The day before leaving for the United States, Li Mu specifically confirmed the progress of several works.
Gubeishui Town has reached a cooperation agreement with Huaqing Travel Service. The Yanjing Municipal Government has provided a guarantee for the Gubeishui Town project in Yanjing Bank. The funding problem of Gubeishui Town has also been fundamentally solved. The Miyun County Committee has fully supported it, and all the approval documents have been given the green light. Even in order to accelerate the normal launch of the Gubeishui Town project, the Jingcheng Expressway section from Yanjing to Miyun has been required to accelerate the construction period. It must be opened to traffic before Gubeishui Town is completed and officially opened for business. For this reason, the municipal government and the transportation department jointly bear the cost of nearly 100 million yuan of speeding up the construction period.
At the same time, the film and television base project is also being actively promoted. The aerial survey company has begun to carry out aerial survey and mapping of the Great Plains of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province. When Li Mu returns from the United States, the aerial survey map will definitely be completed. At that time, he can take the aerial survey map to scientifically enclose the land, and then go to the local government to talk about cooperation.
The outdoor reality show "Life Longing for" jointly created by Makino Image and Xiangnan Satellite TV is about to start shooting. The shooting site chosen for the show in Miyun has basically been renovated, and the recording of the show will soon begin. Li Mu promised to be a guest in this show, but this can only be fulfilled after he returns from the United States.
As for Makino Technology and Taobao Network, Li Mu doesn't need to worry about them at all. Makino Technology is like a spaceship sailing at high speed in space. In this unique environment, there is no resistance at all. If it doesn't actively slow down, its speed will not be affected at all.
As for Taobao Network, after SARS, it has become a behemoth of the Internet + warehousing + logistics. The government recognized the efforts made by Taobao Network during the SARS period. Not only did it give a series of public praise and rewards, but it also gave a lot of practical support in many aspects, such as taxation, land use, transportation, qualification approval, and various policy subsidies. This series of support not only helped Taobao Network reduce a lot of burden, but also provided a stronger impetus for Taobao Network to move forward.
…
After more than ten hours of flight, plus a mid-way landing to refuel, Li Mu and the core members of his Apple business unit finally set foot in the United States again. The last time he came to the United States was just Li Mu's debut. This time, Li Mu was already a very influential figure.
From the moment Li Mu's chartered plane took off in Hua Xia, the American media, especially the Silicon Valley media, began to report the news that Li Mu was going to the United States. Internet companies and capitalists in the United States were trying to figure out the strategic intentions of Li Mu's trip to the United States. Was he here to expand, to find funds, or to prepare for an IPO?
At this moment, Li Mu had almost attracted the attention of the entire United States.
From the popularity of YY to Paradise Town, Plants vs Zombies Online, and now YYtunes, Li Mu had deeply penetrated into the internet life of Americans, and brought about a huge revolution in their internet life.
So far, YYtunes had been online for more than ten days.
In just over ten days, YYtunes was like an unprecedented storm, sweeping the entire West, especially the United States.
There had never been a music software that could bring people such an incredible experience. On YYtunes, music was no longer just for appreciation, it had become a link between music lovers around the world.
The current YYtunes was like the Instagram that appeared out of nowhere in the era of smartphones. YYtunes was a social media based on music, while Instagram was a social media based on pictures.
In more than ten days, YYtunes submitted an answer that shocked the American Internet industry. According to the results of the survey and analysis issued by a tripartite research company, more than 90% of the users in the United States who listened to or downloaded music on the Internet were currently using YYtunes.
In other words, as soon as YYtunes went online, it formed an almost absolute monopoly.
In addition, the rapid popularity of YYtunes made the chart on YYtunes become the most valuable wind vane in the entire music industry.
Nowadays, no chart was more credible than YYtunes, which had gathered hundreds of millions of users. Moreover, it was more effective in driving traffic. After a song or an album was on the chart, it would gain a lot of traffic from the chart, and the traffic would be converted into paid downloads of singles and albums. All of a sudden, all the popular singers began to pay attention to this chart and regarded being on the YYtunes chart as a new goal.
When Li Mu arrived at the new headquarters of Makino Technology's Silicon Valley Branch, Lin Ching-ah had been harassed by a group of people in charge of the record company for the whole morning. In her words, it was really annoying.
When she saw Li Mu, the first thing Lin Ching-ah did was to complain to him. She said helplessly, "Li Zong, all the record companies in the United States have been keeping an eye on YYtunes recently. It's the same for all the popular singers. These companies come to us every day to talk about in-depth cooperation and beg us to help their singers improve their rankings. I'm really annoyed to death."
Li Mu smiled and said, "You can hire a director who specializes in music affairs, or set up a music division. You don't have to do this kind of thing yourself."
Lin Qingya said, "The music business has just started. In order to ensure that these copyright holders are willing to work closely with us, I personally receive all the copyright holders who come to our door. After all, you place so much importance on YYtunes, so I cannot let my guard down."
As she said that, Lin Ching-ah pretended to be mysterious and whispered, "Recently, I've been talking about exclusive cooperation with these copyright owners. The number of active users in iTunes has plummeted, and there's not much profit for them. So, I'm privately pushing for exclusive licensing. I want these copyright owners to exclusively license all the online music copyrights to us. If all goes well, we can sign the first exclusive licensing agreement this month."
Li Mu was surprised for a moment, then said with a smile, "You're trying to take drastic measures against Apple."
The core service of Apple's iTunes was online listening and paid downloading of music. However, the United States was not like Hua Xia in the past. Back then, Hua Xia, even a small individual webmaster, dared to openly pirate music from all over the world on the Internet. In the United States, it was a crime even for an individual to download pirated music. No company would do such a thing. So, if iTunes lost the copyright license, it was basically equivalent to a supermarket without goods, and the future was even bleaker.
Lin Ching-ah smiled and said, "After taking drastic measures, you can take it all away. Otherwise, you'll burn your hands."
Li Mu laughed and looked at her new office. He said, "This building is in a good location. Can you show me around?"
Lin Ching-ah smiled and nodded. She said, "Then I'll show you around and introduce you to it."
Li Mu took Li Ziwei and followed Lin Ching-ah to visit an entire office building newly rented by the Silicon Valley branch of Makino Technology.
Lin Ching-ah said that this building had four floors above ground and two underground. It covered an area of 16000 square meters. The building area was 9,000 square meters, and the office area was 30000 square meters. It could accommodate up to 4,000 people and provide more than 2,000 parking spaces.
Renting such a large new office building was the decision of the senior management of Makino Technology. As the company's internationalization process became faster and faster, Li Mu needed to build the United States branch into the largest headquarters of Makino Technology outside of Hua Xia. An office building that could accommodate 4,000 people was just the beginning. If the IPO was completed, the total staff of Makino Technology in the United States would probably be more than 10,000.
Moreover, even in the hinterland of Silicon Valley, it was not crowded at all. The building density was low, the green area was large, and the general height of the floors was not high. Almost every shoe building was a small park, and the internal depth was large enough. The distance from other office buildings was also very far, and the internal environment was very quiet.
In contrast, the dense feeling of a large number of reinforced concrete buildings in Zhongguancun was always accompanied by a sense of noise, urgency, and high pressure.
The gap between the two was like the gap between the high-end villa area of the rich and Tiantong Court, the largest community in Asia, or even greater.
However, Li Mu knew that this kind of thing could not be envied. The land resources in the United States were much richer than in China. The entire land area of the United States was similar to that of Hua Xia, but almost more than half of the United States was plains. However, Hua Xia's flat area only accounted for 12%, and the area of plains was only a quarter of that of the United States. The population of the United States was 300 million, and it was less than a quarter of that of Hua Xia. In this way, the per capita area of plains in the United States was 16 times that of Hua Xia.
At present, all the employees of the United States branch of Makino Technology added up were about 1,000 people. The vacancy rate of this building was relatively high, so the company directly used the fourth floor as an employee activity center, with lounge, restaurant, and gym.
According to Lin Ching-ah, the big company closest to Makino Technology was Google.
Lin Ching-ah also said that when the branch moved, Google's founder, Larry Page, personally came over to congratulate her and gave her a box of French champagne.
Li Mu smiled and said, "Didn't Larry Page give you a few flower baskets?"
Lin Ching-ah smiled and said, "Americans don't have this custom. They like to give small gifts to the person in charge to express their congratulations."
Li Mu nodded. When Larry Page was mentioned, he remembered the last time he came to the United States, he had dinner with him. At that time, he also helped Sequoia to convince him to accept Sequoia's investment.
As for Google, it had not been listed yet. However, from their last round of financing and the current valuation given by the capital market, it was much lower than Makino Technology.
Thinking about Google and his determination to acquire Apple, Li Mu could not help but think of a guru, the founder of Android, Andy Rubin.
If he remembered correctly, Andy Rubin founded Android in the second half of this year. Two years later, Android was acquired by Larry Page's Google. It was said that Andy Rubin and Larry Page were friends before Android was founded, so Li Mu believed that they knew each other.
Apple was determined to acquire Android. Should he get Andy Rubin, the founder of Android, to join his side in advance? If that was the case, would he be able to basically monopolize the smartphone operating system market in the future?
After all, in the future smartphone market, Symbian would be like a child with an IQ no higher than a five-year-old. It would slowly fall behind the competition of adults. BlackBerry's own bottleneck was a fatal hurdle that even it could not overcome. As for the mighty Microsoft in the smartphone market, it was really too weak. If both IOS and Android were in its pocket, then there would really be no one left to fight in the smartphone market …
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