Chapter 1407 Want Your Life

When Makino Technology announced that its latest product, YYtunes, was about to be launched, the entire Apple company was on the verge of an enemy.

They haven't seen any shadow about YYtunes yet, but the rumors about YYtunes in the North American market have been known in the music industry.

Apple knows that Makino Technology has obtained almost all music copyright authorizations from many record companies around the world, and has signed online sales sharing agreements with them. With Apple's public relations capabilities, it is not difficult to get a model agreement.

Therefore, Apple can already conclude that YYtunes is a product that is completely benchmarked against iTunes through the information it has in its own hands. At least YYtunes, like iTunes, is also a software targeting online music stores.

It is not easy for iTunes to reach today. In the past two years, iTunes was just a music player program under Apple, and then it became the management software for iPod. This year Jobs just started to give iTunes a new concept, adding iTunes -Store, making it an online music store.

At first, this model of selling digital music online was not favored by people, but with his unique vision, Steve Jobs saw the huge potential of the music digital market, so iTunes-Store was developed and launched, creating a new era in the music field.

What made Jobs very gratified was that after the iTunes-Store was launched, it achieved very good results at the user level. When users began to use digital music players, their tastes for music formats were also changing, and digital music became a user The favorite darling, and the music carried in the traditional way has become a tasteless and cumbersome in the eyes of most users.

From Jobs' perspective, he first determined that the digitalization of music terminals is an unstoppable trend in the global music field. Based on this, he firmly believes that purchasing digital music will become the mainstream consumption method of music consumers in the future. Therefore, as long as the iTunes-Store is well done Online music store, then it will definitely have a bright future in the future!

This year is the first year that iTunes-Store has been launched, but Jobs estimates that by the end of the year, Apple will be able to earn at least hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through iTunes-Store, and this number will increase with the increase in iPod sales and the iTunes online music store model. The continuous promotion of the company will definitely show a exponential increase in the future, and it is likely that in a few years, it will grow to the scale of billions of dollars per year, with huge profit margins.

Now, in the eyes of Steve Jobs, iTunes-Store is a very important part of Apple, and there is no room for mistakes. This is mainly because at this stage, many of Apple's businesses have not completely recovered from the previous poor management, and Apple Computer is in deep trouble. The quagmire of losses has been in the quagmire for several years, and now it is just getting better. It is impossible to rely on it to earn stable cash flow for Apple in a short period of time, and even Apple has to prepare a certain amount of food for it.

lest it repeat the same mistakes.

As the founder of the online music launch, Jobs thought that the iTunes-Store would have at least two to three years of pioneer dividends. The enemy, Makino Technology.

As early as when Muye Technology just expanded its business to the United States, Steve Jobs was not interested in Muye Technology and Li Mu himself. With his character and years of experience in the business, he was not optimistic for a long time. The Internet industry, which has left the hardware soil, feels that those are grass without roots, and sooner or later will disappear as the bubble bursts.

So Jobs did not leave the hardware until his death.

But he did not expect that Li Mu, who was young, had made an instant messaging software so perfect that it has now become the Internet product with the most users in the world. This conclusion is not what Li Mu said, nor what Jobs said. It is the result given by a research company in the United States after systematic investigation and demonstration.

The number of users of YY at this stage exceeds all software except the indos operating system.

In the opinion of this research company, strictly speaking, the number of valuable users of YY has actually surpassed indos.

The so-called valuable users are users who first bring actual value to the product. Every active user of YY will bring value to it, paying users directly bring revenue from value-added services to YY, and free users also provide YY with value-added services. advertising revenue, as well as other forms of conversion revenue.

In contrast, the number of valuable users of indos is much smaller than its actual number of users.

Although indos occupies an absolute dominant position in civilian computers at this stage, in most countries and regions, commercial computers are all indos, but there are a large number of users in third world countries, including Huaxia, who use indos The vast majority are pirated;

In addition, even the development of home PCs in the United States has not reached a 1:1 ratio between netizens and PCs. Many netizens do not have their own home PC terminals, which means that whether an indos is Genuine or pirated, both serve more than one netizen, which also greatly reduces the number of valuable users of indos at this stage.

If even indos cannot compete with YY at this level, then there will be no other companies and products on the market that can compete with it.

Such a giant-like product, without relying on any hardware, has swept the world and is highly praised by countless users. This achievement made Jobs begin to be in awe of Li Mu and Muye Technology. Now, what Jobs did not expect was, Not long after the heart of awe was born, this existence that made him fearful became his opponent.

In the day before YYtunes was about to go live, Jobs, who was worried, kept receiving all kinds of disturbing news.

The head of the marketing department told Jobs the first bad news that the number of music copyrights that Makino Technology has now obtained is double the number of existing copyrights in iTunes-Store.

Jobs was stunned.

When some record companies launched the iTunes-Store, they were not ready to invest in the digital wave, so they never cooperated with Apple, but unexpectedly, they have now authorized the copyright to Muye Technology. A very big blow, the lack of content volume will not only make iTunes-Store show a disadvantage in front of YYtunes, but also make iTunes-Store users lose because of following the content.

Immediately afterwards, the head of the R&D department told Jobs the second bad news. One of his classmates has now joined Muye Technology. Although he is not responsible for the YYtunes project, he knows that YYtunes is a priority in the current product tasks of Muye Technology. The one with the highest degree of confidentiality and the highest degree of confidentiality. The employees of other departments did not know some information until the preparation for the launch. This shows that Muye Technology attaches great importance to YYtunes, and this is not bad news. The real bad news is: YY Division Ordered to integrate YYtunes, and unconditionally export all resources to YYtunes!

The thing that Jobs is most afraid of is that Makino Technology is playing high on YYtunes. The main source of users of iTunes-Store are Apple computer and iPod users, and YY users are almost all netizens. If YY fully supports YYtunes, let’s not talk about it. Will it have an impact on the existing users of iTunes-Store, and most importantly, it will rob most of the users that iTunes-Store has not yet reached.

And just when Jobs' back was cold, the general manager of the iPod business reported to him a consultation he had just learned: Makino Technology's second-generation player had been developed, and although the prototype could not be obtained, but according to Asian collections According to the information, it is certain that the second-generation player of Makino Technology is also completely aligned with Apple's iPod, and the overall level of the product should be no less than that of the iPod.

After getting this news, Jobs was completely furious. If Muye Technology made YYtunes alone, he would think that they wanted to compete with Apple for the future market, but if Muye Technology combined YYtunes with the player, it would be the life of Apple. !

He slammed the document in front of the head of the iPod business and scolded: "A giant beast-like company has developed an absolute competitor that is almost indistinguishable from your product, but you are kept in the dark until I just learned this news today! You are a serious dereliction of duty! Absurd, ridiculous, and unreasonable dereliction of duty! I think you have made a major mistake in this position, and I will apply to the board of directors to reconsider your division of duties!"

The person in charge of the iPod business said extremely depressed: "Steve, Makino Technology has its own hardware laboratory and acquired its own production line. They also listed the research and development of this product as a highly confidential project, and they did not officially launch it. Before the product, it is difficult for us to get news. We only know that Makino Technology has a cheap MP3 player for a long time, and no one realizes that it will compete with the iPod. After all, the Chinese market simply does not have the potential to fully promote high-end players. "

"You don't have to defend yourself!" Jobs said angrily: "To put you in charge of the iPod business is to make you pay close attention to all competitors and potential competitors around the world while ensuring the rapid development of the iPod. You did not notice Makino. The targeted actions of technology are your dereliction of duty!"

The person in charge of the iPod business was also a little angry. He stared at Jobs and asked him: "Steve, if I didn't get Muye Technology to develop a new player in advance, it was my dereliction of duty, then I didn't get Muye Technology to develop YYtunes in advance. Whose negligence is it?!"

Jobs was speechless for a while.

Everyone else in the room looked at each other.

iTunes-Store is a project that Steve Jobs personally promoted. It stands to reason that the person who should be responsible for this is him.

At this time, the person in charge of the marketing department saw the awkward atmosphere, and hurriedly came out and said: "Everyone, please don't be so arrogant, I think we ignored these two actions of Muye Technology. Although the result is cruel, it may not be our team. There is something wrong."

Everyone looked at him, and Jobs asked, "What do you mean by that?"

The other party explained: "First of all, Apple has never listed Makino Technology as a sensitive competitor that needs to be paid attention to. We pay close attention to Microsoft, IBM, Sony, and many computer hardware manufacturers and player manufacturers, and do our best. Get all their action information, but we have never determined internally to pay attention to every move of Makino Technology, so this is not someone's dereliction of duty, but we overall ignore Makino Technology, a company that started out as an instant messaging business. ambition."

After speaking, he added: "Secondly, Muye Technology is far away in China, and it is highly confidential about these two projects, so it is even more difficult for us to obtain relevant information. Muye Technology has poached so many R&D talents from Silicon Valley. Many of them are senior R&D personnel from Google, Cisco, and Oracle, but it is said that when YYtunes was developed, the entire R&D team in charge was from China, and all foreign employees stood aside, none of them were useless!"

When Jobs heard this, he scolded angrily: "Li Mu, this damn nationalist!"