Chapter 889

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The two girls, Chen Qing, set off for China the next morning, and Simon continued to stay in New York.

I'm not in North America during the New Year, and there are a lot of things that have accumulated here, and it's not expected to be finished until next week.

First, of course, is the IPO roadshow from Tincobel.

As the final details were finalized, the roadshow was officially launched on Wednesday, January 24th. The first roadshow was held in New York. It happened to be here that Simon was still present that afternoon.

Established in 1991 and launched the first icam-10 digital camera that year, Tinkerbell has grown like other miraculous companies in the Westeros system. In less than five years, it is no longer necessary. Suspicious electronics giant. Even though many in the industry have found that Tinkerbell's success is closely related to the layout of the Westeros system in the new technology field, or even a supplement to the core Internet business, the consumer electronics company's achievements are not in the slightest.

Take 1995, which just passed.

The latest digital camera product icam-50 released this year is still popular, but the most dazzling product is the iplayer-10, a digital music player.

In the whole year of 1995, the icam series of Tincobair had a total shipment volume of 21.37 million units. Due to the great success of the mechanical hard disk version of the digital camera, the market share of Tincobair's digital camera products was not only lower than that of other old brands. Electronics manufacturers have been competing and fell, but rebounded from 53% in 1994 to 61% in 1995.

The success of icam is still within expectations, and the iplayer digital music player was born out of nowhere.

The iplayer-10 was released during Easter last year. From mid-April to the end of 1995, in eight and a half months, the iplayer-10 still sold 20.03 million units despite the limited production capacity in the early stage.

It took five years for the icam series to break through 20 million in sales, but it took only one year for the iplayer-10.

Eyes dropped in shock.

Studying the success stories of the iplayer digital music player, the result is also very simple.

came into being.

First of all, the hardware, software and network environment surrounding this product is quite complete in North America.

Then, before the release of iplayer, pirated music sites started to appear because of the rapid spread of the Internet in North America.

When iplayer went on the market, I found that this portable music player can not only easily accommodate hundreds of music, but also, with a little hack, you can download almost any music you can think of from the Internet for free, whether it is a hot pop single. Or partial underground music.

This is simply an artifact!

Therefore, in 1995, iplayer-10 can be said to be the most dazzling electronic product of the year.

Of course it is also full of controversy.

In just one year, tens of thousands of pirated music sharing websites appeared on the Internet. According to preliminary statistics, global record sales plummeted by more than 20% due to the rapid spread of piracy. Even without buying an iplayer player, many people are starting to download more free music on the Internet instead of paying for records.

Because of this demand, it has also promoted the rapid development of the google search engine under Igret, and the promotion effect is no less than the adult type website that has quietly begun to become popular.

The major record giants felt the crisis and began to find ways to suppress piracy, and tried to kill iplayer, but it was doomed to futile.

One of the biggest victims, Sony, which owns Columbia Records, has personally created "case law" in North America where similar products can't win lawsuits. When Sony’s VCR was released, it was sued by Hollywood giants such as Disney for fear of illegal recording and the proliferation of piracy. The lawsuit lingered for many years. In the end, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that Disney and other plaintiffs lost the case on the grounds that they could not stifle technological progress on the grounds of protecting copyright. To be able to do it rightfully.

The iplayer player is the same as the video recorder.

At present, the output value of the video tape industry in the United States for major filmmakers is no less than that of movie theaters. In the past year, in the face of public opinion pressure from a group of record giants, Tinkerbell also repeatedly used the video recorder as an example to refute, and Criticizing the major record giants just to stick to their own interests in the traditional recording field and not following technological progress, and repeatedly calling on the major record companies to open up their copyright resources to the broadcast platform, so as to achieve a win-win situation.

In addition to these disputes, iplayer once again promoted the development of the US Internet cafe industry that Simon personally helped to fuel.

Although the Internet penetration rate in the United States at this stage has far exceeded that of other countries in the world, there are still many people who cannot connect to the Internet. After these people choose to buy iplayer players, in addition to using their friends' computers, they can only go to Internet cafes to choose and download their favorite ones. music.

as well as.

iplayer-10 was also a favorite loot target for the 1995 robbers of the year.

Because it can not only be used for personal use, but also due to insufficient production capacity at the beginning of the product release, the supply is in short supply. The robbers grabbed this player and even sold it in the second-hand market for a higher price than the new product.

Therefore, not only passers-by wearing iplayer players are easy to be attacked

Even the electronics store that sells this product is not immune. In the past year, there have been many cases of iplayer shelves being looted by large groups of thugs. San Francisco police even cracked an attempt to plan a robbery in Palo Alto in the second half of last year. Figure of the attempted case of the iplayer player repository.

The production base of iplayer player is mainly set up in China.

However, after the player is assembled, it must first be shipped back to San Francisco, and then distributed in the next step. At this stage, the market is mainly in the United States.

At that time, when the robbers were about to start their operations, more than 1.2 million iplayer players were stored in a warehouse in Palo Alto, San Francisco, worth nearly $600 million. The robbers gang even prepared a 10,000-ton ship in the San Francisco Bay. The freighter is in charge of receiving it, and plans to ship it to Mexico first.

Of course it didn't work.

After the disclosure of the matter, it caused a sensation. It felt like an unfinished Hollywood blockbuster. In fact, someone really started planning movies with related themes.

People are like that.

The more difficult it is to obtain, the more curious it will be.

The one-year shortage is actually a deliberate act by Tinkber. In fact, two months after the release of this player, the production capacity was sufficient to meet the market demand. However, the heat caused by various events is like the original time and space. Like the case of selling kidneys for iPhones in China, many American people, especially teenagers, are trying to get an iplayer-10 player that is very cool, show-off and very practical in everyone's eyes.

In the end, in the first year of its release, iplayer-10 created a miracle of more than 20 million sales.

In 1994, only one flagship product, Tinkerbell, achieved other trivial incomes with sales of 7.16 million icam series digital cameras, with a revenue of US$2.19 billion and a net profit of US$270 million.

In 1995, the total sales volume of two icam and iplayer products at the same price reached 41.4 million units. Compared with 1994, the sales volume was equivalent to an increase of nearly 6 times. In addition, the revenue of idisk, broadcast and other products or platforms, Tinkbay Seoul's revenue soared to 12.63 billion US dollars, and its net profit also reached 1.16 billion US dollars.

The continuous popularity of the icam series and the rapid popularity of iplayer, two ace products, coupled with the blowout growth of corporate revenue, the valuation of Tinkerbell has also climbed all the way.

In the last prospectus filed with SEC before Roadshow, the emerging electronics company has reached a valuation of $35 billion, higher than the combined $17 billion valuation of the two companies when Tincober acquired Broadcast in June last year. It has more than doubled. However, according to the feedback from the previous market research, this IPO, the 130 million shares Tinkber is expected to issue, are still in short supply.

130 million shares, of which 51 million were cashed out from major shareholders and 79 million were new shares.

In total, it accounts for 16% of the total share capital of 810 million shares after the IPO.

Among the 51 million cashed-out shares, Westeros Company occupies 30 million shares. According to the issue price of US$43, the cashed-out amount is US$1.29 billion. This is also the first time Simon has directly cashed out during several IPOs in recent years. Because it has held shares in Tincober for more than a year, this time, Westeros only needs to pay a minimum capital gains tax of 15%.

In addition to the cash-out part of shareholders, the amount of new equity financing for the next development of Tincober is US$3.39 billion.

Tinkerbell is not short of this money. On the one hand, this IPO is still the established integration strategy of the Westeros system, and on the other hand, it is also to facilitate Tinkerbell to start the next M&A plan.

In addition, even though the market has already had the highest expectations for the IPO of Tincober, it is expected that the company will retain another pair of king bombs at the launch event during this year's Easter.

This is the irec series of digital cameras that are still in preparation.

Tinkerbell's digital video camera project has been quietly prepared for two years, and the prototype was completed at the end of 1994, just because the conditions in all aspects were not only complete, the original plan was to release in the autumn of 1995, but still actively chose to skip the ticket, and finally decided to follow the normal The rhythm is put on sale this Easter with a new generation of products such as icam and iplayer.

In two years, compared with the original prototype, the upcoming irec-10 is not only more mature in technology, but also has a complete software and hardware ecosystem.

Such as the rapidly increasing capacity of micro-hard drives.

For example, the youtube video platform that Igreit has launched.

For example, the increasingly popular usb interface.

For example, Tinkerbell, like Icam's free photo browsing and processing software, will also be a fairly complete and free video editing software after two years of development.

For example, the broadcast platform will also simultaneously open or free or charge audio copyright services, providing video editing enthusiasts with all kinds of genuine bgm resources for making more exquisite videos.

so many kinds.

This is actually the application ecology.

If it is just a digital video camera, no matter how good the hardware is, it will not have a big market if it lacks the peripheral software and hardware support and lacks enough playability.

Now, due to the improvement of the application ecology, just as icam users can publish pictures on the Internet, future irec users can also display their own images on the Internet

.

Not only that, but also fame and money.

With the official release of irec-10, YouTube will open a service for individual users to upload videos. Although the upload capacity of users will be limited in the early stage, the platform will directly open advertisement sharing. Youtube bloggers can earn income as long as they post videos and clicks.

At that time, Tinkber and Ygritte will officially create a batch of popular YouTube bloggers, which will definitely bring a wave.

Tinkbell's IPO was in full swing, and he attended a roadshow in New York, but Simon didn't show up again, but concentrated on other matters accumulated in New York.

Much of it is about Daenerys Entertainment's TV business.

After the completion of the acquisition of the Metropolitan abc group, the integration of the two companies has been in progress. A very important move during this period is the relocation of the headquarters of espn from Bristol, Connecticut to New York, Connecticut is in New York The city of Greenwich, bordering the north, where the rich and rich belong to Connecticut, was originally headquartered in Bristol, which is not too far away.

However, this relocation is more symbolic.

Before that, because of the conservative nature of the old-school shareholders and executives of the Metropolis ABC Group, such as Warren Buffett and Tom Murphy, ESPN, even if it grew rapidly, has not been the core business of the Metropolis ABC Group. Simon, who is well aware of the future development potential of this professional sports TV station, certainly will not make this mistake again, so he personally decided to relocate the espn team from Connecticut to New York as a whole.

Not only that, but negotiations to buy out NFL events have officially begun.

The eight-year $9 billion buyout contract in memory is no less than a large-scale merger, so it can be said that risks and opportunities coexist. As long as it successfully monopolizes the live broadcast rights of American football games and operates properly, espn can be like the original time and space. That way, start collecting 'espn taxes' from operators that are much higher than other basic cable stations share figures.

In addition, although the TV launch season usually takes place in May to finalize the broadcast plan for the new year, from the beginning of the year, major production companies and TV stations will begin to look for TV programs and produce pilot episodes for promotion during the launch season.

Before Daenerys bought Metropolis abc, Simon knew that the combined Daenerys Entertainment Group would be caught in some kind of Catch-22-like vicious circle in the TV production business.

The main thing is that outside TV stations' purchases of Daenerys Entertainment's TV division are bound to decrease significantly, because other stations will inevitably think that Daenerys Entertainment must keep the best TV shows for their own stations, Daenerys Entertainment. 's TV production department can't prove it doesn't.

So, since you have kept the best for yourself, how can other TV stations, especially direct competitors like nbc and cbs, still purchase projects that have been selected by abc from the TV production department of Daenerys Entertainment?

It was not that Simon did not initially conceive of a solution to this vicious circle. Re-signing long-term contracts with several other TV stations on shows such as "Friends" was one of the measures. Because Simon doesn't want Daenerys's TV business to be completely transformed into a self-produced and self-sold model, the internal digestive system can certainly save costs, but it is also more likely to make people slack.

It is difficult to produce high-quality products by integrating production and broadcasting. This has been proved since the appearance of television. Therefore, the separation of production and broadcasting will become the mainstream of commercial TV stations.

However, Simon eventually gave up on some ideas.

Because the "Catch 22" vicious circle cannot be broken at all, instead of trying in vain, it is better to focus on how to avoid systematic internal rigidity after the integration of production and broadcasting.

This is not difficult.

Introduce external competition.

However, the ratio of self-produced programs and external procurement needs to be carefully adjusted. After all, Daenerys Entertainment’s current TV production department is still very strong. What Simon has to do is to properly introduce 'catfish' and continue to maintain the production department. It is active, and it will not cause too many catfish to harm the fish in your own pond.

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