Simon saw Martin Davis off and had dinner with Robert Iger, who had come all the way to the West Coast for the afternoon meeting, and had a face-to-face meeting.
After the merger of MCA, Robert Egger's position remains unchanged and he is still the president of Daenerys Entertainment Group, but the authority in his hands has increased significantly.
In the next few years, while maintaining Daenerys Entertainment's advantage in television program production, Robert Iger's focus will shift to the cable television business, and USA Television Network will be the top priority.
Although this time the MCA finally fell into the hands of Daenerys Entertainment, the seven major Hollywood studios in the past, Columbia and MGM, have all been bought by overseas investors. Currently, there are also Canada's Seagram Group, Overseas giants such as France's Vivendi Group are eyeing other Hollywood studios.
Therefore, both the U.S. government and the media are aware of a problem. In order to prevent more Hollywood studios from being acquired by overseas capital, it is a general trend to relax the merger ban between domestic TV networks and studios in the United States.
Simon remembers when this legal restriction was lifted, probably around 1994.
Then came Disney's acquisition of ABC, and then CBS and NBC also changed owners and merged with Hollywood studio giants. The FOX TV network owned by News Corporation also completely got rid of many legal constraints after that, and gradually developed to a scale that is on par with the three traditional TV networks.
Speaking of which, if Simon mobilizes the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and his own powerful connections to lobby now, it is not impossible to lift the ban one or two years in advance.
However, doing so would not be in line with Simon's plan for the pace of development of Daenerys Entertainment.
The next step for Daenerys Entertainment is definitely to merge with a national television network and completely complete its horizontal layout in the field of media and entertainment. However, this matter needs to be digested and integrated by MCA and Daenerys Entertainment completes its IPO. Down.
For the next step of M&A expansion, Simon still prefers cash acquisitions. In fact, in many corporate mergers and acquisitions, most acquirees also hope to be able to cash out directly. However, when the debt burden is already heavy enough, Daenerys Entertainment is not suitable to increase too much debt at once, and can only adopt a cash and equity acquisition method.
Even if the market value of Daenerys Entertainment is considerable enough by then, even a complete equity merger will be very cost-effective.
As for the equity that will be given away, stock repurchases will be carried out after the company has sufficient funds.
After dinner, it was already around eight o'clock in the evening when Simon returned to Dume Point Manor.
Today is Tuesday, and Janet has flown to the East Coast in recent days to be busy with matters at Cersei Capital.
The overall situation of the Gulf War has been decided and has basically begun to wind up. Cersei Fund Management, a subsidiary of Cersei Capital, has also begun to wind down its fund hedging operations around this war.
Since it was decided to give up many opportunities such as the pound crisis, this operation can be said to be the last big market operation for the Cersei Fund management team without any ties.
According to preliminary statistics from New York, from the outbreak of the war on February 17 to now, in about a month, Cersei Capital has made more than 1.6 billion US dollars in book profits. The profits mainly came from the S&P, which surged 25% in just one month. 500 index related futures.
After this operation, Cersei Capital will focus more on Apollo Management Company and Black Rock Asset Management Company.
The improvement of the overall economic situation in the United States is just conducive to the development of corporate mergers and acquisitions, asset management and other businesses. Of course, Cersei Fund Management will still remain, but it will be more inclined to micro-hedging of specific stock securities and other portfolios.
After a busy day, he took a shower and changed into a pullover and casual pants. Simon looked at the time. It was already past eleven o'clock in New York. Janet must have gone to bed, so he didn't call her again. Women never I don't like answering the phone, especially when I'm asleep.
Simon, however, is a night owl. He had just arrived at the hotel in Los Angeles and was not sleepy, so he went to the PC room on the first floor of the villa.
The computer room is like a mini personal computer museum, but of course it is not as complete as a real museum.
Simon arranged such a computer room mainly to facilitate himself to check the compatibility of various versions of the IE browser developed by Yigrit on different operating system platforms and computers with different configurations.
Speaking of which, Simon dislikes the coexistence of a large number of operating systems at this time, and is also quite resistant to many personal computers with low configurations. However, the generally expensive personal computers in this era are far from being able to be updated at will. If Igret wants to gain the most customers in the short term, it must be compatible with as many platforms as possible.
However, in the development of the IE browser, Igret has also begun to clearly lean towards Microsoft's Windows system. The function updates of this operating system platform are more timely than other operating systems.
There were several rows of various personal computers in the spacious room of more than 200 square meters. Simon randomly selected three IBM compatible computers with different configurations side by side and opened them. He pulled out a chair and sat down. After the machines were turned on, he connected to the network. , log in to your email address.
Click on an email from Carol Butts.
Unsurprisingly, the female executive in charge of Ygritte's software business once again discussed increasing the price of IE browser software in her email.
Based on the explosion of Internet users in recent months, Igret predicts that the number of Internet users in 1991 will definitely exceed 5 million. The number of installed IE browser software will only increase, and may even reach tens of millions, due to the free trial programs launched by AOL and other Internet access service providers.
According to the ISP pricing of $10 per set of IE browser software, an installed base of tens of millions of dollars means revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars.
From the time Simon brought Tim Berners-Lee to the United States to now, in just two years, he has created a company with software sales revenue exceeding 100 million, which is very rare. However, Carol Bartz believes that the commercial potential of IE browser software goes beyond that.
Simon certainly understands the commercial potential of IE.
However, except for Simon himself, most of the executives within Igret feel that the pricing of IE browser software is on the low side. For $10, you can get richer content and features than most current operating systems, which is almost like getting it for free.
Especially this time, Yigrit has a complete monopoly on the patent for the graphical interface browser of the World Wide Web platform.
In the original time and space, Netscape was only one of the authorized manufacturers of graphical interface browser technology for the World Wide Web platform. The market value of such a company easily exceeded 1 billion US dollars the year it went public.
Now, Simon has no plans to open up the patent licensing of the World Wide Web browser. Therefore, at least on the World Wide Web platform, the browser software will only be one.
Even other versions of browsers that bypass the core of Yigrit's browser are impossible, because the lowest technology patents of the World Wide Web are also in the hands of Yigrit. Other software manufacturers want to develop browsers unless they choose Other network technology platforms.
However, now that the World Wide Web technology has taken the lead, there is not much room for development of other technological types of networks.
At the end of the day, this is monopoly.
Simon had previously rejected Carol Bartz's price increase suggestion, and the low-price strategy had been determined from the beginning. After all, if the sudden price increase of the IE browser makes industry manufacturers feel the threat of Igret to the World Wide Web technology monopoly, there is no guarantee that other manufacturers will not temporarily support network technology standards based on other technologies.
Although it is difficult for other technical standards to pose a threat to World Wide Web technology, it is still troublesome.
After simply replying to an email asking Carol Butts not to bring up the subject again, Simon began browsing through other unread emails.
While he was busy, the sound of high heels could be heard in his ears. Simon looked up from the computer screen. Claire, the C girl, put a glass of water in his hand. The girl was also holding a folder in her hand.
Simon smiled and nodded to the side: "Come online with me."
Claire put the folder on the computer table and sat down next to it. A nice fragrance comes, which makes people feel relaxed and happy.
Simon picked up the water glass and took a sip. He gestured towards the folder that Girl C put down and asked, "What is this?"
Claire handed over the folder and said, "Boss, can you help me take a look at a business plan I recently made?"
Simon nodded, took the folder and opened it.
Girl C explained next to her: "This business plan is inspired by some documents you showed us, boss. One of them was the eliminated Yigrete blog activity plan. It was a picture sharing activity. The reason why it was rejected It is that it is too difficult for users to upload pictures to the Internet and the steps are too cumbersome. Moreover, the current mainstream digital cameras that can directly upload pictures to personal computers using floppy disks as carriers are too expensive. I have considered whether I can develop a low-priced camera. A moderately compact card camera specifically designed for sharing photos to the Internet. With the growth rate of Internet users and the desire for expression that most people have, I think this business plan is very promising."
When Sandra first joined the Yigrit personal homepage platform, Simon gave her a digital camera for picture sharing.
I vaguely remember that the Panasonic digital camera only had more than 700,000 pixels, but the price was as high as 6,000 US dollars. It was more expensive than most of the current mainstream personal computers, and it was indeed beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Moreover, most of today's personal computers do not support image display very well. Only the latest computers in the past two or three years, combined with Igret's IE browser software, can achieve a relatively impressive picture display function, but in fact, the display effect is only equivalent to the pixel level of a paper newspaper. , completely incomparable to the 1080 monitor in Simon's memory.
In order to adapt to computers with lower configurations, IE at this time also specially developed a pictureless mode.
This was Simon's inspiration from using a cell phone in his past life.
The first semi-smartphone in my memory had a screen of only 2.5 inches and could support touch screens. It also used a 2G network, so the networking effect was naturally imaginable. At that time, the built-in browser of that mobile phone supported imageless mode when connecting to the Internet.
If you are used to higher-end smartphones, you will naturally be very uncomfortable with browsing the Internet on a tablet. But for Simon, who was exposed to mobile phones for the first time, browsing news, reading novels, and logging into forums through the small mobile phone screen. Even if the picture display was turned off for the sake of network speed and saving traffic, it seemed that Simon was seeing another person at that time. world.
Nowadays, the content of the Yigrit portal is gradually enriched, and the same is true for current users.
Even if there are no pictures, the information, blogs, emails and even games provided by Yigrit are rich enough.
After all, not every page of the newspapers read by people in this era is filled with a large number of pictures.
However, although Yigrit's IE browser does an excellent job in the picture-less mode for low-end computers, picture display is definitely a trend.
In the next few years, personal computers are destined to support increasingly rich multimedia functions, and picture content is destined to be a crucial content category on the Internet platform before the Internet develops into the streaming media era.
In addition, Yigrit's early entry into social network services will definitely increase users' desire to share pictures online. Therefore, the plan proposed by Girl C is indeed very feasible.
While Simon was reading through Girl C's business plan, his thoughts unknowingly spread further.
Not only are there restrictions on image uploading, but today's personal computers, whether it is the software of the operating system platform or the hardware surrounding the personal computer, can only be described as lacking.
The online software store plan that Igret has started to promote can greatly enrich the software ecosystem of personal computers in the next few years.
However, on the hardware side.
It can be seen just from the motherboard interface of the personal computer at this time.
Nowadays, mainstream personal computers generally have only two hardware interfaces, serial interface and parallel interface. Whether it is a monitor, printer, keyboard or mouse, they can only be connected through these two interfaces. The network crystal head interface, USB interface, PS/S interface and even audio interface in Simon's memory are still missing.
The lack of interfaces actually means the lack of peripheral hardware ecosystem for personal computers.
AOL was providing users with access to the Internet at this time. Due to the lack of hardware and interfaces, in addition to the modem, it was necessary to provide users with a hardware network card that was directly plugged into the motherboard with a network cable interface.
In Girl C's business plan, she plans to develop a digital card camera that uses a 3.5-inch floppy disk as the image carrier. This is probably the only option to promote this camera.
After all, except for floppy drives that were as popular as serial and parallel interfaces on personal computers at this time, there really weren't many ways to easily and quickly transfer pictures from digital cameras to computers and further upload and share them on the Internet.
As for the flash memory and USB that people have become accustomed to later, what are they
Since there is none now, but there is inevitably huge market demand, then this obviously means a big business with incalculable potential value.
Moreover, the interface does not need to be developed too much, a USB is enough.
As long as USB or similar interface solutions are developed in advance, you can try Microsoft's interface to create an entire hardware ecosystem. By then, not only digital cameras, the application of this interface can also be extended to keyboards, mice, MP3 players, mobile phones, speakers and other hardware.
Even though it is just a small interface, if the number of annual installations reaches hundreds of millions, not to mention the benefits that the surrounding hardware ecosystem may create, just the patent licensing fees for the interface will be enough for the manufacturers who develop the technology to make a lot of money. .
In Simon's memory, the WiFi technology patent was in the hands of an Australian university.
Just from the patent fees applied to various types of WiFi chips, the university can easily enjoy more than $1 billion in net income every year.
In comparison, USB technology is definitely far more widely used than WiFi.