/*There should be another update before eight o'clock*/

{Time: July 2, 2003}

{Location: United States-California}

On July 2, when Ning Zimo took a taxi and arrived near Danger Company, his attention was attracted by a man on the side of the road holding a copy of the Wall Street Journal as soon as he got out of the car.

Because there is indeed a very eye-catching title on the lower side of the front page he exposed.

"500,000, photographed the flower-planting woman at Buffett's lunch!"

Paired with Li Ying dressed in white,

That glorious photo.

Such an explosive new topic,

It’s inevitable that people won’t take a second look.

But as the person behind the topic, Ning Zimo only glanced at it twice and then looked away.

Li Ying, the second boss of Emperor Penguin, has been pushed to the front of the stage by him.

Now, he can't stop either.

There is a more important thing waiting for him.

After a year, Ning Zimo made an appointment with Andy and Mathias again. But this time the meeting was no longer in Danger's office, but in a booked hotel suite. This time Ning Zimo came to meet him.

The purpose of the two of them was to meet the founder of sidekick, whom they had an in-depth conversation with for a few days a year ago.

At this time, the two of them were no longer as high-spirited as they had been in front of Ning Zimo a year ago, but looked desolate.

"Matthias and I resigned from danger because of the failure of the sidekick."

This sounds like bad news, but Ning Zimo smiled disapprovingly, "The end of an old relationship means the beginning of a new one, doesn't it?"

Ning Zimo shrugged and continued, "A year ago, when we talked about smart devices, we talked about the positioning of the danger product line. Now, this result only confirms my judgment on smart devices."

"Yeah."

Matthias leaned on the sofa, his whole body stretched out there.

In Ning Zimo's eyes, that action looked very much like Ge You's paralysis.

Looking at the ceiling, Mathias continued, "That's why we invite you to talk about the future now."

Ning Zimo stood up, looked at the two of them, and suddenly opened his arms and smiled at them.

"Then first of all, I want to welcome you to my world!"

…

Hiptop, a sidekick product of Danger Company, was launched on the market after Ning Zimo came to see Andy last year. At that time, Andy and Mathias were in high spirits.

Before hiptop came out, it was popular among the media. At that time, every Danger employee, including Andy and Mathias, thought they could create a new era.

Although Ning Zimo's appearance had poured cold water on them, for the danger that was already on the move, they had already fired their bows and had no intention of turning back.

Ning Zimo didn't attach much importance to that attempt, because at that time he knew that people often only think when they are in despair. And his words at that time were not the reason for the despair of the danger members.

So, irreversible things continued to advance.

Andy and Matthias launched Danger's product as planned, but as the market continued to advance, they encountered various cold receptions and setbacks that made them realize something.

The first generation product of sidekick-hiptop,

failed.

When Andy and Mathias really realized all this, they suddenly remembered that when they were high-spirited last year, someone described a different future for them about smart devices.

But at that time, they completely ignored that person's whims and only wanted to invite the young man with ideas to join their team.

Thinking about it now, that young man had actually predicted the failure of sidekick and even danger from that time.

It seems now that that young man already had his own plans in the corresponding market of smart devices at that time.

A year later, when they sat in front of this young man named Ning Zimo again.

Andy and Mathias lowered their bodies, almost listening to Ning Zimo's teachings.

"The fatal flaw of hiptop is, first of all, its positioning. Although it is aimed at business people, any civilian product cannot be considered popular if it is only popular among high-end people."

Ning Zimo's words made Andy and Mathias blush. Hiptop faces this kind of problem in its marketing.

Hiptop was praised in the media, but the reaction after its launch was in sharp contrast to the media's praise.

Only a few people have tried to buy hiptop. The small number of people buying it is not enough to support hiptop’s R&D, sales and other expenses, let alone profit.

The two of them thought about what happened to Danger Company in the past year, while Ning Zimo continued to talk:

"You know, the collapse of Iridium happened three years ago. If you have carefully studied the development history of Iridium, it is actually easy to find the reason for your failure from it..."

The Iridium satellite that Ning Zimo mentioned is the American Iridium Satellite Company.

In 1996, the Iridium company planned to launch sixty-six artificial satellites for global mobile phone communications. These artificial satellites are called Iridium satellites. The Iridium mobile communication system is a global system designed by the American Iridium company and commissioned by Motorola.

Satellite mobile communication system.

It uses satellite handheld phones to make and receive phone signals anywhere on the earth through satellites.

Compared with the geostationary orbit satellite communication system used, Iridium satellites have two main advantages:

First, the orbit is low, the transmission speed is fast, the information loss is small, and the communication quality is greatly improved;

Second, there is no need for a dedicated ground receiving station, and every satellite mobile handheld phone can be connected to the satellite.

This makes communication in inaccessible and barren places on the earth, remote areas with backward communication, and natural disaster sites unhindered.

Therefore, the Iridium mobile communication system plan has begun a new era of personal satellite communications.

The Iridium mobile communication system began test launches in 1996 and plans to put it into operation in 1998, with an estimated total investment of US$2.3 billion.

The main services provided by the Iridium mobile communication system to users are: mobile phones (cell phones), paging and data transmission.

From a technical perspective, the Iridium mobile communication system has made breakthroughs in key technical issues such as inter-satellite links, the basic structure and procedures of the system have been initially completed, and important progress has been made in all aspects of system research and development.

During this period, dozens of companies around the world participated in the implementation of the Iridium Satellite Project. It should be said that the initial establishment, planning and implementation of the Iridium Satellite Project were very successful.

From a high-tech perspective, the Iridium Project is indeed a beautiful story.

The complexity and advancement of the Iridium satellite system lies in the use of on-board processing and inter-satellite link technology, which is equivalent to inverting the ground cellular network in the sky to enable seamless communication on the ground. Another advanced point is that the Iridium satellite system solves

Cross-protocol roaming between satellite networks and terrestrial cellular networks.

The Iridium satellite system consists of a space segment and a ground segment: the space segment is the constellation, and the ground segment includes the system control center, gateway stations and user terminals.

The Iridium satellite system has created a new era of global personal communications and is considered a milestone in modern communications, allowing humans to communicate with each other "anywhere they can see" on Earth.

Its biggest feature is the handheld communication terminal and the globalization of personal communication, which realizes the five "any" (5w), that is, anyone (whoever) can communicate with anyone (whomever) at any place (wherever) and at any time (whenever).

Communicate by whatever means.

It sounds like this is a pretty great plan, and it’s also a positioning for an elite market like hiptop.

Like Iridium's assessment of the flower growing market, Iridium "conservatively" estimated the total number of customers at 20,000 for flower growing with a population of 1.2 billion at that time.

This number,

Very conservative.

But what about reality?

When Iridium went bankrupt in 2000, Yangyangwo Dahua only sold 990 Iridium-compatible devices.

The number of sales did not even exceed one thousand, which means that the total number of customers that Iridium plans to grow and develop does not even account for 5% of the planned number.

Looking at the world, the pricey "Iridium" communications had a maximum of 55,000 users at that time. The entire Iridium system cost more than 5 billion U.S. dollars, and it is estimated that it must grow to 500,000 users to be profitable.

In other words, Iridium implemented a high-end positioning and marketing strategy at the time, but after it was launched into the market and implemented, it still lacked 89% of its customers to support the entire company.

Therefore, Iridium, which only implemented 11% of its planned tasks, went bankrupt due to huge losses.

After the company went bankrupt, the last customer that could not be contacted was a flower grower who was enjoying himself in Antarctica. In order to serve the last customer well, Iridium even spent a lot more on satellite maintenance fees.

Based on the fact that Iridium’s annual maintenance fee is several hundred million dollars, this flower-growing guy’s coolness and that Iridium wasted millions of dollars may be a joke of a company insisting on customer service.

But no matter what Iridium does, they are a negative example of huge investment in history, but the output is extremely disproportionate.

iridium star,

That example of rapid rise and rapid fall,

Ning Zimo was thrown out of his memory in front of the two of them.

Comparing the similarities between Danger and Iridium,

Andy already understood the main reason for his failure.

"Since the day the mobile phone was born, major brands have been constantly innovating around it. Its functions are becoming richer, its appearance is becoming lighter and thinner, and all aspects of it are being updated under the promotion of major brands.

However, there has still been no fundamental change, and it is either too aloof or too popular. There are very few disruptive innovations, and most of them are struggling under the undercurrent of the times."

Andy observed that Ning Zimo had a dull expression on his face when he said these words.
To be continued...