Chapter 81
Chapter 81: <Everything from 1 to 10>
Hong Soobum and Jang Gwangchul entered Woosung’s room abruptly.
Hong Soobum asked Woosung. “I heard from the vice president. You are interested in the mobile carrier business?”
“Yes, so that we can do everything from infra to service.”
“Sir, manufacturing smartphone and mobile communication business are two very different things.”
“Current communication industry uses HSDPA with the development of LTE coming up in the future. With HSDPA’s speed of 14.4Mbps, it takes over 7 minutes to download an 800mb movie.” Woosung continued. “In 2-3 years, LTE’s biggest advantage MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) will change this business.”
Woosung had a clear and deep understanding of communication technology.
When Woosung tried to continue his explanation, Hong Soobum interrupted him. “I understand that you studied a lot about this but knowing about it isn’t enough.”
Woosung asked evenly. “Then what do we need?”
“Firstly, we need permission from the government. Because of the three existing carriers’ cartel, it will not happen.”
Woosung glanced at Jang Gwangchul and continued. “Do you know a man named Lee Sunghyun?”
“You mean the son of the President? Yes.”
“We became close acquaintances recently. He said because of the current President’s promise of having a mobility fee reduction, he will consider my request seriously.”
Hong Soobum looked at Jang Gwangchul, who already knew this. Hong Soobum started to sweat.
‘Things are happening way too fast.’
He recently heard about the messenger being selected by the government, but that was only a 1.2-million-dollar deal.
Communication business needed billions of dollars to start and maintain.
“I also think we don’t have enough funds. Within a few years, we could potentially have losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. We will need at least 10 billion dollars just to keep afloat.”
10 billion dollars.
Woosung currently had only 2 billion dollars.
He needed an additional 8 billion dollars, but Woosung wasn’t worried. “I can get about 2 billion dollars. The other 8 billion can be earned.”
Jang Gwangchul interrupted with a grave expression. “Woosung, Coconut is still not completed, and it requires a lot of money to finish. Same for the smartphone. We have two projects that are still in the development stages. So where would you earn that much money from?”
Woosung had a plan. With iPhone, Apple’s stocks were going to soar. All he had to do was buy as many stocks as possible.
Woosung also remembered some bio stocks rising due to the spread of new flu at the end of the year.
There were so many chances in the future. Woosung wasn’t worried.
“Listen, it’s not like we need the 10 billion dollars immediately, right?”
Hong Soobum nodded. “T…that’s true.”
“We can make money from algorithm trading, or we can publish more KND stocks. There are so many ways to make money.”
After a few seconds of silence, Jang Gwangchul looked at Woosung.
“10 billion dollars. It’s 10 billion dollars we’re talking about.”
“ONLY 10 billion dollars. We can’t give up on this chance because of only 10 billion dollars.” This could be a huge opportunity. If it became successful, the money would roll in. “This could be the goose that lays golden eggs.”
Jang Gwangchul was hoping Hong Soobum could change Woosung’s mind, but it was clearly useless.
“Director Hong, you need to only focus on Coconut. That’s it.”
Hong Soobum shrugged his shoulders and looked at Jang Gwangchul helplessly. Woosung also turned to Jang Gwangchul.
“By the way, I got a call from America. The final version of Blue S is completed.”
“So all we have left is to launch it.”
“Yes. I heard that the iPhone 3GS will be released on June 9th. It will sell like hotcakes.”
Hong Soobum asked. “Then wouldn’t we be at a disadvantage? People won’t buy two new phones.”
“If the two products have similar qualities and one is cheaper, which phone would you buy?”
“Well that’s our hope, but…”
“It will work. Anyway, I need to go to Silicone Valley for a while. Please come with me, Vice president.”
“Hmm? M…me?”
“Of course. You need to witness the release of KND’s very first smartphone.”
“A…alright.”
“I will buy the tickets for tomorrow.”
Woosung, Amelia, and Jang Gwangchul arrived at Silicone Valley. Amelia went home, while Woosung and Jang Gwangchul headed to the office.
When they arrived, Logan handed them a well-packaged box. On the surface was the name Blue S. Woosung opened it.
“So this is it.”
“As you suggested, the release date has been set to June 12th. It will be through T-Mobile. Luckily, there aren’t a lot of places that deal with Android phones so Google helped out a great deal. Things worked out well.”
Blue S was the first Android phone that had the potential to compete against the iPhone and win.
Logan continued. “Per your instruction, we have 10,000 phones ready to go. The price has been set lower than the iPhones. 4GB model will be 450 dollars and 8GB will be 550 dollars.”
After inspecting the phone, Woosung asked.
“The hardware costs about 210 dollars, right?”
“Yes, but we expect it to go up slightly.”
“That’s fine. I love the design and the specs.”
It was exactly the same as Daeyang’s phone from his previous life.
Width 120mm.
Height 65mm.
Thickness 12.1mm.
The display was 3.5-inch TFT-LCD with the memory of 256mb. Wi-Fi was included.
With specs like this, it was comparable to iPhone 3GS.
On top of that, Coconut Talk was already installed into the phone. Woosung had high expectations for this feature.
‘Coconut Talk service latency was measured to be an average of 0.03 seconds. For the iPhones, it turned out to be as late as 1 second. In terms of speed, ours is definitely better.’
Woosung replied. “With respect to UX, Coconut is better as well. Users will like that.”
“And we also started airing the TV commercials. As you wanted, we hired Lady Nana for it. It’s already looking very promising. We had a lot of inquiries about the phone because of it.”
Lady Nana.
She was one of the most popular pop stars in America in 2009. Woosung spent tens of millions of dollars on this ad campaign.
Logan smiled. “We also created a Facebook page. It already has tens of thousands of likes. Everyone at the office has high hopes for this product.”
“Unless something unexpected happens, Blue S will be the new sensation.” Woosung turned to Logan. “From now on, when people think of Android, they will think of this phone.”
Woosung felt confident. In his previous life, Daeyang’s Blue S was a huge international success. Woosung believed that without a doubt, this phone would be sold out like hotcakes.
June 12th.
Woosung was having coffee in leisure with Jang Gwangchul.
“I told you so.”
“…”
Jang Gwangchul couldn’t say anything. “If we want to meet this huge demand, we will either have to expand the existing factory here or outsource it to a company in China. What do you think?”
“I will follow your decision.”
Jang Gwangchul looked at Woosung in amazement.
Woosung said quietly. “Well, let’s first hire more factory workers.”
“Ok.”
“All of our 10,000 phones sold out. I told you so! If you hadn’t stopped me from outsourcing it to a Chinese factory, we could’ve sold more phones already.”
Jang Gwangchul looked at Woosung with a deep-seated regret implanted on his chest.