When Makino Technology announced the upcoming launch of its latest product, YYtunes, the entire Apple company was on high alert.
They had not seen any sign of YYtunes so far, but the rumors about YYtunes in the North American market were well known in the music industry.
Apple knew that Makino Technology had obtained almost all music copyrights from many record companies around the world and had signed online sales sharing agreements with them. With Apple's public relations ability, it was not difficult to get a copy of the agreement.
Therefore, based on the information that Apple had, it could be concluded that YYtunes was a product that completely targeted iTunes. At the very least, YYtunes, like iTunes, was also a software that positioned itself as an online music store.
It was not easy for iTunes to get to where it was today. In the previous two years, iTunes was just a music player program under Apple, and then it became the management software for the iPod. This year, Jobs just began 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 optimistic, but with his unique vision, Jobs saw the huge potential of the digital music market, so the development of iTunes-Store launched, ushering in a new era in the music industry.
What made Jobs even more gratified was that after the launch of iTunes-Store, it achieved very good performance on the user level. While users began to use digital music players, users' taste in music form was also changing. Digital music became the favored child of users, and music carried in traditional ways became useless and cumbersome in the eyes of most users.
With Jobs' vision, he first determined that the digital music terminal was an irresistible trend in the global music industry. Based on this point, he was even more convinced that buying digital music would become the mainstream consumption method of music consumers in the future. Therefore, as long as iTunes-Store did a good job as an online music store, it would certainly have a bright future!
This year was the first year of iTunes-Store's launch, but Jobs estimated that by the end of the year, Apple could earn at least hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from iTunes-Store. With the increase in iPod sales and the continuous promotion of the iTunes online music store model, this figure would certainly increase exponentially in the future. It was likely to grow to a scale of billions of dollars per year in a few years, with huge profit margins.
Now, in Jobs' eyes, iTunes-Store was a very important part of Apple's current situation, and there was no room for any mistakes. This was mainly because at this stage, many of Apple's businesses had not yet fully recovered from previous mismanagement. Apple Computer had been mired in losses for several years, and it was only now starting to pick up a little. It was impossible to rely on it to earn a stable cash flow for Apple in a short period of time, and even Apple had to prepare a certain amount of rations for it to not repeat the same mistakes.
As the pioneer of online music, Jobs thought that iTunes-Store would have at least two to three years of first-mover dividends. But he did not expect that, just as the business got on track, this exclusive industry that Apple owned attracted the enemy that he least wanted to meet, 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. With his character and his many years of experience in the industry, for a long time, he was not optimistic about the Internet industry that left the soil of hardware. He felt that those were rootless weeds that would sooner or later disappear with the bursting of the bubble.
So, Jobs's focus had never left the hardware until his death.
But he did not expect that Li Mu, at such a young age, would be able to develop an instant messaging software to the extreme, so much so that it has now become the Internet product with the most users in the world. This conclusion was not made by Li Mu, nor was it made by Steve Jobs, but by a research company in the United States after systematic investigation and argumentation.
At this stage, the number of users of YY exceeded all software except the Windows operating system.
In the view of this research company, strictly speaking, the number of valuable users of YY had actually exceeded that of Windows.
The so-called valuable users were the users who first had to bring actual value to the product. Every active user of YY brought value to it. Paid users directly brought value-added business revenue to YY, and free users also provided YY with advertising revenue and other forms of conversion revenue.
In contrast, the number of valuable users of Windows was much smaller than its actual number of users.
Although at this stage, Windows dominated the civilian computer market, and in most countries and regions, commercial computers were all Windows, there were a large number of third world users, including Hua Xia, who mostly used pirated versions of Windows.
In addition, even the development of home PCs in the United States had not reached a 1: 1 ratio of netizens to PCs. Many netizens did not have their own home PC terminals, which meant that a copy of Windows, whether genuine or pirated, served more than one netizen. This also greatly reduced the number of valuable users of Windows at this stage.
If even Windows could not compete with YY at this level, then there was no other company or product on the market that could compete with it.
Such a giant product, without relying on any hardware, had already swept the world and was admired by countless users. This achievement made Jobs begin to revere Li Mu and Makino Technology. But now, what Jobs did not expect was that not long after this feeling of awe arose, the existence that made him in awe became his opponent.
In the days leading up to the launch of YYtunes, a worried Jobs received a steady stream of disturbing news.
The head of marketing told Jobs the first piece of bad news. The number of music copyrights that Makino Technology had now obtained was double that of the existing copyrights in the iTunes Store.
Jobs was dumbfounded.
When iTunes-Store was launched, some record companies were not prepared to join the digital wave, so they never cooperated with Apple. However, they did not expect that Apple would license the copyright to Mu Ye Technology. This was a very big blow to the iTunes-Store. The lack of content would not only put the iTunes-Store at a disadvantage in front of YYtunes, but it would also cause the users of the iTunes-Store to lose because of the content.
Then, the head of research and development told Jobs the second piece of bad news. One of his classmates had now joined Makino Technology. Although he was not in charge of the YYtunes project, he knew that YYtunes was the highest priority and the highest level of confidentiality among Makino Technology's current product tasks. Employees in other departments only learned some information during the preparation stage. This showed the importance that Makino Technology attached to YYtunes. But this was not the bad news. The real bad news was that the YY department was ordered to integrate YYtunes and unconditionally export all resources to YYtunes!
The thing that Jobs was most afraid of was that Makino Technology would take advantage of YYtunes. The main source of users for the iTunes Store were Apple computers and iPod users, and the users of YY were almost all netizens. If YY fully supported YYtunes, not to mention whether it would have an impact on the existing users of the iTunes Store, most importantly, it would wipe out most of the users that the iTunes Store had not yet been able to reach.
Just as Jobs felt a chill down his spine, the head of the iPod business reported to him an inquiry that he had just received: Makino Technology's second-generation player had been developed. Although they could not get a prototype, according to the information collected in Asia, it was certain that Makino Technology's second-generation player was also completely in line with Apple's iPod, and the overall level of the product should not be inferior to the iPod.
When Jobs got the news, he was furious. If Makino Technology were to make YYtunes alone, he would think that they were trying to compete with Apple for the future market. But if Makino Technology were to make YYtunes in conjunction with the music player, that would be equivalent to killing Apple!
He slammed the document in front of the head of the iPod business and scolded, "A behemoth company has developed an absolute competitor that is almost no different from your product, and you were kept in the dark until today. You only found out about it today! This is a serious dereliction of duty! A 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 your division of duties! "
The head of the iPod business said gloomily, "Steve, Makino Technology has its own hardware laboratory and has acquired its own production line. They have also listed the development of this product as a highly confidential project internally. Before they officially launch the product, it is difficult for us to get any information. We only know that Makino Technology has long had a cheap MP3 player, and no one realized that it would compete with the iPod. After all, the Hua Xia market does not have the potential to fully promote high-end music players."
"You don't have to defend yourself!" Jobs said angrily, "I put you in charge of the iPod business to ensure that the iPod develops rapidly, and to keep a close eye on all competitors and potential competitors around the world. You did not notice Makino Technology's targeted actions, and that is your dereliction of duty!"
The head of the iPod business was also a little angry. He stared at Jobs and asked him, "Steve, if it is my dereliction of duty not to have Makino Technology develop a new music player in advance, then whose dereliction of duty is it for not having Makino Technology develop YYtunes in advance?!"
Jobs was speechless for a moment.
The others in the room also looked at each other.
The iTunes-Store was a project that Jobs personally pushed forward, so it stands to reason that he should be the one responsible for it.
At this time, the head of the marketing department saw that the atmosphere was awkward, and he hurriedly came out to smooth things over. "Everyone, don't be so hostile. I think we ignored these two moves by Makino Technology. Although the result is cruel, it is not necessarily our team's fault."
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 closely monitor Microsoft, IBM, Sony, and many other computer hardware manufacturers and music player manufacturers, and do our best to get all the information about their movements. But we have never internally determined to pay attention to every move by Makino Technology. So this is not a dereliction of duty on one person, but we as a whole have ignored the ambitions of Makino Technology, a company that started with instant messaging."
As he said that, he added, "Secondly, Makino Technology is far away in Hua Xia, and these two projects are highly confidential, so it is even more difficult for us to get relevant information. Makino Technology has poached so many R&D talents from Silicon Valley, many of whom 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 in charge of Hua Xia, and all the foreign employees were useless!"
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