For the next month, Boss Huang was with the entire team, excitedly making various designs for the mechs they were about to build. Of course, Boss Huang was mainly responsible for all the cool-looking exteriors and weapon models. When Boss Huang spoke with excitement, he even planned to add a pair of metal wings, which made the professors around him turn green.
Boss Huang wasn't just causing trouble; he also diligently studied mechanical principles, mechanical processing, and even the operation of CNC machine tools. He was quite talented. An experienced craftsman said that if Boss Huang worked with him for a year, he could train Boss Huang to the level of a third-grade machinist. In three years, he could become a sixth-grade worker, and within ten years, a master craftsman of the eighth grade.
Well, what level is an eighth-grade technician?
They are truly capable of hand-crafting missiles. They don't even need electricity and can use various hand tools to assemble a high-precision missile. So, for our Boss Huang, this was very high praise.
Of course, Boss Huang wasn't interested in becoming an eighth-grade worker. He simply found it fun. Actually building a metal behemoth was much more interesting than being a plastic model enthusiast, constantly sanding sprue gates.
So, when our CEO Leng Zhimeng encountered her brother-in-law again, she saw her brother-in-law wearing ordinary worker overalls, standing amidst a pile of metal, holding a file, and furiously grinding a large piece of iron. He was covered in grease and oil.
"What, did you need something from your brother-in-law?" Huang He asked with a smile, seeing Leng Zhimeng.
"Brother-in-law, why don't you clean yourself up a bit!" Leng Zhimeng said, pinching her nose.
"I still need to drill holes in this steel plate later. Just tell me what you need!" Huang He waved his hand dismissively.
"Yes!" Leng Zhimeng said with a drawn-out tone, "We both received invitations almost simultaneously from two companies asking our 00 Game Center to join them. Brother-in-law, which one should we choose?"
"Which two companies?" Huang He asked with a smile.
"Who else could it be? Of course, Apple and Google!" Leng Zhimeng said with a grin.
"Ah, I thought they would have approached me months ago. I didn't expect them to remember us only now!" Huang He said with a chuckle.
"Brother-in-law, who are we going to cooperate with?" Leng Zhimeng asked.
"No rush, why are we in a hurry?" Huang He shrugged and said, "Let them wait a few months. I still have mechs to build."
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"What, it's been a whole week, and 00 is still saying it's under consideration!" Peiqi could not hide his frustration upon hearing his subordinate's report, pushing the reports aside.
At this time, Google and Apple were undoubtedly engaged in a war, a war centered around brand new smartphones.
After both companies' smartphones, which in this era were uniformly referred to as Cp, were unveiled, the war between Google and Apple had undeniably begun. Even though neither company's phones had actually been released, and mass production and enjoyment wouldn't be completed until the end of August 2007, this did not prevent both sides from launching a propaganda and public opinion war starting in early January.
Thanks to Boss Huang's influence across the entire internet culture and video websites, video bloggers, who originally appeared after 2010, had already begun to flourish online around 2007.
And these video bloggers were almost entirely concentrated on Los Gatos Video Network or Netflix Video Network. These two large video platforms were the only ones on the entire internet that could handle the massive server and bandwidth resources required for video websites. However, they were also the only global platforms capable of covering websites worldwide, allowing any user connected to the internet to view videos from another country.
Of course, even with the existence of Los Gatos Video Network and Netflix Video Network as "cheat codes" for the era, video bloggers were limited by network speeds and tools, so their frequency of posting videos online was generally around 2-3 works per month, with video sizes almost always within 100MB.
Therefore, the picture quality of these videos was quite poor, but this did not prevent video bloggers from using these low-quality videos to promote and showcase anything they found interesting, such as the latest Google and Apple phones.
Although mass supply was still in August, it was because the production capacity of Jiangnan Group needed to be expanded, making large-scale production and supply impossible in the short term.
However, this did not prevent Jiangnan Group from producing several hundred to a thousand units each month and handing them over to Google and Apple. Naturally, this also did not prevent Google and Apple from giving these phones to their partnered video bloggers, traditional media, and online media networks, allowing them to help promote their phones in advance through all channels.
This is commonly known as a review.
Google and Apple successively sent their phones for free to popular video bloggers online, inviting them to shoot videos of their actual experiences using these phones and then broadcast them on video platforms to attract netizens' attention and promote the phones.
Of course, these are all tactics commonly used in later generations. All phones, before their launch, would have many famous video bloggers conduct reviews.
And this entire process was not something the mobile phone manufacturers came up with themselves; it was incubated by the market.
In the beginning, these mobile phone manufacturers had no intention of providing their most advanced phones to video bloggers for reviews; that simply didn't happen.
It wasn't until later, with the continuous development of smartphones, that many video bloggers who couldn't find topics began to spontaneously find ways to get the latest, unreleased phones on the market, review them ahead of time, and let curious viewers see what these rumored, amazing phones were like in reality.
At first, these were topics that video bloggers came up with themselves, and mobile phone manufacturers paid no attention.
Until later, an incident occurred, which was when Xiaomi released their Mi MIX phone.
After the Mi MIX was showcased at the press conference, due to its highly marketable full-screen design, the absence of an earpiece, and its use of bone conduction to transmit sound, it quickly captured the curiosity of the entire market and viewers who watched the live broadcast.
Then, these video bloggers discovered a business opportunity and began to try their best to get a Xiaomi Mi MIX phone in advance, producing review videos as quickly as possible and releasing them online.
Because there were so many video bloggers conducting reviews simultaneously, it led to a situation where almost the entire video website was flooded with review videos of the Xiaomi Mi MIX, successfully helping Xiaomi Mi MIX achieve breakout success and be seen by more audiences who had no idea about Xiaomi Mi MIX or previously considered Xiaomi a cheap brand, thus completing the market myth of the Xiaomi Mi MIX.
How amazing was this myth?
Not to mention that this was the second phone in the world that, at the time of its release, saw its scalper price soar to over 20,000 yuan per unit, a full four times its actual retail price. This was an unprecedented situation that only occurred when Apple launched new models, specifically the 'Gold' color variant. To date, only the gold colored iPhone 5 and the Xiaomi Mi MIX had achieved this feat.
Moreover, the Xiaomi Mi MIX's achievement was even more impressive because the iPhone 5's price only tripled, while the Xiaomi Mi MIX quadrupled.
But this was not the Xiaomi Mi MIX's most impressive achievement. Its most outstanding achievement was that since the launch of the Xiaomi Mi MIX, all subsequent new phone models featured full-screen displays as a mandatory standard and a key promotional point.
Even a 1% increase in the full-screen ratio would become a significant achievement for any phone. To achieve this, countless phone manufacturers began to explore how to move the phone's fingerprint sensor under the screen, how to move the front camera under the screen, and how to cancel the earpiece, and so on.
Even Apple could not resist this trend. Initially, Apple was very arrogant. In the new generation of Apple phones, the design remained the same.
As a result, the market slapped Apple in the face. This generation of Apple phones became the worst-selling generation. And without the full-screen display, Apple phones seemed unable to become a fashion accessory for countless fashionistas.
So, Apple quickly switched its phone screens to full-screen displays in the next generation. As a result, even by 2022, no phone manufacturer advertised their full-screen displays because all phones had them. Full-screen displays had become a standard, a golden rule, just like full touchscreens.
It was after this that manufacturers began to pay attention to the importance of video bloggers and their impact on market trends. Thus, some mobile phone manufacturers began to proactively contact various video bloggers, proactively offering their unreleased phones and inviting these video bloggers to conduct reviews to build momentum for their new phones.
Under such circumstances, the entire industry naturally evolved, giving rise to many professional review video bloggers, or even more advanced digital tech reviewers.
These bloggers possessed rich relevant knowledge, a knack for speaking non-stop, and compelling scripts that helped showcase the phone's superior features and allowed users to understand these brand-new phones. Users also enjoyed carefully watching the review videos published by these reviewers before making a purchase, helping them choose their desired phone.
And by 2020, apart from those who didn't use the internet, all other users began to exclusively choose their phones by watching review videos on various video websites.