For the people in the domestic MP3 industry, today was their first major earthquake.
Easy Listening suddenly pulled up a banner advertisement on their homepage, announcing that they had cooperated with the Mango brand and that the customized MP3 player from Mango was about to go on sale. Even YY had begun to support Easy Listening and specially recommended it in a pop-up window, gathering a large number of users.
This was probably the first time that domestic MP3 manufacturers and MP3 enthusiasts had seen such a gorgeous visual advertisement. The nine colors of the Mango-MP3 were centered around black, red, orange, yellow, and green on the left, cyan, blue, purple, and silver on the right. Coupled with the grayish-black metallic background, the entire promotional poster looked extremely high-end and eye-catching.
In this banner advertisement, the 64MB player defined as the Mango-ME amazed everyone, and its price shocked the National People's Congress.
The Mango-ME's price was only 368 yuan. One had to know that the cheapest 64MB player from various brands was about 550 yuan, and the bigger brands were at least more than 600 yuan. The MP3 player of 368 yuan was ridiculously cheap. Moreover, the Mango-ME also came with a very beautiful pair of headphones for free. The matching headphones were the same color as the MP3 player, and there were nine colors to choose from.
In addition, Easy Listening also announced that the first batch of Mango-ME was only 100,000 units, and it would be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.
In an instant, the Mango-ME attracted the attention of a large number of netizens. Many users who planned to buy MP3 players or were interested in MP3 players were tempted. The Mango-ME's appearance instantly beat all similar products on the market. Moreover, it was not just a little cheaper than similar products on the market. Users could not find a reason to reject such an MP3 player.
However, Easy Listening seemed to be deliberately keeping people in suspense. No one knew how to buy the Mango-ME. At the moment, it was only available for reservation on Easy Listening. Any registered user of Easy Listening could make a reservation for the Mango-ME and get a twelve-digit reservation code. The reservation code did not cost money, and it was not mandatory to buy the Mango-ME. However, if users wanted to buy the Mango-ME, they had to make a reservation in advance and have a specific reservation code.
However, as for how to use the reservation code, Easy Listening Network did not give any hints. They only said that the sale would officially start at 8 pm on June 6th. Users who made reservations could open Easy Listening Network before 7: 50 pm on June 6th to wait for the official sale.
Zhao Kang's Internet Water Army took action at the right time. At this time, like a virus, they promoted the Mango-ME everywhere, as well as the price, appearance, and various parameters of the Mango-ME and its competitors. There was no doubt that the Mango-ME's price-to-performance ratio completely crushed the MP3 players under 700 yuan. Even those high-capacity MP3 players with 128MB of memory were only larger than the Mango-ME's memory.
MP3 players were not high-tech products to begin with. Most products used the same chip and the same decoding standard. The only difference in performance was the memory. The rest was the brand, price, and appearance. The Mango-ME was lacking in terms of brand awareness. However, Easy Listening Network made up for the lack of brand awareness to a certain extent. As for price and appearance, the Mango-ME was not afraid of any competitors.
Based on the surprisingly high price-to-performance ratio of the Mango-ME, coupled with Easy Listening Network and YY's vigorous promotion and the Internet Water Army, the effect of the promotion was extraordinary. In just one day, the number of reservations for the Mango-ME had reached 2.18 million. This not only surprised Li Mu, but it also shocked the MP3 manufacturers!
Although the reservation requirement was almost zero, Li Mu did not expect the number of reservations to reach so high in such a short period of time. However, he was still a little worried about the conversion rate of reservations. In his previous life, when some domestic mobile phone brands pre-sold in advance on Jingdong, the number of reservations was easily in the millions. However, the actual conversion rate might not even reach 1%. However, the Mango-ME was full of sincerity. Coupled with the continued popularity of the MP3 players, Li Mu subconsciously believed that the conversion rate of the Mango-ME would not be too bad.
That night, the MP3 manufacturers and distributors collectively lost sleep. They had not experienced the exaggerated era of e-commerce. They did not know how exaggerated the data in front of them was. The two to three million reservations really shocked them.
However, the industry was also discussing the situation of Easy Listening Network's distribution channels. Why did their distributors not receive any news about it?
The distribution channels of the MP3 manufacturers were accurate to the counters. They went from the general agent and the market agent all the way to a certain store and a certain electronic shopping mall counter. Therefore, the lower levels of the MP3 manufacturers were very familiar with the industry's dynamics. Under normal circumstances, the distribution of the brand's sales in the electronic shopping mall would be spread very quickly. However, from the manufacturers to the distributors, no one had heard of the brand Mango. No one had seen its stores or counters. No one knew how it was going to distribute the goods. The first batch of 100,000 units was basically the total sales of a mid-range MP3 brand in the country in a month.
To Li Mu, the biggest task of Easy Listening Network and Mango was to pave the way for Taobao. Their own development was secondary. Therefore, he was not going to reveal any information related to Taobao for the time being. He was going to use Mango-ME to attract the attention of the users. When the time came, he would direct the users to Taobao. At the same time, Alipay would support the payment channel. That would be the end of the matter.
If one were to ask any person on the internet in 2016 what methods were used to produce explosive products in 2002, especially products that sold tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of units per month. The other party would definitely think that the person asking the question was stupid. In 2002, there were less than 60 million netizens. The e-commerce model was cumbersome, and the popularity was low. How was it possible to produce explosive products online?
However, the year 2002 was different from the year 2002 in Li Mu's previous life.
The emergence of Easy Listening Network accelerated the development of MP3 listening, downloading, and even MP3 player hardware to a certain extent.
The emergence of Tieba also increased the number of netizens in the country to a certain extent. It contributed to the current scale of netizens.
The emergence of Happy Farm changed the people's love for games. Many middle-aged and even elderly people who had never touched a computer turned into netizens because of this game. It could be said that there were still millions of users of Happy Farm who had not activated YY. This was enough to prove that these users were pure farm users.
The emergence of 3321 allowed the middle class of society, which was the parents of children born in the 80s, to come into contact with the internet.
The emergence of Alipay allowed the middle class of society developed by 3321 to become the first batch of seed users of online payment. Apart from that, it also cultivated a large group of contemporary college users. They were college students who created income on 3321 and had the ability to be financially independent. These were the payment users on the internet. Soon after, Alipay began to connect to third-party merchants like Legend of Mir, further increasing the number of Alipay users.
The emergence of YY increased the number of netizens. The popularity of YY groups turned online social networking into group social networking overnight. Another large group of users who had never come into contact with the internet became netizens for group social networking.
After that, Happy Farm and YY worked together to increase the number of Alipay users to the level of tens of millions of users. In other words, Alipay had connected to the bank cards of more than ten million people. This scale was achieved by Ali in 2004, the second year after Alipay was launched.
Li Mu had done so many things after his rebirth. He had woven such a huge and interconnected network one after another. He had already changed the internet of his previous life in 2002 beyond recognition and turned it into his own 2002.
Some things were difficult to achieve in 2002 in his previous life. But in 2002 in Li Mu's life, everything became much simpler.
…
While Mango-ME attracted the attention of countless people, another global event happened.
The 2002 World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea officially began.
Hua Xia's men's soccer team made it to the finals for the first time in history. The enthusiasm of the nation for soccer reached its peak.
Li Mu's roommates had not missed a single match since the opening match. If they could not watch in the dormitory, they would go to the cafeteria or small restaurants outside the school. However, there were too many people who went to these places to watch the match. So, they discussed and decided to pool money to rent a small apartment outside the school so that they could go and watch the matches together every day.
People like Liu Nian, Sun Jian, and Hu Zhengdao did not dare to be so extravagant. However, ever since they had 3321, their families, which were struggling to make ends meet, had become a lot more affluent. Therefore, when they worked together, they were able to keep up with each other in terms of spending.
Li Mu had not been to school for many days. These people did not include Li Mu in their discussion about renting a house. However, Li Yawei insisted on calling Li Mu. It was not because she wanted Li Mu to pool money, but because she felt that if Li Mu did not appear soon, everyone would almost forget that they had a roommate.
Li Mu received Li Yawei's call. When he heard that they were going to rent a house to watch the match, he was slightly surprised. Then, he smiled and said, "You guys don't have to rent a house. I've rented a house at the east gate. Go there and watch."
Everyone knew that Li Mu must have rented a house outside the school. When Li Mu said this, Li Yawei was not surprised. She only asked Li Mu, "If we go there to watch the match, will it disturb you and sister-in-law?"
Li Mu said, "Don't talk nonsense. When is the next match?"
"Tonight at 7: 30, Spain versus Slovenia."
Li Mu said, "Okay, you guys go to Yucheng Garden at the east gate of the school at 7, then call me."
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