samsung, which is both a mobile phone manufacturer and a supplier, both a player and a referee.

It has been stuck on Huawei, HTC, and Xiaomi.

HTC executives accused Samsung of using component supply as a competitive weapon.

Huawei's Mate 9 Pro was very popular when it was first launched, but it was soon out of stock for half a year. This phone was basically not available on the market. The reason is that Samsung cut off the supply and refused to give you the OLED screen at all.

Because at that time, Samsung Display was the only manufacturer that could mass-produce curved flexible OLED panels. Other companies either had insufficient yields or simply did not have the ability, so Huawei had no choice but to choose Samsung, but the result was that it was stuck. This also explains why Huawei has rarely used Samsung screens in its main models since the Mate9 series, preferring to choose BOE or LG, which have lower quality, rather than Samsung, just to avoid being stuck.

Even Xiaomi, which focuses on the mid-to-low-end market and has little competition with Samsung, has been stabbed in the back by Samsung several times. When Xiaomi's first high-end mobile phone, the Mi Note series, was released, it even asked Tony Leung to be the spokesperson. As a result, the screen was blocked by Samsung, and Lei Jun personally went to Samsung to beg for the screen.

Qualcomm is even more amazing. Its breeding technology is unique. Many domestic mobile phones are even proud to use Qualcomm chips. Even if Qualcomm poops, it has to bite the bullet and feed it to its daddy, and then turn around and praise Qualcomm for having a good stomach.

The two most famous chips are Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 888.

In the eyes of consumers, the former is the notorious first-generation "Fire Dragon" and the latter is the cursed third-generation "Fire Dragon".

But, so what? Domestic manufacturers still have to use it, and in the end it is the consumers who pay the bill.

Chen Pingjiang said: "If the performance gap is not too big, try to support domestic suppliers and don't always rely on Samsung and Qualcomm."

Zhou Guangping shook his head. "Qualcomm is the only chip manufacturer, unless we develop our own? But that thing can't be made by just throwing money at it, haha. Samsung can be replaced, but the performance will be much lower."

"Yes, I know. So we will try our best to help speed up the domestic supply chain." Chen Pingjiang said helplessly: "But we still have to focus on our first generation of Orange phones. Don't forget the bet agreement between us and the Dongjiang Municipal Government."

This gamble is actually quite big.

The Dongjiang Municipal Government provided Orange Mobile with land at 10% of the market price, as well as a loan of billion yuan with the lowest interest rate.

But at the same time, Orange Mobile must pay no less than 2012 million yuan in taxes every year starting from 5, otherwise it will be required to return the land or purchase it at the original price, and invest 50 billion yuan in the Dongjiang factory in the next five years.

(End of this chapter)