When Makino Technology announced that it would soon launch its latest product YYtunes, the entire Apple company felt like it was facing a formidable enemy.
They haven't seen anything about YYtunes yet, but the rumors about YYtunes in the North American market have become well known in the music industry.
Apple knows that Makino Technology has obtained almost all music copyright licenses 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 obtain a sample agreement.
Therefore, through the information it has, Apple has been able to conclude that YYtunes is a product that is completely comparable to iTunes. At least YYtunes, like iTunes, is also a software for positioning online music stores.
It is not easy for iTunes to get to where it is today. In the past two years, iTunes was just a music player program owned by Apple, and then it became the management software for iPod. This year, Jobs just started to give iTunes a new concept and added iTunes -Store, making it an online music store.
At first, this model of selling digital music online was not favored by others, but with his unique foresight, Jobs saw the huge potential of the music digital market, so iTunes-Store was developed and launched online, creating a new era in the music field.
What made Jobs even more gratified was that after the launch of iTunes-Store, it achieved very good results at the user level. As users began to use digital music players, their tastes in music forms were also changing, and digital music became the first choice for users. However, the music carried in traditional ways has become useless and burdensome in the eyes of most users.
From Jobs' perspective, he first determined that the digitization of music terminals was an unstoppable trend in the global music field. Based on this, he firmly believed that purchasing digital music would become the mainstream consumption method for music consumers in the future. Therefore, as long as iTunes-Store does a good job Online music stores will definitely have great potential in the future!
This year is the first year that iTunes-Store is online, but Jobs predicts 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. With the continuous promotion, there will definitely be a geometric surge in the future, and it is likely to grow to a scale of billions of dollars per year in a few years, 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 any 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. It has been in a quagmire of losses for several years, and it is just now getting better. It is impossible to rely on it to earn stable cash flow for Apple in a short period of time. Apple even has to prepare a certain amount of food for it to prevent it from making the same mistake again.
As the pioneer of online music, Jobs thought that iTunes-Store would be able to reap first-mover dividends for at least two to three years. However, he did not expect that just as the business was on track, this Apple-exclusive industry attracted people he least wanted to encounter. The enemy, Makino Technology.
As early as when Makino Technology first expanded its business to the United States, Jobs was not interested in Makino Technology or Li Mu himself. Based on his character and his many years of experience in the industry, he was not optimistic about this person for a long time. The Internet industry, which has left the soil of hardware, feels that it is rootless grass and will disappear sooner or later when the bubble bursts.
Therefore, throughout his life until his death, the focus of Jobs' work never left hardware.
But he didn't expect that the young Li Mu would actually perfect an instant messaging software to the extreme, so that it has now become the Internet product with the most users in the world. This conclusion was not said by Li Mu, nor by Jobs. It is the result given by an American research company after systematic investigation and demonstration.
The number of users of YY at this stage exceeds that of all software except the Windows operating system.
According to this research company, strictly speaking, the number of valuable users of YY has actually surpassed Windows.
The so-called valuable users mean that users must 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 advertising revenue, and other forms of conversion revenue.
In comparison, the number of valuable users of Windows is much smaller than its actual number of users.
Although at this stage, Windows occupies an absolute dominance in civilian computers. In most countries and regions, commercial computers are all Windows. However, there are a large number of users in third world countries, including China, who use Windows. The vast majority are pirated copies;
In addition, even the development of home PCs in the United States has not reached the 1:1 ratio between Internet users and PCs. Many Internet users do not have their own home PC terminals, which means that a copy of Windows, regardless of whether Genuine or pirated versions, both serve more than one Internet user, which also greatly reduces the number of valuable users of Windows at this stage.
If even Windows 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 product, which does not rely on any hardware, has swept across the world and has been highly praised by countless users. This achievement made Jobs also start to be in awe of Li Mu and Makino Technology. But now, what Jobs did not expect was that, Not long after he developed a sense of awe, this existence that awes him became his opponent.
The worried Jobs continued to receive various disturbing news the day before YYtunes was to be launched.
The person in charge of the marketing department told Jobs the first piece of bad news: the number of music copyrights that Makino Technology has now obtained is twice as much as the existing number of copyrights in the iTunes-Store.
Jobs was stunned.
Some record companies were not prepared to jump into the digital wave when iTunes-Store was launched, so they have not cooperated with Apple. However, unexpectedly, they have now authorized the copyright to Makino Technology. This is a great development for iTunes-Store. A very big blow, the lack of content volume will not only make iTunes-Store appear at a disadvantage in front of YYtunes, but also cause iTunes-Store users to lose because of following the content.
Immediately afterwards, the head of the R&D department told Jobs the second piece of bad news. One of his classmates had now joined Makino Technology. Although he was not responsible for the YYtunes project, he knew that YYtunes was a priority among Makino Technology's current product tasks. The highest and most confidential one. Employees in other departments did not learn some information until the preparation stage. This shows how much Makino Technology attaches importance to YYtunes, and this is not bad news. The real bad news is: YY Business Department Authorized to integrate YYtunes and export all resources to YYtunes unconditionally!
What Jobs feared the most was that Makino Technology was aggressively attacking YYtunes. The main source of users of iTunes-Store are Apple computer and iPod users, while YY users are almost all Internet users. If YY fully supports YYtunes, let’s not talk about it for now. Will it have any impact on the existing users of iTunes-Store? The most important thing is that it will rob most of the users that iTunes-Store has not yet reached.
Just when Jobs felt chills on his back, the head of the iPod business reported to him a piece of advice he had just learned: Makino Technology's second-generation player has been developed. Although the prototype cannot be obtained, according to Asia Collect Based on the information obtained, it is certain that Makino Technology’s second-generation player is also completely comparable to Apple’s iPod, and the overall level of the product should not be inferior to that of the iPod.
After Jobs got the news, he was completely furious. If Makino Technology made YYtunes alone, he would think that they were trying to compete with Apple for the future market. However, if Makino Technology made YYtunes combined with the player, it would be killing Apple. Got it!
He slammed the document in front of the person in charge of the iPod business and cursed angrily: "A behemoth company has developed an absolutely competing product that is almost indistinguishable from yours, but you kept it in the dark until I just learned the news today! This is a serious dereliction of duty on your part! Ridiculous, 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 the division of your 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 have also classified the research and development of this product as a highly confidential project internally. They have not officially launched it. Before the product, it was difficult for us to get news. We only knew that Makino Technology had already had a cheap MP3 player. No one realized that it would compete with the iPod. After all, the Chinese market simply did not have the potential to fully promote high-end players. "
"You don't have to defend yourself!" Jobs said angrily: "Putting you in charge of the iPod business will allow you to ensure the rapid development of the iPod while paying close attention to all competitors and potential competitors around the world. You didn't notice that Makino Technology’s targeted actions 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 it is my fault that I did not get the information about Makino Technology's development of new players in advance, then I did not get the information about Makino Technology's development of YYtunes in advance. Whose fault is it?!"
Jobs was speechless for a moment.
Everyone else in the room looked at each other.
iTunes-Store is a project that Steve Jobs personally promoted. Logically speaking, he is the person who should be responsible for this matter.
At this time, the person in charge of the marketing department saw the awkward atmosphere and hurriedly came out to smooth things over and said: "Everyone, please stop being so tense. I feel that we have ignored these two actions of Makino Technology. Although the result is cruel, it may not necessarily be our team's fault." 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 focused on. 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 negligence, but that we overall ignored the people behind Makino Technology, a company that started as an instant messaging business. Ambition.”
As he spoke, he added: "Secondly, Makino Technology is far away in China, and it is highly confidential on these two projects. It is even harder for us to obtain relevant information. Makino 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 was all Chinese, and all foreign employees were sidelined and useless!"
When Jobs heard this, he angrily cursed: "Li Mu, that damn nationalist!"
(End of chapter)