Chapter 245: Chapter 212: Zhou Hongyi: Where Have 360’s 400 Million Users Gone? Falling-out, Flame War
"It won’t be that easy to crush Eleme. Zhang Xuhao is a Jiaoda graduate, after all. They were only small before because they lacked funding. Now that they’ve secured 50 million in financing from Ah Li, I expect they’ll make significant adjustments to their couriers’ compensation tomorrow."
Pei Yi shook his head. He wasn’t as optimistic as Kou Zhen.
"President Pei, are you saying Eleme will also start offering their couriers a base salary and benefits?"
Kou Zhen’s smile faded as he asked instinctively.
"As long as he isn’t an idiot, he’ll definitely do it! So, whether or not we can win this fight will still come down to hard power."
Pei Yi said, analyzing the situation calmly.
An efficient delivery algorithm, a stable ordering system, a vast network of merchants, and strong execution—these were the core of Kuai Pao’s success.
From the user’s perspective, the first priority was price, and the second was delivery speed. As long as Kuai Pao held firm on these two points, it would be hard for them to lose.
As for the issue of user traffic, Pei Yi wasn’t worried at all.
For one, he had Pinbei and the Orange Application Mall. For another, he had Penguin.
「Meanwhile.」
Chen Yansen opened the 360 Mall, searched for the Haier W910, and then went to the product page.
The pre-sale stock was 10,000 units. But what was surprising was that from morning until eight at night, only 926 units had been sold.
"Just as I thought. Zhou Hongyi really is treating his users like idiots. If he had partnered with Huawei or ZTE, he might have had a chance of success. But no, he just had to pick Haier."
Chen Yansen scoffed and couldn’t help but comment.
’360 co-branding a phone with Haier... what’s the difference between that and Gree making phones?’
In fact, Lei Yijun was also keeping an eye on the Haier W910’s sales. After learning that they hadn’t even broken 1,000 units in a single day, he breathed a sigh of relief, a cold smirk appearing on his face.
Faced with such dismal sales figures, Haier was dumbfounded, and so was Zhou Hongyi.
’Where did 360’s 400 million users go?’
Zhou Hongyi couldn’t figure it out. He opened Weibo, found the promotional post for the Haier W910, and clicked on the comments section.
"Live sales: 926 units. No, wait, are there really idiots buying this?"
"Qualcomm 8260A 1.5G dual-core processor, 4.5-inch HD Retina screen, supports 1080p video recording, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of ROM, and it only costs 1,888 yuan. Seems like a great deal!"
"A Haier phone... the name alone sounds unreliable. If it were Huawei, ZTE, OPPO, or Orange, I might actually consider it."
"I wouldn’t dare buy it anyway. What if they stuff it with 500MB of bloatware that you can’t even uninstall?"
Zhou Hongyi casually scrolled through a few comments and immediately flew into a rage, cursing aloud.
’What’s wrong with a Haier phone?’
’It’s better than a Xiaomi or an Orange Mobile Phone, at least, right?’
’They’re all idiots!’
Zhou Hongyi was seething. From his perspective, when Xiaomi and Orange Mobile Phone first launched, they had neither brand recognition nor a well-developed offline after-sales network.
’Haier’s main business may be home appliances, but in terms of brand influence, could it really be worse than Xiaomi and Orange?’
Zhou Hongyi was deeply unconvinced. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted two more comments: "The Xiaomi Mobile Phone sells for 1,999 yuan and claims to have only a 5% gross margin. The Haier W910 sells for 1,888 yuan with similar specs. Did they cut corners on materials?"
"Just came from President Lei’s comment section. Turns out the Haier W910 downgraded the battery, camera, and screen. The screen supplier, in particular, also supplied ’Big Banana’ last year, and their black screen rate is extremely high."
’President Lei?’
’Lei Yijun?’
Zhou Hongyi had always had a fiery temper. He didn’t even respect Shencheng Ma, let alone Lei Yijun, who was worth less than he was.
With this in mind, he clicked onto Lei Yijun’s Weibo profile and quickly found a comment under the top post that exposed his own phone’s weaknesses.
It seemed to be an objective statement of fact, but its appearance in Lei Yijun’s comment section made Zhou Hongyi narrow his eyes and read more into it.
Maybe it was because the Haier W910 hadn’t met expectations, or maybe he thought Lei Yijun had hired someone to deliberately smear him.
Zhou Hongyi let out a cold snort and posted a passive-aggressive Weibo message.
The gist of it was: don’t treat users like idiots; a certain brand’s phone has poor performance, overheats, lags severely, and yet sells for more than the Haier W910.
Although he didn’t name names, netizens often joked about Xiaomi Mobile Phones: "You can fry an egg on a Xiaomi," "Looking forward to its hand-warming capabilities this winter," and "Born for a fever? My phone is about to burn out."
It was obvious he was insulting Xiaomi!
After seeing Zhou Hongyi’s Weibo post, netizens, who loved nothing more than watching a good drama, started frantically tagging Lei Yijun. Every one of them was an expert at fanning the flames.
Prompted by Li Wanqiang, Lei Yijun logged into Weibo and read through Zhou Hongyi’s latest post. His brow immediately furrowed, and a firestorm of anger ignited within him.
’You’ve got some nerve, Zhou Hongyi!’
’All that talk of "big brother this" and "big brother that," treating me to meals, prying all my experience and plans for manufacturing phones out of me, only to turn around and make your own special-edition phone!’
’Now that the Haier W910 isn’t selling, you want to piggyback on my popularity and deliberately slander the quality of Xiaomi’s products.’
Since the gloves were off, Lei Yijun wasn’t going to show him any more courtesy.
He directly called him out by name and retorted mockingly, "Can your phone’s quality even be mentioned in the same breath as Xiaomi’s? Take a good look at the screen you’re using!"
"I’m using a domestic screen. So what? Are you proud of using goods from Little Days? Does that make all domestic screens garbage? Don’t forget, the Orange Mobile Phone uses a domestic screen too."
Zhou Hongyi shot back online, going on a full-blown rant.
Last year, the two had been sitting together, calling each other "brother" like the best of friends. Now, they were heedlessly tearing into each other’s products’ flaws.
In reality, Zhou Hongyi’s response was just muddying the waters. The Orange C2 used a 260-yuan AMOLED screen, which was considered a high-end component anywhere in the world.
They were both domestic screens, but the gap in quality between domestic screens could be enormous.
Lei Yijun was furious. He first published Xiaomi Mobile Phone’s procurement plan, confirming they had indeed purchased domestic screens from Jingdongfang, then pointed out the quality difference between various suppliers.
The "Big Pineapple" phone, which used the same screen as the Haier W910, was dragged out by netizens and repeatedly thrashed.
Even more users who had bought the "Big Pineapple" phone commented, "Whoever buys it will regret it. Time will tell."
"I bought one for my wife. The screen went black in 13 days. Customer service sent me a new one, and that one’s screen went black in 3 days."
Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun argued until ten at night. When both sides finally quieted down, he glanced at the sales page again. The original 926 units had dropped to 901. A total of 25 users had actually requested refunds!
After learning that the Haier W910’s screen was defective, who would still dare to place an order?
After all, 1,888 yuan wasn’t cheap. Customers would either bite the bullet and upgrade to the Orange C2, or they would choose a Xiaomi Mobile Phone.
After months of effort, to not even sell 1,000 units on launch day... After this, what phone manufacturer would dare to partner with 360 on a special-edition phone?
Lao Zhou was stunned. He immediately put all the blame on Lei Yijun.
He then went on an all-out offensive, tearing into every single one of the Xiaomi Mobile Phone’s fatal flaws.
This scene left industry insiders dumbfounded. They all thought, ’Names can be given by mistake, but nicknames are always earned. The "Red-Clothed Cannon" really lives up to his title.’
At eleven o’clock that night, Chen Nian of Vancl arrived on the scene, angrily denouncing the Haier W910 on Weibo as a garbage product.
"President Chen, last year Vancl was aiming for 10 billion in sales. Let me ask you, can you even make half of that next year?"
Zhou Hongyi had hit Chen Nian right where it hurt, leaving him fuming.
The first day of February was incredibly exciting for netizens, who spent the whole day enjoying the drama.
