Chapter 615 - 439: 50.6 Million Units Sold in Half a Year, the Mass-Fleecing Meitu Kiss, Astonishing Profits

The last workday at the end of June.

At eight o’clock sharp, the salaries of Senlian Capital’s employees were deposited right on time.

Outside, the sky was filled with leaden clouds, looking like it was about to rain, but the employees’ spirits were exceptionally bright.

This was because this month included the quarterly bonus, which ranged from two to as much as four months’ salary.

Of course, for employees at places like Cloud Speed, Kuai Pao, and the Orange Phone Factory, their base salaries were too low. Even with a bonus of double their base pay, it only amounted to an extra two or three thousand yuan.

Chen Yansen summoned his system panel and converted 418,017 wisps of Human Dao Fire into 41 wisps of Immortal Dao Fire, which he then used to increase his Spirit value.

In an instant, the number on the panel changed from 101.05 to 101.46.

It seemed like a tiny change, and in truth, there wasn’t any significant difference.

Aside from an increase in the diameter of his Divine Sense’s detection, the weight limit for telekinesis, and enhancements to his memory and comprehension, the only other change was that the ring-like patterns in his pupils seemed to have brightened slightly, emitting a cool, silver glint.

Whenever Chen Yansen looked in the mirror, he always felt those eyes held a hint of cold indifference.

So far, he still hadn’t discovered the practical use of these ring-like patterns.

They were faint and ephemeral, more than ten times finer than a strand of hair.

After finishing the enhancement, he carried a cup of cold brew tea to the floor-to-ceiling window. Gazing at the gray, overcast sky, he suddenly remembered that Xuyuan would be starting its summer break tomorrow.

In another two months, he would be a senior in college.

He had been so busy during his three years of university that he hadn’t even gotten to know all of his major’s professors.

He had also arranged an internship for Meng Jie at the Luzhou Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Bank. He naturally understood Meng Zhen Country’s little scheme.

With his connections in Huian Province, what bank couldn’t he get her into?

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! A rap sounded at the door.

Chen Yansen habitually scanned with his Divine Sense, then answered, "Come in."

"Boss." Zhou Shouzhi walked in, wearing a light blue suit.

"There’s tea on the table, help yourself." Chen Yansen turned and sat down on the sofa.

Zhou Shouzhi held a document, placed it gently on the coffee table, and said, "The first-week sales figures for the three Western European countries are in. The Qingcheng series sold 146,000 units, the Orange series sold 51,000 units, and the Yaocheng series sold 12,000 units. Of these, the Aurora system accounted for 94.1%, and the Aurora Future System accounted for 5.9%."

He paused for a moment before continuing, "It’s mainly an issue with the app ecosystem. Products like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Amazon are unwilling to create compatible versions for the Aurora Future System."

"It’s fine. From a business perspective, I can understand. After all, they don’t have many users, so it’s normal for them not to take the initiative," Chen Yansen said with a shrug, unconcerned.

Although he said that, he was inwardly calculating, ’Once the Aurora Future System’s market share goes up, I’ll make these bastards pay dearly.’

"The first-day sales for the second batch of micro Orange Intelligent Life Halls reached 317,000 units across 304 stores. Combined with the first batch of stores, that’s a total of 478 locations.

"Average daily offline sales have exceeded 500,000 units, but it’s a 14.6% decrease week-over-week. This indicates that the market is approaching saturation within our current operational coverage," Zhou Shouzhi added.

"And online? The decline must be even steeper," Chen Yansen said with a slight smile, his tone confident.

The 618 shopping festival just ended. Orange Mobile Phone’s single-day sales across all online platforms reached over 2.7 million units, so user demand was already saturated.

If it weren’t for expanding the offline sales network and leveraging the Cloud Speed Service Station channels, the overall sales figures would have already plummeted disastrously.

You have to remember, the Qingcheng D2, Orange C3S, and Yaocheng X1 have been on the market for almost three months.

Generally, a new phone model’s peak sales period is concentrated in the first three months. Sales are halved in the following three months, and in the final three months, average daily sales often drop to one-tenth of the first day’s sales.

A nine-month lifespan is a difficult life-or-death threshold for most smartphones to cross.

Either release a new product or wait to die.

Even a powerhouse like Apple has to launch a new product every year.

Domestic phone manufacturers basically hold new product launch events in both the spring and autumn.

Regardless of whether there are any technical breakthroughs—even if it’s just a new screen, a different processor, or a system upgrade—they have to hype it up big time.

How else are they going to sell it?

"Compared to May, we project a decrease of 18.6%, which I believe is a reasonable rate of decline," Zhou Shouzhi said, not going into detail and only mentioning it briefly.

Chen Yansen didn’t press for more, as he reviewed the sales reports daily and knew the Orange Mobile Phone sales figures like the back of his hand: 43 million units shipped domestically; 7.6 million overseas, with markets covering Africa, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe.

At the current sales pace, the total for the year could exceed 100 million units.

In the domestic market, the Orange Mobile Phone could crush manufacturers like Coolpad, Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, TCL, and Xiaomi, but on the global stage, there was still a considerable gap with Apple, and it was no match for Mountain Star.

He had bought an industry report from a third-party consulting firm, which stated Mountain Star’s global shipments for the first half of the year were around 150 million units, a figure that truly made Chen Yansen envious.

’If Orange Mobile Phone could sell two or three hundred million units a year, wouldn’t those overseas internet companies have to obediently list the Aurora Future version of their apps and chase after him, kissing his ass?’

Building sales channels takes time, after all. Orange Technology had only been established for a full two years, so its poor overseas sales were just a temporary issue.

Once Lao Zhou expanded the market from Europe to Southeast Asia, Australia, and America, with the Orange Mobile Phone’s solid capabilities, it wouldn’t back down even in a head-on confrontation with Mountain Star and Apple!

"Tell the colleagues in the overseas Market Department that if they can hit the sales target of 100 million units, their fourth-quarter performance bonuses will be doubled."

Chen Yansen nodded slightly, habitually dangling a carrot.

"Understood. Thank you, Boss," Zhou Shouzhi replied with a smile.

Chen Yansen’s generosity wasn’t just for executives. Every time he increased bonuses, it applied to at least an entire department or project team—everyone got a piece!

This created a strong sense of unity throughout the company, making everyone work desperately hard to achieve results.

As the two were chatting over tea, Sina Weibo announced that it would add a "Weibo Wallet" function in its next version, officially entering the mobile payment sector.

Meili Shuo and Mogujie successively pivoted their business models. Under pressure from Ah Li, they both shifted to social e-commerce, intentionally reducing the exposure of their shopping guide e-commerce services to reserve traffic for their self-operated businesses.

Although Pinbei was relatively friendly to shopping guide e-commerce, wasn’t Ah Li the same way three years ago?

After getting burned by Ma Liyun, some shopping guide e-commerce platforms had no choice but to switch tracks, turning to compete directly with Ah Li, Pinbei, and Jingdong.

What’s Worth Buying, however, had a blessing in disguise. Its daily active user count was constantly rising, but its revenue growth was very slow.

This was because the users who came over from Meili Shuo and Mogujie were loyal fans of the rebate model, and What’s Worth Buying didn’t offer cash back to users.

As a result, users would think of What’s Worth Buying when searching for discounted products, but before placing an order, they would go to other shopping guide websites.

This led to a shopping guide website in Hu City called "52 Rebate" seeing a huge surge in users and revenue. It even seized the opportunity to secure a round of financing, hopping on the fast train of the era.

Zhou Shouzhi only stayed in Chen Yansen’s office for twenty minutes before leaving in a hurry, rushing back to handle the overseas market layout and the construction of domestic sales channels.

A short while later, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. The heavy rain that had been holding back for half the day finally poured down, and the air temperature dropped significantly along with it.

Chen Yansen returned to his seat, opened his computer, and looked over Yu Xianyang’s R&D progress and design plans. Seeing that they didn’t deviate from his own vision, he felt reassured.

He was currently working on the baseband issue, but even Chen Yansen himself wasn’t sure if he could circumvent Qualcomm’s patent walls.

However, after poaching some R&D personnel, the company had also accumulated some research achievements in protocol stacks, radio frequency, and algorithms.

The Celestial Craft A100 was the main event of the autumn new product launch and the beginning of Orange Technology’s break from Qualcomm and MediaTek. Naturally, Chen Yansen paid it extra attention.

In the blink of an eye, it was five in the afternoon.

By now, the rain outside had also stopped.

Chen Yansen pushed open the door, walked out, took the elevator straight to the parking garage, and was driven back to the Delta Villa District.

「Meanwhile.」

At the Senlian Capital Headquarters in Luzhou’s Baohe District, the main structure of the first phase was complete. Workers were busy with interior decoration, clearing the roads, and adding landscaping.

Employees from Orange Technology’s engineering management department were also busy inspecting the quality of the construction.

Every time locals passed by, they couldn’t help but exclaim, "Holy Dragon Scale Horse! This building is so tall!"

Families with university students, especially those about to graduate, were eagerly waiting, hoping that companies like Orange Technology, Pinbei, and Today Technology would move into Luzhou sooner rather than later.

After all, Senlian Capital’s salary and benefits were famously good. High pay for less work. Although there was overtime, it wasn’t mandatory, and overtime pay was calculated according to labor laws, going up to triple the normal rate.

There were meal and rent subsidies. Many people had seen related videos and pictures online showing that the fruit, snacks, and drinks at the company were available in unlimited supply, as long as they weren’t wasted.

With a monthly salary of eight thousand yuan, one could save over a hundred thousand a year. After working for two years, you could earn enough for a down payment on a house.

With a monthly salary of fifteen thousand, you could save two hundred thousand a year.

At other companies, with the same salary, after deducting expenses for housing, transportation, food, and the five social insurances and one housing fund, you couldn’t even save fifty thousand yuan a year.

Therefore, although Senlian Capital’s monthly salary level wasn’t top-tier in the market, its strengths lay in its law-abiding practices and numerous hidden benefits.

Company employees only ever came in, never out!

When netizens asked, employees would all say the overtime was severe. But when asked why they didn’t quit, every single one of them would beat around the bush.

Quit?

’Only a fool would leave!’

A few years ago, even vocational college students could get into Ali Baba. These days, it’s difficult even for graduates from 211 and 985 universities.

One could only imagine that Senlian Capital’s interview requirements would only get stricter in the future. Who would be foolish enough to resign voluntarily?

「Elsewhere.」

Wealth Treasure announced that the funds in its "Yulibao" had exceeded 50 billion yuan.

But compared to Yu’e Bao’s scale of over 340 billion, it was still miles away.

In June’s "Split 10 Billion in Trial Funds" event, the person at the top of the leaderboard now held over 100 million yuan in funds.

Second place: 97.4 million!

Third place: 96.9 million!

Clearly, the stream of businesspeople wanting to have dinner with President Chen was endless, and the competition was fierce.

The reasons were simple. Magic Camera’s cumulative global user count had surpassed 60 million, and it had topped the download charts on the Orange and Aurora Future Application Mall, the App Store, and Tencent’s Appstore multiple times.

It had leaped to become the new darling of Hua Country’s internet tech companies!

Thanks to video promotions on Mimo, the product had even become a hit in the North American Region.

Many people wanted to be the next Xu Jiujiu!

Even if they couldn’t get support and investment from Senlian Capital, just getting a few words of guidance from Chen Yansen was priceless.

Meanwhile, far away in Mindu, Wu Hongxin was ecstatic, the joy in his eyes impossible to hide. The Meitu Kiss had achieved outstanding results in its first month, selling 672,000 units.

Others might not know, but he himself was perfectly aware: the material cost was less than 800 yuan per unit.

Chen Yansen had earned a lot, but he had earned even more!

A net profit of nearly 700 yuan per unit!

"Women’s money is so easy to make!"

Wu Hongxin muttered to himself.

He thought for a moment, then called the heads of the market and brand departments for a meeting. He planned to find more beautiful, high-traffic celebrities to endorse the Meitu Mobile Phone.

Douyin’s popularity also made him see the potential of the short-video track. While waiting for his subordinates to arrive, the idea of ’plagiarism’ popped into Wu Hongxin’s head.

But on second thought, Penguin’s Weishi had just launched. If he jumped on the bandwagon now, he could easily be crushed by the giants. So, he forcefully suppressed the impulse and decided to focus his energy on the mobile phone business for the time being.

However, he had already come up with a name for the product—it would be called Meipai!