Chapter 683 - 489: Huawei’s 500 Million Purchase Order! 30 GWh Capacity Layout! Song Yuncheng the Grinder

On October 15th, Pinbei’s Double Eleven presale event kicked off.

Meitu CEO Wu Hongxin publicly announced that cumulative sales of the Meitu 1S Beauty Camera had surpassed 300,000 units, with revenue reaching 640 million yuan.

Meanwhile, the first-day sales figures for the High Technology Corporation One Max were released, with a total of 11,000 units sold globally.

The model featured a Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a built-in 3,300 mAh lithium battery. It was priced at 5,288 yuan.

The price had netizens asking: What gave High Technology Corporation the audacity?

After all, the Yaocheng X1 standard edition, with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, sold for only 3,999 yuan!

As a result, the 5,288 yuan High Technology Corporation One Max faced widespread ridicule online the moment it launched.

Shortly after, data released by IDC showed that Hua Country’s smartphone shipments had jumped to first place globally, accounting for over 40% of the market for the first time.

After their release, both the Nokia Lumia 1520 and the Blackberry Z30 made the Hua Country market their primary focus.

The former hoped to leverage Hua Country’s vast mobile user base to increase the market share of the Windows Phone 8 operating system, while the latter intended to use the opportunity to save Blackberry’s precarious market position.

Unfortunately, they were priced too high—one at 4,999 yuan and the other at 4,299 yuan.

For consumers, the Yaocheng X1 was a much better deal: a purely domestic OS with no ads, smooth performance, a powerful camera, higher security, and a lower price.

Thus, one after another, flagship phones from three foreign manufacturers—High Technology Corporation, Nokia, and Blackberry—all failed spectacularly in the Hua Country market.

Only the iPhone 5s’s sales left everyone in the dust, allowing it to firmly dominate the high-end market.

In the over-4,000-yuan price range, only the Yaocheng X1, the Mountain Star GALAXY S4, and the Sony L36h could still put up a fight.

With Orange Technology’s new product launch approaching, everyone hoped the Yaocheng X2 would continue the success of its predecessor and challenge Apple’s arrogant dominance.

Huawei’s Ren Zhongfei was no exception. During his meeting with Chen Yansen, he sighed and said, "In the high-end sector, the Yaocheng series is the only domestic phone that can still compete."

Four months prior, Huawei had launched the Ascend P6, which sold only 2 million units, falling far short of its 10-million-unit target.

In 2013, Huawei’s phone business was primarily focused on low-to-mid-range models, mostly as contract phones—the kind given away when you top up your calling credit.

The models launched this year, such as the Ascend P2, Ascend P6, and Ascend Mate, were generally priced in the two-to-three-thousand-yuan range. Their hardware configurations were on par with flagship phones from Xiaomi and 360, and they hadn’t yet started to break into the high-end market.

"You’re too kind, President Ren. The Yaocheng alone won’t be enough.

Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, and Xiaomi can all make high-end models. Whether it’s the Deep Blue Battery, the Aurora Future OS, or the Celestial Craft A100 Chip, Orange Technology is more than happy to make them available to our industry peers."

Chen Yansen stood tall, a smile on his face as he looked at Ren Zhongfei and spoke.

Cao Dahua stood by his side.

Flanking Ren Zhongfei were He Boting and Yu Chendong.

Just last night, as Chen Yansen was raising a glass with Ma Wenteng and others, a call had come in from Yu Chendong, inviting him to visit Huawei Headquarters.

The two companies had previously collaborated in chip design, voice recognition, and IT infrastructure.

For example, the baseband module of the Celestial Craft A100 Chip was the result of a patent cross-licensing agreement between Tiangong Technology and Hisilicon. Meanwhile, Huawei’s smart voice assistant, ’Xiaoyi,’ was successfully developed using the Yuxi development toolkit.

Huawei got its start in the telecommunications industry. At this time, its phone business was still a small fraction, accounting for less than 25% of its revenue. Its core segments remained its carrier and server businesses.

For example, during the construction of its two data centers, Orange Technology had purchased a host of expensive equipment from Huawei, including Cloud Engine 12800 switches, all-flash storage products, and uninterruptible power supplies.

After hearing Chen Yansen’s words, Ren Zhongfei gave a faint smile. "Are you that confident in the Celestial Craft A100, President Chen?"

"You always view your own children through a certain filter," Chen Yansen said, half-joking.

The Celestial Craft A100 had not yet been released. All Huawei knew at the moment was that it incorporated some Balrog Baseband technology, was an octa-core processor, and utilized the Orange Z1 instruction set and Profound Core architecture.

But as for the chip’s actual performance, no one could say for sure before the product launch.

’Still,’ Ren Zhongfei thought, ’since Chen Yansen is bold enough to put the Celestial Craft A100 in the Yaocheng X2, its performance surely can’t be any worse than the Snapdragon 600.’

’Otherwise, the reputation of the Yaocheng series would be ruined.’

"The Deep Blue Battery is a major breakthrough for the mobile phone industry. Judging from the market feedback for the iPhone 5s, users in Hua Country have a high demand for smartphones with long battery life."

"President Chen, starting with our new models next year, Huawei is preparing to fully adopt the Deep Blue Battery."

Ren Zhongfei wasn’t particularly interested in the Celestial Craft A100.

He wouldn’t be swayed by a processor that hadn’t been market-tested, no matter how much it was hyped up.

Besides, their Hisilicon Kirin 910T Quad-core Processor had already entered the tape-out stage, boasting a 20% performance increase over the Hisilicon K3V2E.

Chen Yansen wanted to pitch his Celestial Craft A100 Chip, and Ren Zhongfei wanted to pitch Hisilicon’s Kirin chip.

’Even if it were only used in the Orange C-series,’ he thought, ’with Orange Mobile Phone’s global shipment volume, that would still be ten to twenty million chips sold per year.’

Seeing that Ren Zhongfei was only interested in the Deep Blue Battery, Chen Yansen didn’t press the issue. He nodded and said to Cao Dahua, "Follow up with President Yu. Once Factory Number Two’s production capacity comes online, give Huawei’s orders priority."

As for the contract amount, it would naturally start at five hundred million US Dollars.

That was the standard for any company looking to make a deal, unless the production capacity for the Deep Blue Battery was expanded again.

"Yes, Boss," Cao Dahua readily agreed.

In private, he would occasionally call Chen Yansen "Chen Tongxue" or "Brother Sen," but in business settings, Old Cao always knew how to conduct himself, presenting the very picture of a loyal subordinate.