Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

With 330 million units sold, it was only 50 million units behind first place. And now it had fallen to the point of selling itself off?

In reality, while Nokia’s sales figures seemed extremely high, over 70% of them were feature phones. It was just a paper tiger!

And Microsoft’s motive for acquiring Nokia was also very simple!

First, to seize a larger share of the mobile market, compete with Apple and Google, and increase the market share of the Windows Phone OS.

Second, Nokia owned 8,500 design patents and 30,000 utility patents. By acquiring these key patents, Microsoft could enhance its own competitiveness.

To put it bluntly, Microsoft wanted to leverage Nokia’s position in the phone market to drive the ecosystem development of its Windows Phone OS.

In Microsoft’s view, it was just a mobile operating system. The technical difficulty wasn’t high, so there was no need to just hand the market over to Android and iOS.

As the reigning hegemon of the PC era’s operating systems, it naturally wanted to solidify its position in the mobile era as well.

Splurging tens of billions of Hua Yuan just to fight for market share in the mobile network space was truly staggering.

Although Orange Technology’s Aurora Future OS hadn’t been released yet, word of it had already spread throughout the industry.

”Popularizing Aurora Future OS won’t be so simple. Windows Phone is coming in strong, and Android and iOS are already well-established,” Lei Yijun said, smiling and shaking his head after hearing the news.

He believed in Orange Technology’s R&D capabilities, and he believed in Chen Yansen’s operational skills and business acumen, but the process of replacing Android or iOS would be as difficult as reshaping heaven and earth.

”President Lei, I’ve already submitted the production plans for the Xiaomi 2A and Xiaomi 2S to the Orange Phone Factory. Equipment calibration is expected to be completed by mid-March,” Li Wanqiang interjected.

To him, developing their own OS was a thankless task. He didn’t understand why Chen Yansen was spending so much manpower, material resources, and money on it.

The supply chain involved in mobile phones was incredibly complex, with countless components from the CPU and GPU to the camera, storage chips, and battery. Every single module involved thousands upon thousands of patents.

’Wouldn’t it be better to just pay for them?’

”For the two models, only 5,000 units will be equipped with Aurora Future OS. Did Orange Technology say anything about that?” Lei Yijun asked.

”No,” Li Wanqiang replied.

Hearing this, Lei Yijun secretly breathed a sigh of relief, afraid that he had offended Chen Yansen over the matter.

”President Lei, Orange Technology’s new product launch is set for March 18th,” Li Wanqiang reminded him.

”Right, I know,” Lei Yijun said.

「Elsewhere.」

In the brightly lit Xiaomi Headquarters Building, in the office area of the MIUI Department, Li Xingwei wore a grave expression, staring blankly into space.

The computer screen in front of him was dark, clearly not in use.

He was one of the founding team members of Xiaomi Technology, employee number 12, and a core development engineer for the MIUI system.

”We’ll start with a custom Android system. Once Xiaomi Mobile Phones capture a certain share of the domestic market, we’ll leverage our advantage in the end-user market to build Hua Country’s own mobile operating system.”

The grand promises Lei Yijun had made when he first joined kept flashing through his mind.

He had come from Microsoft and had even participated in the system development for Windows Phone.

He had joined Xiaomi first and foremost for the generous salary and tempting stock options, but also because he wanted to develop a ”pure-blood” domestic operating system.

But two weeks ago, Lei Yijun had announced that they were halting iterative upgrades for the MIUI system.

In other words, the boss had decided to abandon the MIUI system.

People like them had two choices: transfer to Xiaomi’s application ecosystem department, or stay put and provide system maintenance for existing users. The latter meant just waiting to be slowly cast aside by the company.

”Wei, what are you thinking about?” Just then, Sun Peng, another one of MIUI’s lead creators, nudged his shoulder and asked.

”Brother Peng, if even the Xiaomi 2A and 2S aren’t going to use the MIUI system, is there any reason for our department to even exist?” Li Xingwei asked with a bitter smile.