Chapter 479 358: 10 Million Users, a Rival Appears! Demon, Hand Over My Grandpa

Mountain Star and MediaTek purchase this tier of patent license. It offers low flexibility and a low licensing fee, but carries high royalties. The trade-off is a fast time-to-market.

The third type is a use license, which only allows clients to use the pre-packaged CPU core. It cannot be modified or extended and is typically used for embedded systems or the low-end market.

It has the lowest licensing fee and the poorest flexibility, and is mostly used for inexpensive IoT chips.

The chips used in Ofo bikes and Cloud Speed Express lockers are basically the product of this type of license.

Chen Yansen planned to license out the Orange Z1 at a low price. The first priority was to seize the market.

Nurture the market early on, then harvest it later.

Develop one generation, deploy one generation, and keep one in reserve!

The Orange Z1 was just the beginning of Orange Technology's in-house CPU architecture, not the end.

When the time comes, he'd like to see how ARM could possibly continue its cash grab.

'Fucking hell. Daring to rip me off? They're courting death!'

Chen Yansen's eyes narrowed, a cold glint flashing within them. "Let Hua Country's chip industry start with the Orange Z1!"

Mike Keller and Wu Shengyu were busy verifying the superiority of the Orange Z1, while Ding Houmeng was occupied with the patent application process.

"Going to Delta tonight."

Chen Yansen sent a text to Song Yuncheng.

"Why don't you rest for a couple of days? You seem a little tired lately," Song Yuncheng replied instantly, an image of Chen Yansen's exhausted face appearing in her mind.

"I'm not tired."

"Did you... buy some pills?"

Chen Yansen read the text and laughed in exasperation. 'Looks like I've been too easy on Song Yuncheng,' he thought.

'Pills?'

'I've never taken that crap in my life!'

Chen Yansen pursed his lips, fingers flying as he typed back, "Your Q4 performance bonus is gone."

"..." Song Yuncheng bit her lip, feeling utterly wronged. 'I was just worried about your health!'

「Meanwhile.」

Mimo had been live in the North American Region for twenty days, and its user base in the Lighthouse Country and Canada was skyrocketing.

Total registrations had already surpassed 10 million, with daily active users holding steady at 4.3 million. User stickiness and retention rates were extremely high.

The endless variety of bizarre and fascinating short videos were incredibly appealing to users. Combined with the recommendation engine working its magic behind the scenes, users found themselves getting more and more addicted the more they scrolled.

Before they knew it, users had completely drained their mobile data allowances.

Because of this, heavy users of the Mimo Short Video app had no choice but to sign up for unlimited data plans.

Under Mimo's influence, sales for T-Mobile's Unlimited 4G plan, Sprint's Everything Data plan, and MetroPCS's 4G LTE for All plan exploded one after another.

The head of T-Mobile's marketing department had the sharpest business acumen. He immediately contacted Mao Chaorong, wanting to promote their Unlimited 4G plan on Mimo.

Faced with an offer of 30 US dollars CPM (cost per thousand impressions), 50 US dollars CPA (commission per plan purchased), and a 500,000 US dollar advertising contract, Mao Chaorong accepted the partnership without the slightest hesitation.

In truth, he hadn't expected Mimo's download numbers and viral growth to be this explosive.

That was until a video editor named Harrison appeared. His editing skills were nothing short of magical; his first uploaded video gained 2.6 million likes in just two days.

The video was then reposted on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, with the Mimo watermark clearly visible in the bottom right corner.

He then uploaded a second video featuring the viral Harry Potter magic broom illusion, but his filming and editing were so masterful that the average person couldn't spot the trick at all.

With just two videos, he gained 1.3 million followers on Mimo, instantly becoming a well-known influencer.

This, in turn, attracted a large number of creators skilled in special effects editing to flock to Mimo, progressively raising the quality of the platform's video content.

Once Mimo surpassed 10 million users, it immediately appeared on the radar of Wall Street investment firms.

To put things in perspective, not even Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter had experienced such an explosive growth rate in their early days.

Investment offers from the likes of the Anderson Horowitz Fund, Greylock Partners, KPCB, and Baishang Capital came pouring in, with financing offers routinely reaching tens of millions of US dollars.

Mao Chaorong didn't have the authority to make such a decision, so he immediately reported the situation to Chen Yansen.

"They want a piece of Mimo for only 10 million US dollars? In their dreams!"

Chen Yansen rejected them without a second thought.

Mimo and Toutiao were part of the same parent company. It would naturally open a window for financing in the future, but that time was definitely not now.

President Chen was always the one taking advantage of others. Did this bunch of idiots from Wall Street really think they could take advantage of him?

Not a chance!

After getting a clear idea of Chen Yansen's intentions, Mao Chaorong felt emboldened. He didn't refuse the offers, but simply stalled for time.

Meanwhile, Twitter, which had just acquired Vine, was still in small-scale product testing. But after seeing Mimo's explosive popularity, they couldn't hold back any longer and rapidly launched a massive promotional campaign.

"Fuck!"

Mao Chaorong cursed under his breath when he heard the news.

He knew that Mimo's first major competitor had entered the ring.

In 2012, while Twitter couldn't match Facebook in terms of total user base or daily active users, it was still a phenomenal social media app in Europe and America, with over 600 million users and more than 200 million monthly active users.

If Twitter threw its full weight behind funneling traffic to Vine, Mimo would have a tough time competing.

Mao Chaorong knew a confrontation was inevitable. He immediately accelerated Mimo's expansion, hoping to throw money at boosting download numbers before Vine could gain any real momentum.

Chen Yansen had given Mimo a monthly promotional budget of 20 million US dollars, and so far, they had only spent half of it.

In another ten days, another 20 million US dollars would arrive. Mao Chaorong no longer dared to pinch pennies. To acquire users on a massive scale, he relaxed the cost-per-acquisition targets for his ad campaigns.

When Chen Yansen received Mao Chaorong's report, he had no objections, simply replying, "If the money isn't enough, I'll add more!"

Running into competitors was normal. Internet products in Europe and America copied each other all the time; it was impossible for the short-video space to be dominated by a single product.

A battle royale between dozens, even hundreds, of competing companies was the norm in the business community.

Winner takes all!

...

...

「Three days later, on a typical Friday, at the Yanjing Huake Science Association.」

"An in-house CPU architecture called Orange Z1? A new product from Orange Technology?"

Hu Ruihui, who was in charge of the Loongson Project, pushed up his glasses and questioned his assistant.

"The news came from the Intellectual Property Association, but the materials Orange Technology submitted only contain the instruction format, execution flow, and code examples. The performance of the instruction set is still unknown."

The assistant replied with precision.

In its initial design, the Loongson 1 had used the MIPS instruction set, which was past its patent protection period. However, because it was an outdated version, its reference value was limited.

Therefore, three years ago, the Huake Science Association paid a hefty sum to purchase permanent licenses for the MIPS 32 and MIPS 64 architectures, which allowed them to create Hua Country's first quad-core CPU, the Loongson 3A.

Compared to ARM's instruction set, while MIPS was also a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture, it was far inferior in terms of architectural design and power optimization, making it very limited.

"I've heard of this company. Last year, their smartphone shipments surpassed Mountain Star's. Very impressive," Hu Ruihui praised casually.

Even though phone manufacturers like Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, and Lenovo were trying hard to catch up, between 2009 and 2011, they were consistently crushed by foreign brands like Mountain Star, Apple, and Nokia.

That situation was only completely reversed after Orange Technology was established.

"Hu Gong, are you suggesting...?" The assistant had a guess but didn't dare to be certain, so he asked cautiously.

"Give them a call. I need to make a trip to Xucheng,"

Hu Ruihui stated plainly, giving the order to his assistant.

In his view, the fact that Orange Technology dared to apply for a patent, and even file an international one, was a sign of their immense confidence.

Ultimately, while MIPS had its highlights in single-thread efficiency and architectural simplicity, it was held back by its limited ecosystem and commercialization model, making it difficult to compete with ARM in the mainstream market.

The Loongson project couldn't be limited to internal use forever; the problem of commercialization could not be ignored.

Regardless of the Orange Z1's actual performance, Hu Ruihui had to make the trip to Xucheng to personally experience its power efficiency, cache, and execution efficiency.

What if it turned out to be a pleasant surprise?

"Yes, Hu Gong. I'll get right on it," the assistant replied with a nod.

Although Chen Yansen hadn't made a public announcement, the leading figures in the tech industry had already learned of the Orange Z1's existence.

Most scoffed at the news, having no faith in Orange Technology's R&D capabilities, but there were also quite a few who, like Hu Ruihui, were intrigued.

Before setting off, Hu Ruihui took a detailed look into the history of Chen Yansen and Orange Technology's development and couldn't help but be inwardly astonished.

'It was all too fast!'

Orange Technology's products—the Aurora OS, its camera algorithms, its battery management system, its voice interaction engine—had all progressed at a breakneck pace in the right direction, seemingly without taking a single wrong turn.

This was extremely rare in the field of research and development!

After piecing things together in his mind, Hu Ruihui came to see Chen Yansen as a brilliantly talented young man.

Little did he know that this "outstanding youth" was, at that very moment, dressed in a Scorpion Demon cosplay outfit, busy fighting one of the mighty Huluwa.

"Demon, give me back my grandpa!" Ye Qiuping said, trying to suppress her embarrassment with a coquettish pout.

"Hah! *You're* the demon!" Chen Yansen shot back, ramrod straight and enjoying himself immensely.